Increase Employee Productivity with These Simple Ideas

Employee productivity is a cornerstone of success, but it can be difficult to motivate them sometimes, and impossible to simply will them to do so. By providing incentives, benefits, open communication lines, the right software and systems, swift meetings, and continued training; your business will keep humming along the right track.

First and foremost, treating your employees with respect by doing things like offering them incentives and other benefits for working with you will improve productivity. It’s been shown repeatedly that happier people are more productive. Figure out what your workforce needs in terms of benefits by getting to know them and their position and perspectives in life. Go beyond health and dental benefits and consider paid leave, team events and meals, fitness and wellness perks. Mutual respect will also grow, which only means good things for your company’s future. And remember to take the time to thank your employees, either publicly or in private, for their efforts. Benefits related to promoting physical and mental health will also ensure you have healthier employees – that is the point, after all. Sure, it saves them money, too, but everyone benefits from fitter employees who aren’t depressed or anxious. One can’t be very productive when they’re suffering.

Allow your employees chances to be heard and provide them ample feedback. Keeping lines of communication open is an important part of any type of relationship. Are expectations being made clear? Miscommunications can lead to mistakes or heading off in the wrong direction completely. Just as management is given opportunities to provide feedback via performance reviews, employees should get the same opportunity to do so in regard to management.

Our world is fully digitized and taking advantage of cloud-based Enterprise Resource Management software to integrate the many departments within your company and to have efficient control over operations will improve employee productivity significantly. A program like Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) streamlines business intelligence and reporting and lets you identity issues before they become a problem. Time-consuming manual tasks are accelerated using automatic workflows. Employees can access information to serve the needs of customers from any connected location on a range of devices. Data management is a cinch with centralized information and databases to check inventory, orders, expenses, and more. To learn about the latest Sage software options visit a professional consulting and ERP software service provider with a history of experience.

Productivity can be interrupted in many ways, and several meetings a week is a major source of stoppage. To make meetings quicker and more efficient, always provide an agenda to everyone in attendance ahead of time and stick to it. Table new topics of discussion unless they’re an emergency and of the utmost importance. Only include relevant players in the meeting. Other parties who can benefit from the information can receive a summary of the minutes if it’s relevant to their work later.

Training doesn’t only belong at the start of a contract or upon hiring. Provide further training opportunities and professional development to help your workers stay up-to-date with how to do their job better and faster, but also correctly. Productivity isn’t always about doing things quickly; it’s about doing things right the first time and not having to re-do them or go into damage control mode.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.