Ideas to Increase Your Employees' Work Productivity

 Written by: Ahmed Abdel Wahab

High work productivity is the goal that professional leaders seek, because employee productivity is essential to ensure the success of any company regardless of its field. But if you look with me, you will see that most companies are currently facing many challenges due to the changes occurring in the labor market and employee expectations about the work environment and its requirements.

You cannot achieve real results if we abandon your approach to employees and tell them enthusiastically: "Increase your productivity", because you need to provide more than just verbal encouragement, you need to be proactive and effective in your management of the team, and seek to inspire, motivate and support them with wise decisions and practical steps. If you are wondering about these steps, you are in the right place, because you will look with me in the following lines at 11 ideas that will actually increase work productivity in your organization!

But let's first answer the following question.

 What is work productivity?

What is meant by this concept is the productivity of employees in your company during a specific period. This term is sometimes expressed as labor productivity or worker efficiency. The Arab Planning Institute defines productivity as “the concept of the effectiveness of using inputs and technology associated with the productive relationship, where productivity is defined as the amount of output produced by one unit of production factors.”

In addition to these academic definitions, we can look at labor productivity here as the amount of good achievements your employees achieve within a specific time frame. The more your employees focus on performing the right tasks at the right time with high quality, the higher your organization’s labor productivity will be.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that labor productivity is usually calculated by dividing output (including goods or services produced) by input (including hours worked or labor costs). However, various market factors must be considered, such as inflation and changes in the nature of the products or services provided.

 What Factors Influence Labor Productivity?

There are several factors that may affect the productivity and efficiency of your employees, but here are the 4 main factors that control this path:

1. Work environment: The impact of the work environment on employee productivity is difficult to limit in short sentences, but if you think with me here, you will see that things like a positive atmosphere, appropriate facilities, and a professional and harmonious way of communicating with the team contribute to enhancing productivity and motivating employees to make more effort.

2. Specific goals: Clear and achievable goals help increase team productivity and make them feel growth and responsibility.

3. Employee training: Continuous training and providing educational opportunities for your team are among the most important factors in their development and increasing their productivity. Therefore, you should pay attention to developing professional plans to train employees, in addition to providing various training courses that enhance their skills and enrich their knowledge according to your company's needs and goals.

4. Employee Will and Readiness: You must hire an ambitious team that is willing to learn and develop, because if your team does not have an internal drive to increase its productivity, you will not reap the results you seek regardless of your efforts to improve the work environment or set various goals and training.

Now, what about practical ideas that contribute to increasing productivity in organizations?

11 Ideas to Increase Your Team's Productivity

1. Take Care of the Onboarding Process

Many HR managers believe that once you sign a contract with an employee, this means ensuring his loyalty to the company, but this traditional thinking is incorrect when we talk about people with competencies and talents, because they want to work with a company that values ​​their talents, enriches their skills, and has a planned and accurate model of the upcoming trends for its new employees from day one.

Therefore, my advice to you here is to start preparing a precise onboarding program for your new employees. The program should include practical and thoughtful steps that introduce your new employees to your company's culture and work mechanism. It is important to provide them with the necessary materials and appropriate training. Don't forget to provide them with an evaluation and follow-up mechanism and share your notes from time to time in regular meetings. This way, you will create a suitable atmosphere to increase work productivity from day one.

2. Increase the spirit of competition

Invite your team to compete with each other through some competitive games or divide tasks among them and oblige them to a specific time to complete them and then provide some rewards or gifts to those who complete them on time.

Healthy competition is one of the most important factors that enhance work productivity in institutions and contribute to achieving the desired goals efficiently. In addition, it encourages the team to innovate and create and may motivate them to cooperate with each other and share their knowledge to achieve the desired goal. In this regard, business expert Anthony Mixides says

 "Competition has been proven to increase productivity; teams can bond more effectively by directing their productivity to a fun and lively activity, rather than assigning tasks to them in a direct and dry manner. “It may take some time for a team to learn how to work well together, but you'll be surprised how quickly teams bond when there's a drive to succeed and healthy competition.”

3. Set Clear Expectations

Ask yourself here: Do your team have clear expectations about work productivity? Are they familiar with your organization’s performance appraisal methods?

 It’s easy to assume that your employees know what’s going on in your head, but you’ll be surprised by their different expectations if you decide to invite them to an informal meeting to discuss responsibilities and share expectations.

 In addition, I recommend conducting regular surveys to find out what employees’ expectations are. It’s important to make sure that your employees clearly understand their roles and responsibilities. Share with them the appraisal mechanisms you follow in your company and clarify what information and resources they need before they start their tasks.

4. Avoid Micromanaging

Many managers believe that micromanaging employees is the solution to increasing work productivity. However, reality tells us otherwise; Over-managing all tasks delegated to employees drains their morale and weakens their productivity, as it narrows their space for creativity and innovation and makes them feel controlled by management, which makes them lose motivation and limits their effort.

 Therefore, it is important to seek to build trust with employees and give them enough space to manage the tasks delegated to them freely. Research indicates that when there is greater trust in the work environment, employees provide creative ideas and solutions 23% higher than in environments characterized by doubt and over-management.

