Workplace Performance: A Primer

Workplace performance is how well your employees behave in the workplace. It is also how well your employees accomplish the duties you have given them.?

After over twelve years of helping leaders achieve peak performance, I noticed a common trend.?For one thing, we can all agree that success is the fruit of hard work. In the context of a workplace, the hard work belongs to you, the owner, your fellow managers and lastly, your employees. They also are shaped by different factors ranging from the work environment and quality of training to the competency of your employees.?In this article, I will inform and teach you about what shapes workplace performance, and how you can assess it.?

What Shapes Workplace Performance

From my years of working, I’ve learned that in an ideal company, its workforce is made of super performers who are very competent and productive. However, I’ve also noticed that the reality is quite different, and that is because your employees are human and unique.

Several factors come into play and affect an employee’s workplace performance.?

Some factors that can affect your employee’s performance are their quality of the day, motivation, personal life, and overall mental and physical health. In particular, an employee’s mental health can be enough for them not to perform well on a particular day.?

Overall, these aspects and factors are also indicators that your employee is human. They may also affect how well they do their daily tasks.?

Definition

Workplace performance, in essence, is how your employees behave and how well they perform in their assigned tasks and duties.?

From my years of experience, the factors that drive the quality of your employees’ workplace performance include the following:

Quality of Day – How well your employee’s day has begun and been going can influence how they perform and may depend if they had a good day. How your employees perform based on the quality of their day can also depend on how well they deal with minor inconveniences.

Training – Training is about preparation for your career. It also sets the stage for the kind of career you will have. It will also determine the work quality of your employee.

Moreover, the roles in an industry suit people who come from a specific type of training and with a specific skill set. According to a survey conducted by TinyPulse, 69% (source ) of employees feel they need to reach their fullest potential. It is also because their roles do not allow them to maximise their strengths.

Work Environment – You need a good work environment to be productive. During the pandemic, many people began to work from home in the comfort of their desks. A space that encourages you to be your most productive self is important because it is an investment. It is important to have a conducive work environment because it affects your mood and mental state, thus influencing your work performance.?

Your workspace can also depend on your role and industry; for example, if you are a financial advisor, you may work in a more formal office space with minimal decor, but sometimes, may have to leave occasionally to network and attend meetings.

Motivation – Working with no goal can make your employees feel like they are shooting in the dark. This will make your team lose motivation to work. As the leader of your team, you have to find ways to motivate them, and also set goals so that you can guide them to the best of your ability.?

Management – Furthermore, management is also crucial for a productive team that performs well. Management refers to the staff who help manage the company, such as managers, and administration officers. Management sets goals and the direction you and your team must execute. Management also has the power to allocate resources for productivity.?

Personal life – At the end of the day, we are all human. We all experience good days – and bad days in our personal life. Your employee’s personal life can bleed into their work life. If your employees have personal issues and they don’t have safety nets in the form of policies that can help them, it can impact their job performance. It will also impact your team’s productivity.?

Health – Do you know that one’s health directly influences workplace performance and productivity? According to Physical activity in paid work time for desk-based employees: a qualitative study of employers’ and employees’ perspectives, work-related stress is the biggest cause of sickness absence in the UK. Sickness absence has cost ￡13bn from lost days at work and productivity.?If your employee is in bad health, they may have to take a sick leave or even worst, might have to take a long leave to seek further treatment for more serious health conditions.

Physical health – The relationship between an employee’s physical health and work performance is clearer in the research, Physical activity in paid work time for desk-based employees: a qualitative study of employers’ and employees’ perspectives. The variable factors in the research comprised the vacation leaves off, quantity and quality of work performed, overall job performance, and extra effort exerted on interpersonal relationships and others. Research shows results, higher physical activity (a sign of good health) led to fewer days off work. Another relationship between physical health and work performance is that your employee’s poor health means there will be less productivity.?

Invest in exercise at least thirty minutes per day so that you will have better health and higher productivity at work.?

