Employee Productivity Insights

If your company’s performance has hit a disappointing plateau, you’re likely wondering how to increase employee productivity.

Here’s a little secret: most office workers are productive for less than three hours a day. It’s no surprise that a workforce of part-timers struggles to meet expected performance levels.

It takes a good company-wide strategy to maximize your employees’ strengths and motivate them to work hard every day. Luckily, this guide is just what you need to get the ball rolling.

What is Employee Productivity?

Put simply, employee productivity measures how much work an employee is doing on company time. It’s an easy way to keep track of your employees’ workflow in terms of –

Efficiency – how well they’re using their time
Quality – whether their work meets expectations
Quantity – how many tasks they can get done

But there’s more to it than that.

Monitoring employee productivity provides insight into whether your company can meet its goals. Think of this metric as your company’s engine – when it breaks down, the business can’t run. Inversely, high productivity means your business can expand faster than ever.

Why Improve Employee Productivity?

There’s no question that a high-performing workforce is necessary for your business to thrive. But is it worth it to figure out how to increase employee productivity?

It may be tempting to write off unproductive employees and fill their roles with motivated candidates. However, investing in current employees may be more cost-efficient than hoping new ones will perform better.

There’s much to be gained from taking charge of your employees’ productivity –

More Profitable Workforce – Efficiency travels upward. An efficient team makes the whole organization perform better overall. The more productive your employees, the more their work pays for the resources you’ve devoted to them.
Capacity for Innovation – When your employees aren’t struggling to get through the minimum, they have mental energy to spare for creative problem-solving. Innovators drive evolution in your company – they’re your first line of defense against stagnation.
Better Work Relationships – Conflict is inevitable when teammates feel that some are working harder than others. An effective employee productivity strategy ensures that everyone is contributing equally. And everyone gets along better with people they can trust.
Lower Turnover Rates – Most reasons for low productivity revolve around dissatisfied employees. A highly motivated, highly engaged workforce is less likely to leave in search of better prospects. Higher retention rates save you money and resources in the long run.
Competitive Edge – Employees on their A game consistently work fast, deliver quality, and embody company values, making your business look good. Better yet, a full team of productive employees can meet market demands quicker than competitors, giving you a head start.

7 Strategies to Increase Employee Productivity

As convincing as those points are, you know it’s no simple task to rework your strategy from the ground up. But knowing where to focus your efforts is half the battle.

These seven tips will show you how to increase employee productivity in your company.

1) Track Employee Productivity

The days of manually crunching numbers once a year for performance reviews have long passed. If you’re not using software to track productivity, you’re losing out on technology that successful companies have relied on for years.

An employee productivity tracker makes your workers’ activity transparent. Analyzing productivity data in real time, these apps help you optimize your employees’ performance with ease. When problems crop up, managers can see exactly where things are going wrong and provide immediate support.

Not only do productivity trackers keep everyone updated, but they also motivate employees to put their best foot forward.

2) Set Performance Goals and Milestones

Without a concrete, specific action plan, your employees may not understand what’s expected of them. That’s why setting performance goals is a crucial step in how to increase employee productivity.

To foster innovation, initiative, and realistic expectations, empower your team to create their own KPIs and SMART goals. Putting employees in the pilot seat gives them the freedom to do the job they love – with full accountability.

3) Implement Continuous Feedback

Timely feedback can make all the difference in improving employee productivity. It’s hard to know your strengths and weaknesses when they’re constantly evolving and the last feedback you received was months ago. All your employees need is a bit of guidance to show they’re on the right track.

A continuous feedback loop is the perfect strategy for the job. Through regular one-on-one and group meetings, managers and their teams can stay on top of performance goals.

4) Train Better Managers

Improvement doesn’t fall only on your employees’ shoulders, though. Don’t dismiss the possibility that your managers may be holding them back.

Good managers know how to increase employee productivity and build good relationships with their team. But it’s a company effort to bring your managers up to that level.

