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Managing a team of employees is one of the greatest challenges you’ll face as a business owner. Getting the most out of them is just as important.
Unmotivated employees or team members not working to their full potential has a direct impact on your business and it can be frustrating when this leads to negative business results. Here are some suggestions for maximising productivity in your employees.
Focus on Training & Development
Not providing your employees with the right training for the job can have significant implications. Budgets are always tight but having a set amount aside for personal development will lead to great results in the long-run.
Training can also give your employees new skills that they never knew they possessed, as well as helping them hone their existing ones. This means that they can give you their absolute best in the office or even potentially become managers later down the line, ensuring you retain that talent.
Offer Employee Incentives
Everyone loves a treat or reward to celebrate success and your employees are no different. When considering employee incentives, it’s important to consider personal tastes and preferences – after all, everyone is different.
There’s no limit to what you can offer as incentives. These can simply be sharing the success with the management team or customers on social media, through to a meal out at the end of the month or even bonuses and early finishes. All of which are effective ways of enhancing morale and offering encouragement.
Break down & distribute tasks across the team
It’s understandable that you want to keep control of your business and activities, but constantly checking every detail adds to your own workload and impacts on efficiency.
Distributing tasks out evenly to your team not only helps take the pressure off you but encourages trust and helps them to personally develop their own skills, rather than leaving the bulk of the work to any one person. Remember that age-old saying, “there’s no I in team”.
Teamwork & collaborative working
Talking of teamwork, employees often try to take on tasks themselves. When you do work effectively with others you do get things done quicker and still to a higher standard.
By encouraging teamwork and collaboration, your employees can gain a greater understanding of the task and as a result, complete the task efficiently by supporting one another. Collaborative working also helps enhance trust within your workforce and helps them build their confidence for later projects.
A positive culture is a winning culture
Having employees who enjoy their work and being in a positive environment is a key part of getting the most from their output. By creating a positive culture where everyone feels equally supported, you can then create a stronger team.
Implementing a company culture where everyone feels valued, respected, and able to discuss issues openly leads to employees who work harder because they want to, and because they’re able to tap into your ethos – hard work which translates into results.
One task at a time
Research shows that multitasking directly impacts on efficiency and productivity. It’s hard for employees to give their all to one task when they’re distracted by another on their second computer screen.
This is where planning and delegation once again come into their own. By working with your employees to understand what tasks they have on their lists, you can help them to break tasks down one by one and prevent them from being overwhelmed by their workload.
Take Action
There are many other ways you can enhance productivity in your workplace, but we hope that these ones have at least got you thinking about the steps you might want to take.
At Outlook Partnerships, we’re here to help you develop your business and employees. Our Motivation and Engaging workshop enables you to get an understanding of why employees might not be working to the best of their abilities and what you can do to support them. The workshop also shows you what you can do to encourage employees and give them the right motivation.
Take a look at our workshops or get in touch with us for more details.
