This is why every business should strive towards improving the productivity levels of their employees. But you need to be careful not to negatively impact their happiness. Pressured employees can produce results in the short term, but in the long term their productivity will decline and they will eventually quit the company.
To help you avoid this situation I have made a list of tactics you can use to increase employee productivity without sacrificing their happiness…
Figure out what employees want:
To improve employee productivity and maintain happiness you need to first find out what employees want. If you know exactly what makes them happy and what makes them unhappy, it will help you devise a productivity strategy that won’t disappoint them.
So, conduct a survey and a do a round of interviews that will help you gain a lot of insights about your employees. Along with questions that ask them directly what they want out of work, include some extra ones that will help you learn more about their personalities. Ask the managers to also provide notes based on their experience working with these employees.
After that you can use all this data to create your employee productivity strategy. This will help you get the most out of your employees.
Sometimes, just asking questions will automatically spur your employees into becoming more productivity as found by Facebook.
They create a survey that asked 30% of their employees whether the company (Facebook) was taking steps to improve their experience. And those who took the survey “ended up being 12% more likely than their peers to request a curated list of additional resources and tools to help them become more engaged at Facebook — and that was true whether their original answer was yes or no.”
This indirect effect on engagement and productivity occurred because it showed Facebook’s employees that the company cares about their experience and well being. It encouraged their employees to be more loyal towards them.
Help employees establish a routine by creating a schedule:
After you get the data from the survey and create a strategy, you can begin setting up the schedule.
Having a strict work schedule will help your employees get into a routine. They will be able to plan their week in advance. They will be able to function better not only at work, but also during the time they spend away. As they will plan the rest of their lives around their work. This will ensure that they get proper rest which is critical for high performance levels.
To help you set things up, try a reliable scheduling software. It should not only let you easily set up the schedule on the computer, but should also let you share it with your employees through apps. Communication features will be a plus as it will make it easy for you to make changes to the schedule.
Don’t discourage remote work:
If employees want to work remotely, let them do so. Most managers have this misconception that remote work reduces productivity, when in fact it is the contrary. A survey from CoSo Cloud found that 77% of employees working remotely are more productive and 30% of them accomplish more in less time. They are also ready to put in longer time at work and take less time off.
Managing remote employees should also be easy for you as you can you can use the same scheduling software to create their schedules. Also, there are so many affordable instant messaging, VoIP and video conferencing software that will help you and the rest of the team members communicate.
Track performance
The only way to check if the strategy you have created is working is by tracking employee performance. To analyse how much time they are putting in at work you can install tracking software on their computers and mobile devices. And to gain insights on their engagement and happiness levels you can just conduct more surveys and interviews at regular intervals.
Now improve your employee productivity…
These are the tactics you can implement to improve employee productivity and happiness at the same time. Start by gathering information through surveys and interviews. Next, create a strategy and execute it with the help of a scheduling software. And finally track employee performance with the help of software and surveys.