Accordingly, I advise you here to take the following steps:

• Loosen your grip: Leave a few tasks to employee management and help them manage themselves.

  Learn to delegate tasks: Spend some time learning the skill of delegation and direct employees to the desired results and steps.

• Invest in collaborative tools: Help your team grow and increase work productivity through collaborative tools that support them in delegating tasks and following up on them as they happen.

5. Don't waste time on useless meetings

Many team leaders and HR managers see meetings as an essential process for growth and monitoring work productivity. Therefore, they may increase them daily or weekly; these meetings continue for hours discussing ideas and proposals that are not spent at the same rate of time implementing. It is obvious that this method weakens the productivity of employees in organizations and wastes their time.

This is confirmed by what was indicated by the Atlassian survey, which was answered by nearly 5,000 thousand employees across 4 continents, as these employees indicated that the main reason that hinders their productivity is the abundance of meetings. This is due to the following reasons:

• 47% of employees indicated that meetings are the most timewasters during work.

• 80% of the survey sample indicated that they would be more productive if they spent less time on meetings.

• 54% of employees leave meetings without coming out with a clear and specific idea of ​​the next steps.

The question here is: How do you improve work productivity through meetings and other things?

• Reduce the number of recurring meetings and make them short and practical.

• Also reduce the time of meetings, and it is preferable to set a time in which to discuss the basic ideas first.

• Invite fewer employees to meetings so that you can discuss ideas and exchange proposals more easily (note that the more attendees, the greater the rate of distraction and the less benefit).

• Use emails - instead of holding recurring meetings - as email is a faster and more accurate means of communication (resort to meetings if you want to get immediate responses or to discuss ideas and proposals).

6. Encourage balancing and self-care

This idea helps you strengthen the relationship with employees and makes them feel your serious desire to support and support them professionally and socially. Therefore, your company should have a detailed routine to help employees take care of themselves and balance their work and social lives.

 This can be done through the following:

• Encourage a culture of rewards and gifts in your organization.

• Commit to employees’ rights regarding paid leave.

• Provide various courses that train employees on dealing with work pressures, reducing stress, and developing balancing skills.

• Be more flexible in choosing working hours. It may be useful for you to consider providing your team with the possibility of working from home on some days.

7. Support constructive communication

Effective communication with the team significantly increases work productivity. The concept of communication here does not only mean the type of messages you will share with your employees but also refers to the method of communication you will adopt in your organization. For example, your team may prefer to communicate via voice calls or emails.

So, try to find out the method your team prefers so that you can easily exchange ideas and information in a timely manner. It is also important to support constructive communication between team members, through encouraging activities such as competitive games that enhance team spirit or holding informal meetings that provide the opportunity for positive interaction. You can also organize office parties that create an atmosphere of familiarity and fun, in addition to planning group trips from time to time to enhance cooperation, acquaintance and social growth.

All of these activities contribute to building a welcoming work environment, which is reflected in the employees’ feelings, which increases their loyalty and belonging. When employees feel that they are part of a cohesive and harmonious organization, they will be more enthusiastic about work and will cooperate to achieve common goals with high productivity.

8. Seek to train the team in a way that suits them

Career growth is one of the main pillars that motivate employees to continue working and increase their productivity. When an employee feels that his company is developing his skills and enriching his knowledge in a practical way, he will automatically apply this knowledge in the tasks assigned to him. Unlike the case of employees in companies that do not help them develop professionally, they will view their companies in this case as a fixed and dead company that does not provide them with anything that fattens or satisfies their hunger.

9. Allow breaks for exercise

If your team spends most of their time at the desk, this is a golden tip; because exercise increases productivity and motivates employees to focus. Therefore, allow breaks for exercise, especially during long office hours.

you can also motivate your team to exercise by participating in a corporate health program to help your facility create a healthy culture. It may help you increase work productivity by encouraging employees with some rewards or privileges if they perform a sports activity during their workday.

10. Improve work conditions and facilities

I would not be exaggerating if I said that all the elements you use in the work environment affect the mood and productivity of employees, starting with your style of interior design, through the furniture used, ventilation elements and natural lighting in the place. Accordingly, I recommend here to cooperate with specialists who organize your internal work environment in a smooth and comfortable way.

The workplace should also contain plants and natural light; To make your employees feel comfortable and enhance work productivity, away from the atmosphere of yellow, dusty offices with noisy lighting and tense atmosphere.

11. Choose your employees carefully

The biggest challenge here is that when implementing these ideas, your current team may lack sufficient readiness to change and increase work productivity, which makes all your steps wasted if you do not invest them with competent employees. Therefore, I invite you here to hire competent people who have a deep understanding of your needs and are truly compatible with your goals.

 Entrepreneur Mona Ataya, founder of Mumz World, says in this regard: “You have to go very far with your ambition to be able to attract people who are convinced of your vision and enthusiastic about your goal, and you have to keep reminding them of your vision and the impact you want to make.”