8 SIMPLE STRATEGIES TO INCREASE EMPLOYEES PRODUCTIVITY IN THE WORKPLACE

9 min readMar 27, 2020

It has been a commonly held belief by many employers that increasing the working hours of your employees can substantially increase their productivity. Clearly, they couldn’t be more wrong. Times are changing, and along with it, the work culture of the companies are also changing. The focus is shifting from logging more hours to implementing new strategies to increase employees productivity in the workplace within a given time.

The next-generation companies can focus on smart tactics to implement them and enhance the productivity of their employees. Let’s see how they can achieve that:

1. TRUST YOUR EMPLOYEES

Employees are the ones who make an organization to what they are known for in their niche. But in most of the cases, it has been commonly observed that employees don’t get a chance to get recognized for their work. They work not just for the paycheck at the end of every month, but there’s more to it which they long for — a deep relationship with their organization, belongingness to where they put the maximum hours of their working life.

Your lack of trust in your employees keeps them from feeling themselves as a part of your organization. You want your employees to give their best at work, but when it comes to entrusting them with higher responsibilities, then you hesitate to bring them on board.

The time has never been better than now to entrust your deserving employees with higher responsibilities of qualitative work that can help them grow and bring them out of the monotonicity of their work. The modernity and greater responsibility in their task will keep them motivated towards their job, and employees productivity would be a natural outcome of that.

2. ASSESS YOUR EMPLOYEES’ CAPABILITY THOROUGHLY BEFORE ASSIGNING THEM TO WORK

Most of the cases where employees are not able to work at their optimum potential are because of the mismatch between their capabilities and the nature of work. As an employer, It is of utmost importance that you must know your employees well enough to assign them a suitable role in your organization.

The knowledge of your employees must not get restricted to their qualifications and skill sets but should exceed way beyond that. You must know their interest areas, their behavioral aspects as well to determine what kind of role would be able to bring out the best in them.

Let’s take a small example. Imagine you need an employee to lead a team of designers building graphical user interfaces for various software products your company is building. You will, of course, look at the essential skill sets of the prospective candidates for this role. But the one who stands out most would be someone with an inclination towards arts. From the viewpoint of an artist, which could be their interest, they can give extra emphasis on the types of colors they must choose for the skin of the software, the shape of the buttons, their placements, and so on.

Thus, these kinds of choices would only be possible if you assess your employees beyond your set criteria and know their personal interests and behavioral aspects as well.

3. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

Communication in any organization is the most valuable part of it that helps it grow. Effective communication is significant between all the levels of an organization for keeping the cohesion between teams, within teams, and among the higher management.

In this era of technological advancement, we have become too dependent on different modes of electronic communication, be it emails, social media, or chat messengers. While they are quite handy in communicating the quick as well as deeply explored thoughts (like in a descriptive email), sometimes our tech-savvy selves become so empowering that we fail to see their shortcomings hampering our conversations.

AND OH! HERE IS HOW CORPORATES CAN STAY PRODUCTIVE WITH USER ACTIVITY MONITORING THIS CORONA DOWNTURN

A simple one to one meeting could be more effective in communicating your thoughts than hours spent on mail chains. Likewise, there could be other options like short meetings or a direct mobile conversation, which should be used instead of relying all the time on written communication. These are simple yet easy to forget means of communication in today’s world and hence must be reminded often to keep the communication short, simple, and effective.

4. SET CLEAR GOALS FOR YOUR EMPLOYEES

Before you expect your employees to start working towards the goals you have given them, make sure they understand every aspect of it and know it inside out. Your employees will begin working on your goals by themselves once they recognize why they are doing so, what would be the impact on the organization, how long would it take to finish the job, and so on.

Every goal you set for your employees should be SMART, which means it should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. You must evaluate for yourself before assigning them if these aspects are covered clearly in your goals or not.

5. USE EMPLOYEE MONITORING TOOLS

Employee monitoring systems are not as stringent as they sound. But many of the employees do also agree that it is instead an amazing medium for enhancing employees productivity. When installed on an employee’s computer while being transparent with them about it, it can have multiple benefits for both employers as well as employees.

