The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Whether you’re running a small company or a big one, increasing your employees’ productivity can enhance your firm’s bottom line. Producing more using limited resources is a key aspect in the modern competitive business environment. According to the New York Times, businesses that can maximize productivity from each employee and quality output from scarce resources have a high success probability.
However, most small businesses don’t know how to start the journey to increase productivity. Luckily, with the right tips and knowledge, you can easily improve your employees’ performance to boost productivity. Below are ways to increase productivity in your company.
1. Delegate Duties
Delegating additional duties to your workers is an excellent way to boost their work morale and job satisfaction. Delegation boosts morale and enhances employees’ skills and expertise in various roles, creating all-around workers. In the long run, such workers will become resourceful, helping your business increase its productivity level. Although delegation comes with some level of risk, if you offer your workers the chance to develop their skills, eventually, it will increase productivity.
Availing the right tools and equipment can significantly increase their performance, thus boosting your company’s productivity. Today, you have many tools, including HR software, proposal software, accounting software, and payroll processing software, to boost efficiency and productivity. Using such tools and equipment, you can increase individual employee performance, translating to increased organizational productivity.
3. Eliminate Distractions from the Workspaces
If your employees gain easy access to social media networks using the company internet, it can distract them, impacting their productivity negatively. There are several ways you can eliminate such distractions. For instance, you can instruct your IT department to deactivate social media networks in the computers that employees use. You can also encourage your staff to switch off their mobile phones during work hours. Doing so will increase their focus on their duties, and their time at the workplace will be spent more productively. Ultimately, eliminating distractions will contribute to increased productivity in your business.
4. Set Realistic Goals and Provide Feedback
Setting clear goals and your company’s path toward success is an important aspect of increasing productivity. Nevertheless, when setting such goals, you should be realistic and consider your employees’ capabilities and weaknesses. Otherwise, you might end up scaring your employees with unattainable goals, leading to poor performance and low productivity.
Additionally, once you have set realistic goals, you need to devise a way to assess your staff’s performance against the set goals. You must identify what has been achieved and what hasn’t and discuss the results with your employees to determine what can be improved. Also, always remember to give positive feedback to employees who perform exceptionally and constructively encourage low performers. Eventually, doing so will boost your effort to increase productivity in your company.
Improving the quality of work can result in enhanced productivity in your company. Providing training and development opportunities to your staff minimizes the frequency of making mistakes and the need to re-do jobs. Additionally, offering training and development opportunities make your staff feel valued, and they perceive this as your commitment to helping them advance their careers. In turn, this boosts their work morale leading to increased productivity in your business.
6. Adopt Flexible Working Schedules
Needing all your workers to adhere to a rigid work schedule irrespective of their duties destroys employee morale and business productivity. On the contrary, enabling your employees to have some level of autonomy with their work schedules can improve their productivity. Besides, this can help build loyalty and motivate them to work extra hard to succeed in their work. Permitting some of your staff to work from home can improve productivity in the current business environment where the COVID-19 impacts physical working.
Concluding Remarks
Overly, you can leverage various strategies to boost employee work morale and increase productivity in your company. Some of the strategies you can apply in your business include delegating duties, adopting the correct tools and equipment, and eliminating distractions from the workspaces. You can also set realistic goals, provide feedback, and adopt flexible working schedules. Using these strategies, you can significantly increase productivity in your company.
