Tag: company culture

How To Improve Employee Productivity In 2023?

Improving employee productivity can be a challenge, especially when most of the employees are new joiners who are also new to the industry. In fact, according to a study by Academia, the employee productivity rate is decreasing day by day which has created an atmosphere of panic for employers. But you don’t need to worry as there is a solution to this problem. 

There are many tried and tested ways to improve productivity, which are quite effective. In this blog, we’re going to reveal five such ways that will help you improve employee productivity.

What Is Employee Productivity?

Before we begin to learn about the ways to improve productivity, we need to know what employee productivity actually is. It is not just a way to evaluate employee performance but to know if the employees are working to their full potential. Business leaders want their companies to compete with others in their industry. For them to do so, they need an engaged workforce that will increase productivity.

Employee productivity is an assessment of the efficiency of a worker or group of workers. Productivity may be evaluated in terms of the output of an employee in a specific period of time.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s best to find ways for your employees to feel like they’re spending their time working toward something meaningful. This can make employees feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. In that case, it is likely to have a positive impact on productivity. Encourage a positive work culture and team engagement. Tracking each employee’s performance so that you can share the feedback with them will go miles in enhancing their growth and development in the company.

Also Read: Employee Engagement on Productivity

Why Measure Employee Productivity?

Before you even think about improving the workforce productivity, you need to ensure that you can measure your employees’ performance in a meaningful way. There are multiple ways to measure an employee’s productivity, for example, you can track how many files are processed or what percentage of clients have been contacted per day. You need to clearly identify what you want your employees to do and then build a way to measure it. Otherwise, you will never know if they are achieving their targets.

Why Employee Productivity Might Be Low?

In today’s day and age, organizations have to fight common contemporary factors that often have a negative effect on employees’ productivity levels. Factors such as long working hours and irregular shifts can cause mental health issues among employees. While these factors might not affect every individual who works within an organization, they do play a pivotal part in lowering the productivity levels of individuals. 

It’s essential to understand what caused your low productivity before improving it. Chances are, several factors contributed to the problem. At times, when employees are working remotely, they can feel disconnected from their workplace and can be challenging to supervise—and that can hamper their performance. It can also be due to lack of clear objectives or expectations. Time management can also be an issue, for example, some people need more structure than others and may struggle with setting their schedules or meeting deadlines without some guidance from you.

Also Read: Reduce Anxiety at the Workplace

How to Improve Productivity In Workplace?

Managers spend a lot of time working on an employee’s growth and development. Still, sometimes they lack concrete tools to help them achieve their goal. If you are having issues with productivity, here are five tried-and-tested ways to improve your employees’ productivity:

1. Increase Visibility and Access

You can encourage your employees to be more productive by increasing their visibility and access to resources. It’s pretty easy to get into a rut where employees are frustrated with limited software or equipment access, but it’s just as easy to change that.

Bring in a consultant if you need assistance in helping your staff upskill themselves. Then, work with them on creating a timeline for training. The end result is an engaged workforce aligned with the organization’s vision, with increased motivation and overall productivity.

2. Set Clear Expectations

As a leader, it’s up to you to set clear expectations. Connect with an individual employee or a group to assess their career goals and figure out areas of improvement. 

Some companies have structured annual reviews that are handled by managers. If your company handles performance reviews more informally than that, then your first step should be setting clear expectations about where people should focus their attention and how they can improve. 

3. Goal-Setting and Tracking

Delegating tasks is a tried and tested way to get employees up to speed. Encourage your employees to take on as much responsibility as they can handle and learn from their mistakes along the way. You could say that managing smart employees is really about managing their development, which requires some investment of time and resources. Ultimately, it will improve employee performance and productivity in leaps and bounds. 

The key here is to trust your team. When you do, you’ll see employee engagement and satisfaction increase dramatically, which should translate into increased output over time as well. Don’t try to be everything for everyone—it may seem like a lot of work at first, but it pays off in employee engagement in terms of encouraging your team’s productivity over time.

5. Use Employee Productivity Tools

Learning how to improve employee productivity is all about having access to good tools. This can be in-house software or off-the-shelf applications that are available online. All of these offer ways to get more work done and improve processes, allowing you to spend less time on manual work and more time focusing on activities that help boost your bottom line. 

If you can find tools that can better connect employees and empower them at every level, you’ll notice a real increase in their productivity. Invest in those tools that have proven value for your specific business needs and goals.

6. Measure Performance Periodically

It’s not always easy to find that one sure thing that makes employees more productive; there are usually a number of factors involved. However, if you take a look at any employee review website and search for tips on improving employee performance, you’ll notice that most revolve around giving employees room for improvement. 

