How to Increase Employee Productivity at Work: 10 Best Practices

Employees are the most valuable asset of a company, and their performance directly impacts its ability to fulfill office work. Therefore, employee productivity is essential to ensure the success of any company.

In what ways can you Increase Employee Productivity in the Workplace? And is it possible to measure employee productivity? Below we answer these questions.

What is Employee Productivity?

The concept of employee productivity, sometimes called workforce productivity, measures a worker’s efficiency or the efficiency of a group of workers.

Productivity can be measured based on an employee’s performance over a period of time. Employee Productivity is an essential factor for a company since the success of any company relies upon the productivity of its workforce.

10 Best Ways to Increase Employee Productivity in the Workplace

Here are 10 best ways through which you will surely Increase Employee Productivity in the Workplace:

• Prioritize Quality over Quantity for Similar Work
• Improve Workplace Conditions
• Keep Your Employees Accountable on an Individual Level
• Don’t Waste Time on Pointless Meetings
• Provide Various Training to Employee 
• Improve Employee Productivity by Increasing Employee Engagement
• Improve Office Communication
• Exercise Breaks 
• Set 3-5 Daily Goals and Create Some Competition
• Optimize Email

1. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity for Similar Work

You should focus on what employees accomplish during their work rather than the time spent.

Longer hours don’t always equate to better outcomes. To conclude, the quality of the work performed yields larger efficiency improvements than the quantity of work performed.

Research Shows, “People who work 70 hours per week generate nothing more than others who work 55 hours per week for a similar job”.

Some of the methods you can use to encourage a better quality rather than quantity of work are:

• Shorter Workdays: It helps employees to feel healthy and less stressed.
• Offer Regular breaks: It helps employees to recharge at an individual level.

2. Improve Workplace Conditions

The best work environment setup influences the employees to be more productive. The setup must be well organized based on the infrastructure, ventilation, and disturbances.

The workplace has to have lots of natural light and plants. This will make employees more comfortable and productive at their work.

Some researchers say, “When employees work in workplaces with white walls, they make more mistakes,” so don’t leave your wall colors white. Instead, you can use red, green, or blue, which helps with the detail-oriented task and boosts creativity.

3. Keep Your Employees Accountable on an Individual Level

Micromanaging will not make life simpler for anyone. When managers start to measure every detail of their employees’ work hours, employees will likely become even more prone to slacking.

Invest in collaborative tools, goods, or services aimed at achieving the objectives. It’s far preferable than concentrating on micromanaging your employees’ working hours.

If there isn’t a supervisor hovering over their heads, the employees will feel more independent, calm, and confident in their abilities. That’s why leave the room once you’ve done.

If an employee completes a project in half the time and spends the other half on social networking, that should be the least of your concerns.

4. Don’t Waste Time on Pointless Meetings

Meeting time is one of the most significant obstacles to employee productivity. According to Atlassian,  almost 47% of employees complain that the number one time-waster during work hours is time spent on meetings. 

Instead of holding meetings, you can use email as it is a faster and more precise means of communication. Set only the important meeting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPVTLroz2Ck&ab_channel=AdrianaGirdler

You can reduce the number of meeting attendees. Invite only employees who are important to the meeting. Meeting participants should be kept to a minimum – the larger the group, the greater the risk of distractions.

You can reduce the meeting time. Set a time restriction on how long the meeting will last. 20-25 minutes is enough for you to cover the most important points.

Learn More:- Pros and Con’s Of Virtual Meetings🤝

5. Provide Skilled Training to Employee 

You must provide opportunities for additional training to develop a happy, productive workforce. Training helps improve the knowledge and work performance of employees.

Make sure your employees are receiving the information and knowledge they need in the format best suited to them.

You can provide the best types of employee training methods for your workforce. Some of them are as follows:

• Instructor-led training
• Simulation employee training
• eLearning
• Coaching or mentoring
• Lectures
• Hands-on training
• Group discussion and activities
• Role-playing

Learn More:- 6 Must-Have Skills For Remote Work💻📱🧑🏠

6. Employee Engagement Improves Employee Productivity

Engaging employees is one of the most important factors in increasing employee productivity.

Employees’ happiness, motivation, and engagement are the best and most effective things a company can focus on to boost or increase employee productivity.

A happy, productive workforce is characterized by engaged employees. Appreciate your employee if they do an excellent job and give exciting rewards for time spent doing an outstanding job.