Mental health – Plenty of research goes into the relationship between mental health and work performance. Mental health refers to a person’s emotional state and falls under one’s overall health and well-being. Its relationship to work performance is if employees suffer from poor mental health and are not given proper support, it can manifest through physical symptoms and also can negatively alter their work performance (source ).?

When it comes to mental health, you know the peaks and limits of your strengths and capabilities best. If you have reached your limit, do not be afraid to seek help. If your employee is also experiencing their limit mentally, you can offer them support as well. You can become a mental rockstar .

Assessing Workplace Performance?

How To Measure Workplace Performance

It is a universal fact that employees propel the failure and success of an organisation. As a result, it is important to acknowledge employees who are exceptional. On the other hand, it is also crucial to help those underperforming employees.?

There are plenty of ways to assess your employee’s performance. How you can assess employee performance lies primarily in how well they accomplish their tasks. The factors that affect how you measure an employee’s work performance also include:?

Quality of Work – The quality of output in the workplace depends on the output you and your employees produce. For example, project managers’ outputs are usually timelines and records of communication. The outputs must be neat and submitted on time. It should also be attentive to detail.?

Trust and consistency – If an employee continues to perform well and consistently, establishing trust becomes more organic. Without trust, it is hard to find footing within the industry. Team leaders and managers trust their employees, especially if, over time, their employees have proven themselves to be valuable.

To practise trust and consistency in the workplace, you can show your support to your employees. If your employees are feeling unwell or are not acting like themselves, you can check in on them, and ask them how you can best support them. Don’t be afraid to offer them the option of using their leaves, so that they also receive time to mentally recuperate. There are some things in life that you cannot rush – and that is recovery. Another way you can earn their trust is to encourage them to cultivate work-life balance and pursue wellness.?

Efficiency – You can never go wrong with considering efficiency as a way to assess the quality of your employee’s output. Efficiency is how well and how fast your employee executes their task. It is also about working smarter, not working harder.

From my experience, I can also agree that it is also about harnessing what drives efficiency: developing the skill and capacity of your employees. By focusing on improving your employees’ skills and capacity, you can properly allocate costs of performance management. It also becomes an investment in your employees.

With an efficient employee who has developed their skills and capacity, you waste less time and fewer resources.

Practice efficiency with your employees by maintaining open communication and being proactive with feedback about their performance. If your employees are aware that you are assessing them independently, it allows them to trust you more and seek your support.?

Outlook – Your mind can be a powerful tool. The kind of outlook we have affects the kind of day we’ll have – and even the kind of life we lead. When it comes to work, the principle is also the same.

One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that when it comes to hiring, people prefer hiring and working with employees who have positive and open outlooks. It’s because they are easier to be around, more teachable, and a good working attitude can also affect the morale of your team.?

Increase Workplace Productivity with YuJin’s signature workshop – The Mental Rockstar Program!

Don’t be afraid as well to admit your own mistakes and own up to them. It makes you more human, and a better leader in the process. You should also maintain the same practices which have resulted in higher productivity at work.?

If you want to challenge yourself more by maintaining consistency, you can work on your time management, and reassess your personal work ethic. Those are just some surefire tips and tricks I’ve learned from my work experiences that work if you want to help build trust in the workplace.?

Several factors shape workplace performance. They are interconnected and form a system that can be learned and applied to every level of the organisation – employees, managers and leaders. When an organisation learns the right strategies, applies the requisite mindset and adopts the correct habits, then peak performance is unleashed.?

The Mental Rockstar Program was designed for organisations that want to excel in their respective industry. It was designed and developed by YuJin, who is known as the mental toughness expert. A former lawyer and investment banker, he utilises his deep knowledge of the corporate world to design an award-winning program. His awards include Asia’s Best Brands Award, Best Motivational Speaker, Prestige Top 40 Under 40 Young Achiever Award, and the TallyPress Top 10 Top Speaker & Trainer. Contact Mental Rockstar today to unleash peak performance in your workplace today!