So far, this year, 2020 has brought us so many challenges that we haven’t experienced before. One area that has had a learning curve is how to stay productive, let alone increase productivity, during all the 2020 distractions.
Recently while training a group of new leaders to be good leaders, I overheard a conversation where the new manager was telling another how he was “just getting through” his employees annual review’s. He mentioned that it was really easy to just “cut and paste” comments from one employee to another.
As you can guess… we had some juicy conversation points for the rest of the day and for this article.
Productivity will certainly decrease if and when the work environment either in session or remote is such that it drains their energy and leaves them feeling unmotivated. The best way to boost productivity is to motivate your team in one of two way. Either by giving external incentives or tapping into internal motivating mechanisms like personal growth and a sense of accomplishment. These motivation sources are dependent on the individual and if you don’t really know the individual you won’t know how and what motivates them.
Here are nine proven ways to increase your team’s productivity.
- Keep the communication lines open between the employees and leadership. The secret here is to listen to the employees, really listen to them. Notice them, engage them, be with them. Make the environment such that no one is afraid to come to leadership with a challenge, question or problem.
- Make it ok to take breaks. Recently I saw a post in a Facebook group and the manager was asking “what do you do if you’re working from home employees are taking too many breaks?” Wouldn’t the issue be are they getting the work done in a timely and quality way?
- Know their strengths. As you learn more and more about your employees, you’ll come to know their individual strengths. Make sure they are doing work that utilizes their strengths.
- Avoid the marathon and look to the short term. Set short term, success possible goals and work to help your employees achieve them.
- Catch them doing something right. With all the stress of remote employees and working from home, catching them doing something right seems to have fallen by the wayside. Nothing motivates an employee to do their best work like recognition for a job well done and being rewarded for it.
- Make sure your employees have the tools they need. If your employees are working remotely, do that have what they need? Think about periodically asking your employees if they feel they have sufficient tools and resources to help them with their work.
- Keep the learning coming. Some people are motivated by praise and recognition, while others are motivated by personal growth and learning. For the latter, the best way to ensure productivity is to provide them with learning opportunities to upskill themselves.
That is why it is important to have some sort of training program in your company where employees can learn new skills to perform their jobs better. You can introduce courses related to the jobs as well as for other generic areas like leadership or management skills. - Bring the trust. One of the biggest causes of dissatisfaction or low productivity in employees is micromanagement by their bosses. If someone continuously finds faults or tells you how to do things, you will eventually lose interest.
That is why micromanagement should be avoided at all costs. Instead, guide your employees and then trust them to do their jobs. Even if they fail sometimes, it’s better to help them improve rather than taking control of things yourself. - Look to the bright side. Look for and reward the positive. While all the things mentioned above contribute to this, it still deserved a special mention on this list. In the end, it all boils down to creating a positive work environment where your employees can thrive and do their best work.
Implement one or two of these steps into your business to create a positive work environment for your employees and encourage them to do their best. What ideas have you implemented that have helped? Let us know.