Regular pulse surveys will let your managers know when employee motivation is flagging. Using the results, you can create actionable steps and offer training opportunities to build your managers’ leadership skills.

5) Provide Opportunities for Growth

Training programs are a straightforward way to increase employee productivity, closing skill and knowledge gaps in your team.

Courses and workshops on the latest tech and industry standards will keep your employees up to date. But you can also support the development of soft skills like time management, organization, and communication.

Invest in your employees’ futures – they’ll thank you for it by doing their jobs better.

6) Reduce Time-Wasters

No discussion on how to increase employee productivity is complete without mentioning the bane of all work: distractions.

It may sound like a no-brainer, but these accumulating obstacles can affect your workforce in ways you don’t expect. Emails, messages, and poorly timed meetings can pull your employees out of the zone instantly. And after an interruption, it takes 23 minutes to refocus on average.

If your office is a hive of activity, encourage teams to turn off notifications when they need to lock in. Be efficient and economical with meetings – every moment in a meeting is one where your employees aren’t making progress.

7) Boost Employee Engagement

This one shouldn’t surprise you. If you’re stumped on how to increase employee productivity, look closely at how your employees feel about their work.

According to Gallup, low employee engagement can increase turnover by up to 43%. If your employees aren’t motivated or passionate about the work they do for you, they’ll look somewhere else. So, make it a priority to improve your employees’ experience in the workplace.

But don’t just guess what they want. Use surveys, meetings, or continuous improvement boards to ask them directly and democratically.

Upgrade Your Employee Productivity Today

The secret for how to increase employee productivity is at your fingertips. nGAGE at Work will help you process productivity data in real time, and it won’t stop there. It’s high time to automate every aspect of your performance management strategy.

Take the plunge now and get ready to unlock your workforce’s full potential.

As business Agility becomes the standard, many companies are starting to adopt the “continuous feedback loop” model of performance evaluation. But what does that mean, and how does it compare to traditional annual performance reviews?

The truth is that annual reviews are just too few and far between to be effective or efficient.

Studies have shown that employees want specific, frequent, and actionable feedback. When an annual review rolls around, it’s often far too late to fix the problems that affected performance.

Instead of focusing on how last year’s performance was lacking, continuous feedback loops look at what changes can be made now.

What Is a Continuous Feedback Loop?

The continuous feedback loop is a strategy for exchanging feedback and putting it into practice on a regular basis.

Gone is the lag time between one performance review and the next. Instead, routine one-on-ones and group check-ins follow up on team members’ progress in reaching their performance goals.

This iterative model ensures that every piece of feedback is understood, acted on, and used to drive positive change. It creates a highly skilled, Agile workforce that can quickly adapt to new challenges.

But continuous feedback isn’t just managers making better workers out of their employees. It’s a two-way conversation – employees also offer their input to management, making a better work environment for themselves. In a healthy feedback culture, everyone benefits.

When there’s a continuous flow of ideas, suggestions, and solutions, a growth mindset naturally follows. So, rather than a source of stress, giving and receiving feedback becomes a valued workplace ritual.

How Important Is a Continuous Feedback Cycle?

In a continuous feedback cycle, your company – and the individuals who make it possible – never stop evolving.

Managers in touch with their teams’ strengths and weaknesses can better respond to their needs when it counts. Employees keep superiors accountable for issues in systems and communication.

The result is a system of continuous learning that puts people and their goals first.

It comes with many benefits – here are just a few that a continuous feedback loop can bring to your company.

Boost Employee Development

It goes without saying that continuous feedback is designed to generate continuous improvement.

Employees who are constantly building skills and optimizing their workflow become the best possible people for their roles. When they know what’s needed, they can adapt to their role as it evolves. That means their value in your company is always on the rise.

Continuous feedback loops keep managers attentive and responsive to employees’ learning and development.

Increase Employee Engagement

Employees thrive on feedback, whether positive of negative, and they tend to want more of it than they’re given. Taking advantage of that fact yields better outcomes for their performance and their job satisfaction. It’s a win-win.

But don’t stop at feedback for employees.

