Employee Productivity

How to increase employee productivity in the workplace

In order to increase employee productivity in the workplace, we can implement the following steps:

1. Improve workplace conditions.

If you want to make your employees productive, you’ll need to make sure they’re working in optimal conditions.

• Make sure there is plenty of natural light in the office. Employees who work in an office with windows and enough natural light sleep 46 minutes more at night – they are more rested and more likely to focus when they come to work.

• Include plant-life in the office. Green offices make employees more comfortable, and thus more productive with their work.

• Do not leave your wall colour white. Employees make more errors when they work in offices with white walls – instead, opt for red (it helps with detail-oriented tasks), green (it helps motivate), blue (it boosts creativity).

2. Optimize emailing.

Studies claim we spend 13 hours per week on e mails – multiply that with the number of employees in your company, and you’ll get the exact hours of your time could be spending more productively.

• Block time just for emails. Instruct your employees to select a time window each day when you will deal with emails and stick to this time – perform all email communication during the 1 hour after lunch, or 1 hour before you leave work.

• Keep emails short and on point. Instruct your employees, to be polite as well as precise with their questions, and straightforward with their answers when writing an email.

• Refrain from emailing your employees in the middle of the night. Such late-night emails may stress out your employees, increase their anxiety levels, and decrease their chances of performing well at work tomorrow morning.

3. Optimize meetings.

Employees spend nearly 87 hours per month on various meetings – which amounts to $37 billion loss per year, as many meetings grow into unproductive discussions.

• Email instead. Email is a faster and more precise means of communication, so instead of holding countless meetings, blast a group email during your time blocked hour dedicated to emails.

• Reduce the number of meetings per day/week/month. Hold only the essential meetings.

• Reduce the number of meeting attendees. Some employees may be vital for your meetings, but others who aren’t shouldn’t be obliged to attend every time. Instead, the most productive solution is to have them continue with their usual line of work.

• Reduce the time spent in each meeting. 15-20 minutes per meeting is enough for you to cover the most important points.

4. Allow flexible schedule.

Different people have different productivity prime times during the day – so, sticking to a strict 9-to-5 schedule, or working hard from the earliest hours of the morning may not work for everyone.

• Make the work hours flexible – Instead of working 8 continuous hours per day, let your employees work in two smaller time blocks that together equal 8 hours. For example, let them clock in work time from 7 AM to 1 PM, go to the gym/long lunch, and then finish their workday from 3 PM to 5 PM. They’ll feel more productive and efficient – they’ll get a fresh surge of energy after the long, fulfilling 2-hour break, and avoid the dreaded afternoon slump employees tend to feel before “closing” time.

• Allow remote work – In spite of some remote work challenges, 65% of employees believe they’re more productive when they work outside of the office, and 47% wish their company provided this benefit. Select positions eligible to work remotely, define availability hours for remote workers, define specific response time, and instruct employees to log their time for productivity reports.

5. Provide better employee training.

Training and development help improve employee knowledge, and then their work performance, by extension.

• Use specialized software. Learning Management Software, such as Lynda or  Talent LMS, provides various useful courses that help employees expand on their old skills and learn some new ones. They also offer analytics and statistics, so you can track your employee progress.

• Provide hands-on training. This type of training lets the employees test out the efficacy of certain training tasks, by giving them the opportunity to try them as they learn about them.

• Allow employees to learn at their own pace. Rushing through complicated topics will not allow new knowledge to stick, or employees to test out their newfound skills. It’s best to leave employees time to process their training or learn at their own place.

There are also other ways on which we can know the productivity of an employee.