Employees should be involved in the company’s decision-making processes. Make them feel as if they contributed to the company’s production.

Make it clear to employees that their input is valued. Consider their comments, thoughts, and opinions regularly and give continuous feedback. To increase employee productivity, consider investing in a company health care plan. 

Learn More:- How To Build Trust On Remote Team

7. Improve Office Communication

Excellent collaboration leads to optimal productivity and efficiency in teamwork, and good collaboration is based on effective communication. 

You need to figure out the best way to communicate. For example, your company may communicate through a communication platform, email, or phone, but you’ll need to discover how each employee responds best.

You and your employees will have to work hard to become a productive unit. You may begin by throwing occasional informal get-togethers, office parties, or planning a staff trip. 

When new employees arrive, help them feel at ease in the office and have equal footing with their coworkers.

Learn More:- Best Online Whiteboards Tools For Team Collaboration✌️

8. Exercise Breaks 

It is important for employees to exercise because it will increase their productivity. It helps keep the mind focused and increases energy levels, thus increasing productivity.

Exercise keeps employees mentally sharp and helps avoid various illnesses. Here are some ideas for motivating employees to sneak in some exercise at work:

• Offer “exercise breaks” to encourage employees to exercise.
• Invest in a corporate wellness program to help your company create a culture of health and productivity.
• Encourage employees by rewarding them if they walk to work on a daily basis.

Learn More:- 10 Simple Steps to Bringing Your Employees Together🤲

9. Set 3-5 Daily Goals and Create Some Competition

You should not have a long to-do list including 100 things, before noon. Having 3-5 non-negotiable daily goals is a viable option.

It doesn’t mean to say “don’t do more”. But you should not put too much pressure on yourself and your employees.

Everyone wants to compete within the group and be the best. Introduce some friendly competition and suitable rewards, and it may help motivate the underproductive employee who is dissatisfied with their current position.

Learn More:- Best Strategies to Create Long-Term Support for Remote Work

10. Optimize Email

Half of the battle for employee productivity is gone once your employees get into the constant flow of their receiving email.

According to some research, we spend 13 hours per week on emails. Now you can identify how much time has been wasted.

But emails in the workplace are similar to peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich. Without the other, there is none.

So, you can try to manage this email flow so that it has the least possible impact on employee productivity.

• Encourage team members to use proper email etiquette to increase productivity.
• Instruct your employees to choose a time frame each day to deal with emails and stick to it.
• Keep emails short and on point, and instruct your employees to be kind and straightforward in their responses.
• Keep email subject lines short and clear, describing what the email is about.
• You may use effective collaboration tools, products, or services like Skype, Slack, and others to make communication amongst employees easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-624UM7g4cE&ab_channel=MattD%27Avella

How to Measure Employee Productivity?

Employee productivity isn’t only a metric for measuring a company’s efficiency. This is only the most obvious one to be used. 

You can set goals and track your team’s progress. It is one of the most effective ways to measure employee productivity. The team’s work quality must also be considered while evaluating employee productivity.

To measure employee productivity, you can use the labor productivity LP equation: total output ÷ total input, i.e.

Output	The revenue you create
Input	Employee hours and resources
Productivity	Output / Input

For example, if a company generated $70000 in 1300 hours, then employee productivity is $70000/1300, i.e., $53 per hour of work.

Similarly, if a company generates $70000 with 20 employees, to calculate your company’s employee productivity, $70000/20, i.e., $3500 per employee a week.

Tracking employee productivity is essential to a company. Companies can use the software tool timeTracko, for tracking office time and monitoring employee productivity. 

timeTracko tracks and measures employees’ daily time spent on the assigned tasks. Within a single feature, employees’ productive and unproductive hours are immediately evaluated.

In addition, you can keep track of what each employee is doing. It is the most effective and best tool for remote employees that help to enhance productivity and deliver the output on time.

Conclusion

You have to increase employee productivity for the success of your company. In order to do so, you have to make sure you prioritize quality over quantity for similar work, improve workplace conditions, and ditch the time spent on pointless meetings.

Provide different training to employees, optimize emailing, exercise breaks and improve office communication.

Hope the tips mentioned above will help you boost workforce productivity in your company. Just keep in mind that what’s good for your company and what’s good for your employee must be considered equally.

 FAQs Regarding Employee Monitoring