With today’s businesses trying to do more with fewer employees, it seems surprising that productivity should even be a concern. As the average workload placed on every employee increases, it seems obvious that overall productivity should go up – regardless of each worker’s commitment to the company itself.
However, as any good manager will tell you, there’s a major difference between employees who are truly productive and engaged with the company’s mission, and those who skate by – doing only the bare minimum needed to continue collecting a paycheck.
So if you notice that your staff members aren’t getting as much done as you’d like, keep an eye out for any of the following productivity killers:
Employee boredom
Truth be told, boredom and productivity seem to be mutually exclusive concepts. After all, if an employee is bored, why wouldn’t he simply add extra tasks and responsibilities until he felt more comfortable with his overall level of productivity? In fact, when it comes to employee motivation, the opposite is likely to be true…
According to research carried out by the Gallup agency in October 2011, an estimated 71% of American workers describe themselves as either “Not engaged” or “Actively disengaged.” Workers who aren’t engaged with their missions are likely to be less productive and less motivated than their “Actively engaged” counterparts, leading to an overall decrease in productivity.
The fastest way to kill employee boredom is to assign workers tasks that they actually care about. Simply adding more tasks won’t do the trick – especially if those tasks aren’t interesting to workers. Instead, find ways to give bored employees ownership of projects that interest them, and you should see a marked difference in their overall productivity levels.
Unnecessary processes
Want to kill employee productivity as quickly as possible? Give workers tasks that involve completing unnecessary processes!
Not only do repetitive activities like these discourage employee engagement, they waste company time that could be spent on more mission-critical projects. To quickly ramp up your staff’s productivity, ask team members for their feedback on processes that seem unnecessary or redundant. Then, minimize these inefficiencies to allow your workers to spend more time working on the projects that matter most to your company’s success.
Lack of information
A similar productivity problem exists when employees can’t access the information they need to complete their tasks. Every time a team member is stalled and waiting for feedback, that’s time that’s being wasted that could easily be recaptured with better systems.
If this issue is one that plagues your workplace, look for tools that free up the flow of information so that employees are no longer stuck waiting on critical gatekeepers to move forward. Enterprise Q&A systems like Quandora can certainly help manage this productivity issue, though there are dozens of other solutions that will help your employees get access to the information they need to get their work done.
Unclear expectations
Of course, productivity issues don’t always fall on the shoulders of your employees. Often, it’s the unclear expectations set out by management teams that prevent projects from moving forward.
For example, consider a situation where an employee is assigned responsibility for a project, but then struggles when other team members offer differing suggestions on what the final outcome should look like. As a result, the employee isn’t clear on how to move forward, leading to project delays and worker frustrations.
To prevent this from occurring, limit the number of people who have influence over a project and encourage these managers to provide clear, concise instructions that won’t be changed after the project’s launch.
Lack of personal incentives
Finally, keep in mind that the most motivated, productive employees are those who feel they have a personal stake in their projects’ success.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to offer employees a share of your company – just so that they’ll feel financial responsible for the organization’s growth. However, expecting workers to toil away so that CEOs and other C-level team members can profit is a recipe for productivity disaster!
Instead, make your company’s success personal to your employees by offering performance-based incentives. This could come in the form of financial bonuses, or it could be something as simple as hosting a pizza party if your team meets certain sales goals. By helping your employees to feel personally responsible for the part they play in your company’s overall success, you should see a major increase in productivity as a result.
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