Time is the most valuable asset anyone has, and it’s also the most critical metric to track when it comes to measuring employee productivity. It is crucial to utilize your employee’s potential to gain profit. With employees working remotely due to the pandemic, it is hard for employees to be productive and efficient.
Now that almost 70% of the world is working from home and managers are forced to lead their team remotely, employee productivity has become an essential topic of discussion. But there are many misconceptions about productivity. Improving employee productivity is not about making your employees work for longer hours. It is about getting the work done in the most efficient way and an adequate period.
Eventually, this is why you hired your employees right! Each employee should add value in their roles and contribute to the overall success of the company. Your employees’ productivity levels determine how much value they provide, and this is why it’s important to focus on ensuring a positive work environment that facilitates this.
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As an employer, you have the capability and responsibility to check in on your employees and empower them with the tools and best practices they need to do their best work. With this article, we will be covering all the important topics about employee productivity. So without wasting any time, let’s get started with the basics.
Productivity Definition:
The basic definition of productivity is a way to measure efficiency. In an economic context, productivity is how to measure the output that comes from units of input. Let’s take farming as an example: One acre of land that produces 10-pumpkins? That is not very productive. But, if land produces 2000-pumpkins, that is a better return of investment on your pumpkin planting.
Employee productivity can be also defined as the amount of work or output produced by an employee in a specific period. As a manager, it is important to avoid any roadblocks or distractions along the way that you could help them overcome.
Writer Charles Duhigg in his book – Smarter Faster Better, defines productivity as making certain choices in certain ways that move us from being merely busy to genuinely productive. Tony Robbins’ approach to productivity focuses on ways people can systematize and better manage their lives so they have more time to do what they want.
What Are The Importance Of Employee Productivity?
All successful and effective organizations comprehend the importance of employee productivity and the value it brings. When your employees are productive, your business can utilize human resources at their full capacity with minimal wastage. Employee productivity is important because the amount of money a company spends on employee wages should be less than what the employee earns through their work.
Higher Profitability:
Businesses experience an increase in profitability when it becomes less expensive to produce their products and services. When employees are more productive and efficient, less work is required to produce the same amount of goods.
Reducing Operational Costs:
Companies can reduce operational costs through several initiatives. If individual workers improve their workflow, they will either produce more in less time or reduce the number of hours they need to work to achieve the same output.
Better Resource Management:
Often companies don’t use their resources to the best potential. Employees are busy some of the time and looking for work to do at other times. Better human resource management offers a great opportunity to reduce costs and increase productivity. Improved workflow systems will identify places that roles are overlapping. Companies can improve situations where employees aren’t being used to their maximum potential, and they can start to use their resources efficiently.
Seizing The Opportunity For Growth:
An increase in productivity is always an opportunity for growth. How this increase is used is up to management. If the productivity increase results in more time for employees, it’s important to control how this time is spent.
Reducing Waste And Environmental Impact:
The environment suffers when people aren’t efficient. If you’re not organized and take ten hours to do work that could be done in six, you use four hours of extra electricity that doesn’t need to be used. When you don’t look closely at the way you’re doing things, you waste time, money, and resources.
Reducing Employee Burnout:
When employees have too much to do and not enough time to do it, it can result in stress, exhaustion, or total burnout. Working more efficiently whether a reduction in time spent on daily processes or a reallocation of roles and responsibilities – results in people being able to cope better with their workload and complete their responsibilities in the time allocated to them.
How To Improve Employee Productivity?
Now that you understand how vital employee productivity is for your business. Let’s go through some of the best practices for improving employee productivity.
Set Realistic Goals:
One of the most common problems in the workplace is having no idea of how your employees are performing daily. Knowing how they are performing and what you can do to boost their performance is critical. Do they need incentives? Consider how your employees’ performance is contributing to the goals and targets of your company. There are many tools available in the market like EmpMonitor to track and monitor employee productivity. We will talk more about EmpMonitor In a bit.
Define And Measure Tasks:
Define tasks for every employee and create a benchmark for productivity. After assigning the tasks among your team, measure the time they are spending on completing the task. You can use EmpMonitor to monitor how much time they are spending on which tasks. It provides a detailed report on what your employees have done during office hours.
Consider Improving Work culture:
Work culture in your company is the sum of what you and your staff do and say, how you act within a business, how customers, products, and services are treated. It is the daily organizational structure, and it defines you and your business. An environment that’s too cold or hot will distract you from your high-priority tasks. Investing in high-quality desks, chairs, lighting, and air conditioning systems will help you improve the workplace environment year-round.
Improve Employee Productivity By Minimizing Distractions:
It’s difficult to focus on high-priority tasks and complete them on time in an environment full of distractions. Studies have shown that distractions are the biggest killers of productivity. You need to minimize or eliminate distractions before you start working.
Communicate Clearly:
Communication plays a critical role in romance and business. Without clear communication, businesses fail and relationships end. Managers who can communicate their expectations and responsibilities clearly will be rewarded with a productive and engaged workforce. You can boost productivity and performance by communicating positively with your team.
Encourage And Reward Them:
Encouraging and rewarding your employees is one of the best ways to increase productivity and performance in the workplace. Offering incentives and gifts is a great way to improve engagement and productivity levels. When you speak positively of your employees, they will feel motivated to work harder and increase their productivity and performance.
Improve Employee Skills:
Training employees provide them with growth opportunities, and this enhances employee retention. Once you have hired new employees, you need to train them to boost productivity. There are a lot of valuable skills that your employees can develop or improve their productivity. It could be touch typing, communication, time management, or using a particular software or app.
Encourage Self-Care:
The majority of employees around the world are stressed. According to the American Institute of Stress, work-related fears and occupational pressures are the leading causes of stress among adults in America. Stressed employees are mentally, physically, and emotionally unhealthy which leads to their productivity suffering. When your employees are stressed, everyone loses. Therefore, it’s important to encourage your employees to take good care of their physical, mental, and emotional health.
Invest In The Right Monitoring Tool:
After putting this much effort to improve your employee’s productivity, you also have to make sure that it is working for them or not. You have to discover the areas of improvement. To do this, you have to invest in the right monitoring tool. There are many monitoring tools available in the market. One of the best employee monitoring tools is EmpMonitor.
EmpMonitor is a cloud-based employee monitoring system, and you can monitor every activity of your employees from a single dashboard. With the help of the EmpMonitor, you can monitor every activity of your employees during office hours. It will help you to measure and ensure that they meet the productivity parameters.
EmpMonitor offers many useful tools to ensure the productivity and efficiency of your employees:
- Time Tracking:
With the Help of EmpMonitor, you can track every minute of your employee’s working hours. It gives you a detailed report on how much time they have been active, idle, neutral, or offline from a single dashboard.
- Productivity Tracking:
With the help of EmpMonitor, you can identify the productivity killers and provide a clear understanding of every process from end to end. You can track and measure the productivity of your employees.
- Regular Screenshots:
EmpMonitor captures screenshots of your employee’s system. It keeps them in check that they are working on assigned tasks or not.
- Keystroke Logging:
Keystroke logging is one of the best ways to ensure data security. It lets you know about the words that employees type.
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Wrapping Words:
Productivity is one of the pathways to success. Employees are necessary to drive your business forward, so you should pay proper attention to improve productivity and efficiency. The approach how to improve employee productivity is vastly changing in every industry. The biggest determining factor for employee productivity is employee satisfaction.
Even if you don’t implement these employee benefits in your workplace, actively work to find out what changes you can make to improve conditions for your workers. Small changes in your work environment and small investments in the health and happiness of your workers can go a long way for your company’s growth.