When so many workers resign because they feel their feedback isn’t valued, it’s clear that power imbalance damages morale.

A continuous feedback loop can empower employees to participate in making company-wide decisions. If they can be part of the change, they’ll feel more connected to the company’s trajectory.

Identify Immediate Challenges

Team members struggle to stay on top of backlogged issues when performance reviews happen only once or twice a year. And because annual reviews quickly seem outdated, managers often assess recent performance in a vacuum instead of revisiting old data.

Feedback must be reflexive to keep up with the demands of an unpredictable, fast-paced industry. In other words, it must be made Agile.

Agile continuous feedback loops respond to issues in real time, lowering recency bias and keeping action plans updated.

Improve Trust and Transparency

In a culture of constant feedback exchange, conversations about improvement are always happening. Managers and employees are both clear about their expectations of each other while being honest about what’s realistic.

By making goal-setting and decision-making processes open, transparent, and collaborative, continuous feedback loops foster trust between all levels of management. And better relationships create a more loyal workforce.

5 Strategies to Ensure Continuous Feedback for Employees

It’s a challenge to get an entire organization on board with big changes, but the key is to start simple.

Take a look at these five tips to kick off and maintain your continuous feedback loop.

1. Start a Weekly Feedback Session

Turning feedback exchange into a group activity takes some of the pressure off individuals.

Weekly feedback sessions, hosted by managers, are focused, collaborative conversations about recent successes, obstacles, and ideas. They provide opportunities for employees and managers to give and request feedback.

Honesty is important for these sessions to be productive. But to avoid starting conflicts or crushing morale, you’ll need guidelines that keep the discussion respectful and constructive.

2. Set Up a Continuous Improvement Board

A continuous improvement board is a great way to kickstart an interactive feedback culture. If your team is office-based, place a bulletin board somewhere visible and have a pack of sticky notes nearby. All team members can use them to:

Vote on strategies for continuous improvement put forth by management
Create mind maps to solve problems collaboratively
Leave messages for colleagues, from suggestions to a simple “good job”

A virtual whiteboard or Slack channel works just as well for remote teams.

3. Engage Remote Employees

Many remote employees reportedly feel excluded by colleagues and detached from company goals and values. So it’s essential to bring your remote employees into the continuous feedback loop.

Using employee feedback software like nGAGE is an easy way to give your remote teams a stake in the company’s growth. Peer-to-peer feedback ensures that the team is collaborating outside of projects, too.

4. Look At the Data Behind the Data

Quantitative results only tell you so much. The unspoken implications behind them are just as important to consider.

You can use them to see whether your feedback strategy is having the intended effect.

If feedback surveys aren’t getting the expected number of responses, ask employees how the process could be more engaging. If one-on-ones for a particular team don’t yield positive results, check in with them about their manager’s communication.

5. Put the Feedback into Practice

Continuous feedback loops are doomed to fail if no one takes affirmative action to meet goals and make changes. It’s built into the loop – there’s no progress if nothing has changed.

Leadership should be the first to model putting feedback into action. Set deadlines for deciding which employee feedback to implement and be transparent about them. When you’ve come to a consensus, let employees know:

What you’ve settled on
What the changes will look like
How long they’ll take to set up
Why other suggestions didn’t make the cut

Need Help Ensuring Effective Continuous Feedback?

Though it’s a simple system, a continuous feedback loop takes a lot of work to run smoothly. With so many moving parts, it can be difficult to make sure everyone’s participating and that no feedback gets lost along the way.

An employee feedback software like nGAGE takes work off your plate and keeps everyone accountable. With nGAGE, your company can:

Keep track of all feedback and who it’s given to, making it easier to spot recurring concerns and recent improvements.
Request feedback from employees and managers at any time with just the click of a button.
Give feedback anonymously, without fear of bias or retribution from superiors.

Request a demo now to see how nGAGE can streamline your continuous feedback loop.

Category: Employee Productivity

How to Increase Employee Productivity – 7 Practical Strategies