While there are many employee monitoring software available on the web, there is hardly any smart, comprehensive, and easy to use software like EmpMonitor. I am explaining some of its remarkably magnanimous features below:

TRACK AND ENHANCE EMPLOYEES PRODUCTIVITY:

It is the most powerful feature of EmpMonitor, which lets you measure the productive hours your employee is logging in while at work. You can track their login and log out time- based on which, EmpMonitor will calculate their total number of productive hours.

TAKE SCREENSHOTS:

If you are worried about a possible data loss from your employees’ pc, then you can have a look at the screenshot of their pc which is being taken regularly and saved. You can adjust the time interval between each screenshot in the admin settings, and it will serve you with the same number of screenshots within a particular time interval. EmpMonitor saves the screenshots for the past three months that can be accessed anytime.

TRACK BROWSER HISTORY:

Know which websites are being used by your employees during the working hours and decide for yourself if they are productive or just a waste of time. You can know how many times the user opened a particular web page. You will also get the title of the pages.

DEPUTIZE YOUR TEAM-MATES:

If the team size is generous in an organization, then you don’t have to keep tracking every team all by yourself. You can give monitoring rights to the team-managers or team leaders, and they can monitor their respective teams. They can review websites being watched by their employees as well as analyze all other data that relates to their productivity.

BTW, HERE ARE 05 UNBELIEVABLE WAYS YOU CAN MANAGE REMOTE EMPLOYEES EFFECTIVELY

TOP APPS USED:

Do you want to know which applications are being used most by your employees? EmpMonitor will give you a comprehensive report of all the applications used by your employees. You can also view the amount of time spent on each of those. You can have a look at the top ten apps used by your employees, and you can see this data for a maximum of the past six months. To see the apps used on a particular day, you just have to adjust the date, and it will show you exactly that.

6. PRAISE AND GIVE INCENTIVES TO YOUR EMPLOYEES

Timely admiration and appreciation for hard work are crucial factors for motivating your employees for higher productivity. You can do this at the end of every financial year or after the successful launch of a project. Remember that just a verbal remark is not enough. You must take a few of these tangible steps to make them feel worthy for your organization:

TEAM-OUTING:

Taking your team out for team building activities can turn out to be quite fruitful to make them enthusiastic and loyal towards your organization. Team outing helps them ease out on the personal level in front of their colleagues and helps boost your employees’ morale.

SALARY HIKE:

A timely unbiased appraisal clubbed with a salary hike is pivotal to keep your employees motivated. Giving them a bonus during the festival time or out of your company’s profit margin also let them realize that you care for them.

PAID LEAVES:

Your employees need to take some time off to maintain their work-life balance, and when it comes in the form of paid leaves, then there is nothing like it. It helps them regain strength, recharge their energy, and restore their mental health, which often gets deteriorated due to demanding work schedules resulting in mental fatigue.

7. TRAIN YOUR EMPLOYEES

Equipping your employees with the latest technology and trends is vital for employees’ performance in an organization. Giving them proper training relevant to their work area prepares them to accomplish tasks with more advanced methodologies and bringing a fresh approach to their work.

Hence, timely train your employees with the latest courses available in your niche. It will eventually help them achieve the goals of your organization more smartly.

8. HONEST REVIEWS AND FEEDBACK

Constructive criticism is the backbone of an ever-evolving team in an organization. You should take some time out to evaluate all the areas of your employees’ work. Find the loopholes that you can fill with honest review-meetings. Ensure that your employees shouldn’t get offended by your criticism but rather take it sportively to improve upon the areas that you are pointing out.

A reverse methodology holds equal weightage in this process, where you can also ask your employees about the improvement areas they think should be implemented in your organization. This way, they would be more vigilant on their own as well as the company’s working style and would feel a lot more connected due to enhanced ownership of their workplace.

WRAPPING IT UP

These were the eight simple steps that you must keep in mind and implement if you want to enhance the productivity of your employees. Remember that the fundamental step to bringing the best out of your employees is to make them feel an essential and indispensable part of your organization through regular participation in all the developmental activities that you plan to execute.

Have any doubts or questions? Don’t forget to leave a comment below on what you think about these steps and how you plan to act on the strategies to increase employees productivity in the workplace.

Still want to read more about to increase employee productivity?

Read more guide at EmpMonitor