3 Steps to Increasing Your Workforce’s Productivity and Job Satisfaction

The following is adapted from Building an Elite Organization.

It seems to be almost universally true that people in high-growth companies—or companies that are working to become high-growth organizations—constantly feel like they are caught up in a whirlwind of nonstop emails, phone calls, and meetings. You may have experienced this yourself or seen it among your own team members. 

We ran into this issue a lot at my organization, DLP Real Estate Capital. While our people were putting in longer and longer hours, the majority of their time was still spent on matters that did little to directly further the mission of the organization. 

As a result, our people were feeling burned out, dissatisfied, and disengaged at work and in life. We put our resources towards fixing the problem, and we came up with three key things that increased job satisfaction among our entire workforce. What we found when we did this—and what many other organizations have also found—is that when our workforce’s job satisfaction increased, so did their productivity. 

If your organization is struggling with a decrease in productivity because of job burnout, call-offs, or disengagement, then increasing job satisfaction among your employees might help. Here are three steps that will help you do that.

#1: Embrace a Culture of Work-Life Balance

The first step to increasing job satisfaction (and therefore productivity) in an organization involves a shift at the organizational level. You—and your entire leadership team—must embrace a culture of work-life balance. 

You need to accept the fact that team members who feel they are making enough time for all of their priorities—personal as well as professional—are going to be more productive at work, even if that means they end up working fewer hours.

If you are a leader who is thinking, “I need my people putting all their time into their work; I don’t want them distracted and working less,” you are not alone. Many leaders feel this way. 

The reality, however, is that encouraging your team members to put all their focus and energy into working sixty or eighty hours a week might benefit your organization in the short term, but sooner or later, each team member’s lack of fulfillment in other areas of their life will bleed into work. When that happens, you will start having all kinds of problems. 

You’ll see an increase in health issues—including heart-related and other physical ailments—mental illness, and substance abuse problems. You will also start seeing other effects of burnout, such as absenteeism, decreased productivity, a toxic work environment, team members experiencing personal relationship problems, and losing great people who will naturally want to seek out a better working environment. 

#2: Identify Goals in Every Part of Life

The next step in changing this cycle of burnout and low productivity is to help your team members get aligned with themselves. In other words, they need to figure out what they want to accomplish in life and what changes they need to make to achieve their goals.

Encourage every member of your organization to list out as many goals—big and small—as they can think of for each area of their lives. These areas are what we at DLP refer to collectively as the 8 Fs: family, fitness, friends, finances, freedom, faith, fun, and fulfillment.

Once they’ve come up with goals for each of these areas, they should prioritize their top ten or so goals for the following twelve months. They should focus especially on their goals for the areas in need of significant improvement. This exercise encourages each team member to take control of their life and to realize that they can have it all.

Over and over again, we’ve seen that when we give team members the support to assess and improve on every aspect of their lives—which is exactly what this step is about—they become happier, healthier, and more engaged in their lives and at work. Invariably, this leads to increased productivity from the team member. 

#3: Clearly Communicate Expectations

Once your organization begins to embrace work-life balance and your workforce is clear on their goals, it’s time for the final step. Every team member needs to get in alignment with their leader. 

That means their leader makes sure the team member understands what’s expected of them, clearly communicates how the team member is performing, and shares what needs to happen for both the team member and the leader to achieve their goals. This step is vital to the process; people look to leadership to keep them focused, to inspire them, and to guide them in what’s important to the organization.

If you miss this step, you run a very real risk that your organization will be filled with people working at cross-purposes, because they won’t know what their priorities are or how what they’re doing fits into the mission. When this happens, job dissatisfaction and burnout will quickly follow.

The best way to achieve this last step is through monthly alignment meetings. These meetings are intended to build a relationship between the team member and their leader. Because they demonstrate that the leader genuinely cares about the team member, they build loyalty and engagement, which in turn helps increase productivity and results.

During the monthly alignment meeting, the team member should be encouraged to share any successes, personal or professional, they’ve had over the past month. They should also report on any to-dos they were tasked with. 

Finally, they should share any issues they’re having (again, personal or professional), and get their leader’s help in solving the issue. Even if the leader can’t solve the issue, they should help the team member get clarity around the problem.

Embrace a New Way of Being

I know that it can be hard to shift your organization’s culture and embrace a new paradigm. However, if you can do it—if you can embrace a culture of work-life balance, help your team members get clear on all their goals, and make sure that your workforce is aligned with their leaders—you will quickly see job satisfaction and productivity increase.

This was true for DLP, it’s true for numerous organizations throughout the world, and it will be true for you. By following the three steps described here, you’ll be well on your way to making sure you have a highly engaged, happy, and productive workforce.

For more advice on how to increase your workforce’s productivity, you can find Building an Elite Organization on Amazon.

Don Wenner is the Founder and CEO of DLP Real Estate Capital, a leader in real estate investing, private direct lending, construction, management, and sales. DLP has been ranked as an Inc. 5,000 Fastest-Growing US company for eight consecutive years, with an average three-year-growth rate exceeding 400 percent and more than $1 billion in assets. Named one of the top fifteen real estate professionals by REAL Trends and The Wall Street Journal for seven years straight, Don has closed more than $4 billion in real estate transactions. He resides in St. Augustine, Florida, with his wife and two sons.