In a competitive marketplace, a business needs every advantage it can get. One of the greatest assets of any business is its employees. However, sometimes, that asset is wasted due to lazy, unmotivated and unproductive employees. With that in mind, below are six tips for increasing worker productivity within your company.
Take Advantage of Breaks
According to research published on ScienceDirect, regular breaks can increase worker productivity significantly. While this may seem illogical to some managers who are more like slave drivers, breaks allow both the mind and body to rest and thus refresh. Without a break, employees tend to burn out faster. You don’t want to wear out your employees and hamper their productivity. Regular breaks are also demanded by the law. They also help reduce turnover since burnt out employees are likely to leave the organization all together.
Provide Varied Tasks
Workers should not be forced to do the same kind of work every single day for eight hours at a time. In fact, not providing varied tasks for employees to perform can be dangerous and an insurance risk. According to WebMD, repeating the same motion with the same body parts over and over again can lead to repetitive motion injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome and bursitis. Even having employees type constantly is a risk. Make sure employee work is varied enough so they can switch between tasks during the day.
Provide Feedback
Another reason why employees might become unmotivated is the lack of feedback from management and others in higher positions in the organization. Employees that receive no feedback may assume that the company doesn’t care about their contributions. Even worse, they may assume the quality of their work doesn’t matter and may spend the workday simply trying to run out the clock. Clear and proper feedback is one way to make sure employees stay engaged and passionate about their jobs.
Have Employees Work Towards Goals
Work inside a factory, office or any other kind of workplace should be goal oriented. If employees’ work is measured in terms of achieving goals, they are far more likely to be more motivated and engaged in their work. Whether it is meeting quotas, finishing projects or obtaining good customer reviews, some kind of goal should be strived for. Without a goal, work may seem much more mundane and pointless to the average employee.
Focus on Collaboration
Employees should also work together towards the same goals to stay engaged. Collaboration can produce a far better end product than employees working on their own can produce. Make sure that your employees are provided with the tools they need to collaborate effectively. For example, VoIP from companies such as ACN Inc. can help insure that your employees can teleconference together no matter where they are. This can also save money for the company compared to the expense of landline or cellular phone calls.
Track Productivity
Overall, if you don’t track employee productivity, you won’t be able to do much to improve it. Tracking productivity can be accomplished using different strategies and different tools. Some of them don’t require direct supervision. Productivity tracking software can help you keep tabs on how much of your employees’ time on company computers is actually used for work. Make sure, however, employees are aware that they are being monitored so they don’t feel like their privacy has been violated after starting with your company.
Productivity is vitally important to the success or failure of a company. With productive employees, you can design and create quality products and provide excellent service in a timely fashion. Without productive employees, progress may be made at snail’s pace. If you have problems with productivity in your business, try the tips listed above.