Make sure you share feedback with them on a regular basis and try to avoid looking at mistakes as signs of failure. Pay attention to each little detail. Just remember—don’t rush things! It takes time for new hires to become familiar with your company culture and standards.

Scaling Up Productivity

Businesses frequently look for strategies to motivate staff to work harder in an effort to increase productivity. The use of bonuses and commissions is one of these strategies. You’ve probably dealt with performance-based incentives if you’ve worked in sales or customer service. Although these techniques may be useful in some situations, they aren’t always reliable. In fact, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, as with many other things. 

According to a recent Stanford University study, offering a small wage raise has a greater impact on productivity and job satisfaction than introducing commission-based compensation systems. In the end, commission-based pay is less effective than simply paying people what they earn based on their time spent at work because it may appear like an easy method to inspire employees—especially those who don’t feel personally motivated by their professions. Naturally, employing wage raises doesn’t imply you should stop using any other employee motivation strategies; instead, think about how each strategy fits into your overarching strategy for enhancing employee satisfaction and productivity.

Conclusion

There is no universal way to boost employee productivity. But if you use these five tried and tested ways that we have shortlisted, you will be able to help your employees enhance their productivity and boost their career growth.

While no one can say for sure which method is best for you and your team, we believe in practicing what we preach. We’ve seen first-hand how rewarding it is to invest in individual development of our employees.

Everyone comes to work excited and ready to take on new challenges, because they know their manager believes in them and their growth potential. When people feel appreciated and valued by those around them, they want to keep those relationships strong. So invest in employee development!

steps to improve employee productivity

 

How to Create a Positive Workplace Culture for Your Employees?

Years of research conducted by renowned psychologists and organizational leaders reveal that positive workplace culture is one of the most important driving factors of business success. It leads to higher productivity, better employee engagement, and higher returns. Therefore, it is imperative to create a culture that supports employees’ growth and values them for their efforts.

Continue reading “How to Create a Positive Workplace Culture for Your Employees?”

How Company Culture Shapes Employee Engagement?

Deloitte research cites culture and engagement as the top challenges for 87 percent of organizations, particularly for measuring culture and engagement effectively. In fact, measurement of both factors, culture, and engagement, is necessary as they yield major benefits. For developing a high-performance culture fueled by engaged employees, decouple the two – culture and engagement – and see each as an individual entity with its own set of contributions. 

Companies with high-performing cultures are innovative, customer-focused, and meet their strategic objectives in accordance with their values. In the same way, employees who are engaged are more productive and far less likely to leave the company. Both are important and closely related, but they differ in nature, and hence, measuring a company’s culture and employee engagement requires specific metrics. Unfortunately, companies often employ the same tool to measure both. For example, when employees’ surveys are conducted, there is no specific questionnaire for measuring culture and understanding level of employee engagement. Your cultural change and employee engagement programs will fail if you aren’t clear on what you are measuring.

Can any one aspect – company culture or employee engagement – thrive by itself?

Although many managers believe that employee engagement surveys alone can boost productivity, it is not so. Improving the organization’s overall culture with a higher level of employee engagement is a far better way to boost business productivity and drive growth. To simply put, employee engagement is inextricably related to the strength of the company culture.

Understanding what is Employee Engagement

An employee’s engagement has to do with how employees feel about their workplace and work culture. The healthier a company’s culture is, the easier it becomes for the employees to grasp their roles and responsibilities. Engagement leads to happier, more motivated, and more committed employees. 

Engaged employees are more likely to be:

  • Dedicated and motivated to exceed their company’s goals.
  • Positive and proactive about acquiring new skills and creative in resolving problems.
  • Devoted to building their careers with an organization

Engaged employees add a multitude of benefits to an organization, which include increased productivity, stronger customer relationships, and decreased turnover, to name a few. 

Also read: Why is employee engagement important for your company?

What do stats have to say about employee engagement and culture?

Interestingly, looking at certain stats, it is undeniable that employee engagement is closely related to a company’s high-performing and healthy culture.

Understanding what is company culture

Simply put, company culture refers to the employees’ norms, practices, and behavior that influence how and why certain events or actions happen in an organization. 

Company cultures that excel can have a positive impact on all areas of an organization. Engaged employees, increased productivity, achievement of goals and increased retention are all hallmarks of high-performance work cultures. A company with a strong culture, for example, has a 14 percent employee turnover rate when compared with a company with a subpar culture, which has a 48 percent turnover rate.

In what ways does a high-performance culture differ from a usual company culture?

A high-performance culture focuses on following effective and workable practices and norms to drive superior employee performance in an organization.

To elaborate, it’s a culture that allows a performance-driven organization to achieve superior financial and non-financial results, with values such as better service, high employee engagement; improved client satisfaction; increased productivity, and employee retention, over a long period.

Also read: How to build a positive workplace culture and its benefits

Company culture and employee engagement: how are they unique?

To differentiate between the two, think of employee engagement as focusing on an employee (or ‘I’ factor) and culture as emphasizing the whole (‘or ‘we’ factor). Therefore, the employee-engagement factor has to do with how employees feel about their employer and their workplace work. 

An engagement survey can make a good predictor of employee retention, as it can measure loyalty and productivity. Managerial actions or other factors can severely affect employee engagement or even have an adverse impact on it quickly.

Culture, on the other hand, focuses on intrinsic company values, which are often unquantifiable and difficult to assess. An organization’s culture is, essentially, ‘the way we do things.’ Changing culture takes time and effort because it’s often deeply ingrained. Hence, to influence a company’s culture, you must engage in a long-term reform program, or you must experience a significant external change, like an acquisition or merger.

Thus, employee engagement focuses on keeping employees motivated and happy while company culture lies deeply buried within an organization based on certain values, practices, norms, and a set of beliefs. To understand each of them better, it is necessary to understand how to measure your company culture and engagement.

Why is it necessary to measure engagement and culture?

Measuring culture and employee engagement is crucial since engaged employees are directly linked to employee retention, performance, and a company’s profitability. Importantly, the measurement of company culture and employee engagement helps to understand whether employees’ engagement and commitment align with a company’s expectations and strategic objectives or not. 

Most organizations adopt certain metrics to measure company culture and employee engagement. To start with any form of quantifiable measurement, understand and know where the culture stands now and what steps you had taken to create a high-performing culture. 

Unlike employee engagement, culture focuses on an organization’s core values and vision, and hence, any type of off-the-shelf survey will not be effective.

How company culture and engagement are assessed differently?

Culture and engagement are not only measured for different reasons, they must also be evaluated differently. For instance, you can find out how engaged your employees are based on the scores of your employee engagement survey. Using this data, you can then determine what improvements can be made. You can compare employees’ performance to that of previous years or similar organizations to get clarity on employee engagement and performance.

On the other hand, when it comes to culture, there is no right or wrong way to respond. Based on its goals and business objectives, an organization must identify what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Viewpoints on culture differ greatly from one organization to the next. For example, the culture of a bank will differ greatly from that of a start-up.

How does company culture shape employee engagement?

High-performance company culture is directly related to employee engagement, as the culture clearly defines healthy and supportive values and behaviors. In such a culture, employees know what’s expected of them and how their environment positively influences their performance. They feel connected, involved, and supported. Owing to all these factors which build up a conducive culture, they tend to be engaged. To enhance employee engagement, begin by strengthening your company culture, and here are several methods to do so:

1. Clearly define company culture

Culture forms the heart and soul of your organization, and thus, you need a strong culture to foster strong employee engagement. To get started, the leadership team should outline:

  • Company’s mission, vision, and values
  • Employee behavior expectations
  • Define culture and document it as a presentation or on your Intranet system, or in an employee handbook. Make your document widely available once it has been created and follow up on your defined culture. All hands meet or virtual gatherings can be held for the same.

2. Conduct Employee Surveys

Regularly assess your organization’s culture. By doing so, you’ll:

  • Learn what works in your company culture and how you can improve it.
  • Give employees a voice and you’ll discover new ideas you might not have thought of.

3. Work on employee feedback

When you decide to engage employees’ feedback, the payoff will be immense. The employees will sense that they are helping to shape the company culture, and their engagement will increase. Communicate the actions you plan to implement based on their feedback. Hold focus groups to discuss your action plan. Encourage employees to participate in brainstorming sessions to generate ideas.

Also Read: How To Create A Feedback Culture In Your Workplace?

Conclusion

Creating a strong culture for employee engagement has its own set of challenges – more like an ebb and flow, as it is not a one-time task. For long-term value, your culture needs to be nurtured regularly and for the same, measuring culture and employee engagement is crucial. In the process, you shall understand how satisfied and committed an employee is to her job. 

By offering training regular sessions, managerial encouragement, and keeping an open mind about effective workplace practices, companies can meet the expectations of employees to create a high-performance culture. 

In a nutshell, employee engagement is an ongoing process and is inextricably related to company culture. Over time, you need to focus on employee needs, then use that information to create a strong company culture.

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