Employees Are the Key to Productivity

Productivity is always going to be a big issue in the workplace. While you want to encourage your employees to get work done, you don’t want to be too overbearing, as it could have the exact opposite of your desired effect. How can you make sure that your employees are staying on-task and focused on their goals? You can take the first step by understanding their motivations and long-term goals.

Understanding the Employee Perspective

To make sure your employees stay productive, you first need to look at their duties from their perspective. Depending on their motivations and goals, your employees will have a different reason to want to do a good job. Some might be in it for the long haul, thinking of your business as a career. Others might only be using it as a stepping stone toward achieving their ultimate goal. Understanding where they fall on this spectrum is imperative to getting the most out of your workers.

If you give your employees the ability to invest themselves in your company for their own benefit, you might find that they are much more productive and efficient with their time. If you give them the opportunity to learn new skills that they can carry with them in the future, you may find they are more devoted to their work. After all, there’s one thing that’s certain: an employee who is unfulfilled and uncertain of their future with a business will be less productive, leading ultimately to their departure in search of greener pastures.

Augmenting Productivity

Productivity is a necessity to maintain operations without losing out on profit, so you should establish the following guidelines to ensure that your employees remain cognizant of their own work ethic. You might have to rely on them to self-police themselves at times, since if you micromanage too much, they might grow to resent your management style. Here are a couple of ideas to get you thinking about how to get the most out of your employees:

• Establish KPIs for friendly competition: Key performance indicators help you establish guidelines for how much you want your employees to get done throughout the workday. These are generally used to ensure that projects and tasks are on time and on budget. While it could easily be marketed as the bare minimum to strive for in terms of productivity, you should instead look at it as an opportunity to instill some friendly competition amongst your staff. With KPIs being visible and transparent in the workplace, your employees can really own their work and use the information to better themselves.
• Implement a content filter to keep them on task: A content filter can keep the endless content of the Internet at bay so that your employees can stay productive. A content filter can keep users off of social media and streaming services to help them be as efficient as possible with their time. You can even implement them on a per-user basis, meaning that problem employees can be remediated while those who don’t make a habit of it can enjoy the fruits of their labor every now and then.

SMART Services is a staunch believer in the power of technology to make your business as productive as possible. To learn more about how we can help, reach out to us at 586 258-0650 .