Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire

How to Increase Employee Productivity

You’re office and company is moving along smoothly and everyone is getting their work done. Or are they? Sometimes it’s difficult to know if your employees are really working up to their potential and utilizing their time fully. If they aren’t, then you need to start working towards making sure they are getting their work done in a timely manner and being as productive as possible. If your employees are getting their work done, there still may be room for improvement. After all, there’s always room for improvement, isn’t there? Take a look at these surefire ways you can increase your employee’s productivity, and start putting your company’s best foot forward.

Acknowledgement and Encouragement
When your employees do a great job, do you acknowledge it? By letting your employees know when they have done a great job you are actually encouraging them to continue to do their best. If I spent hours upon hours on a certain project and gave it my all only for it to go unrecognized, then chances are I won’t put in as much effort the next time around. It seems like a tit for tat kind of situation, but it’s a reality. Employees want to know that they are appreciated and that their hard work is being noticed. Brush up on some employee appreciation tactics and start letting your employees know how great of a job they are doing.

Goals
Make sure the goals you are setting for your candidates are actually reachable. Setting unreasonable goals, or goals that are too high, can overwhelm your employee and actually decrease their productivity. Furthermore, if you set super high goals and your employees must work extra hard to reach them, you may just burn them out. We want our employees to be stellar and shine, but they can’t shine when they are burnt out and tired.

Make Your Employees Accountable
This is one of the most important factors in employee productivity. You must make sure your employees are being held accountable for their actions. If not, what will stop them from taking an unwarranted break for 45 minutes or taking three days to finish a project when it should have taken one. Holding employees accountable for their actions lets them all know that they need to be working up to their full potential and that they need to be making good decisions. Without accountability you will likely have a very undisciplined, and unproductive, team.

Avoid Micromanaging
You care deeply about your company and the work that you do- that’s a given. However, when you micromanage your employees it can be stifling and very difficult to work. It takes a certain amount of trust to let your employees manage their work. However, if you trust your employees enough to let them take the reigns, they will respect you for it. On top of that, it encourages and motivates them to show you they can do this without all of your micromanaging and pushing.

Hire the Best Employees
When you hire highly motivated and skilled employees they are bound to be very productive. However, take a tip from the Olympics and make sure you are not just hiring the candidate that looks best on paper. That’s why hiring smarter and better is key in making your company run smoothly. You can hire smarter and better when you hire employees through Spark Hire. Utilizing video interviews and video technology in your hiring process is the most effective way to hire talent. Start implementing video into your hiring process and hire the best employee for your company.

SOURCE: Tweak Your Biz
IMAGE: Courtesy of Cyclope-Series Team Blog

Nicole Nicholson

Nicole is the Content Editor for Spark Hire and mainly writes for and edits the work for the Spark News blog. She graduated in 2010 with a BA in Journalism from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She has a passion for writing, editing, and pretty much anything to do with content. In her free time she frequents the Chicago music scene and writes reviews on shows for her own personal blog. Connect with Nicole and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter