The issue of depleting employee engagement is the runner up in the entrepreneur’s “Top 10 things that worry me” relay race. The decreasing employee engagement is a new age epidemic that has taken over the workspaces, thanks to the distraction called social media.
Today, we live in the generation where we can fall out of reasons to work due to higher proportion of online distractions available. In this kind of scenario, it’s no surprise entrepreneurs are worried sick about how to increase their employee productivity at work.
As an entrepreneur or manager, you already know that your profitability percent is directly proportional to the employee engagement. There’s no debating there.
A recent Gallup study found that only 13% of employees feel engaged at work. Further the research showed that companies who have more engaged employees, compared to lesser ones. had 22% higher profitability. They had 10% more customer ratings and 48% fewer safety incidents [source].
Managing and engaging your employees at work is half a battle in itself. It’s not an easy feat but certainly not an impossible one. Before you get started, make sure to put yourself in your employee’s shoes to rethink the systems deployed in your company.
Though this article may not provide tailor made solutions to your unique problems, it will surely help you increase your employee’s productivity. The few of the many techniques are given below:
Contents
1. What’s Their Drive?
The conventional thinking is what work must be assigned to who and what skills do they have to get the job done. Freeze! Have you thought otherwise? What are the things that drive employees to want to work with you? is a question that we never consider to answer as entrepreneurs. But that’s the key says Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath who identified 4 drives:
- Physical drive – Having the opportunity to recharge
- Emotional drive – Feeling Valued
- Mental drive – Having the ability to work autonomously
- Spiritual drive – Feeling connected to a higher purpose
If company helps your employees to nurture these drives, there’s no reason your business should ever suffer. Emotional job satisfaction beats monetary satisfaction, always!
2. Build a Healthy Beehive
We spend most our life working, so you might as well make your workplace a serene and innovative one. Little changes in your workplace can bring about big transformations in people’s attitude.
- Focus on letting natural sunshine light your office wherever possible. The sunlight has mysterious ways to positively influence human thinking and metabolism. Make your office nature friendly. Add a hint of flower essence in the air. It’s relaxing and freshening.
- Hang inspirational and humor filled quotes on the wall. The quotes help in influencing and selecting better set of thoughts and might even make your bad day a good one.
- Invest in a nap room, recreational sports room, a view room, “pursue your hobby” room and a library. Many might wonder how rooms that’ll make people lazy help in pushing up the revenues. Read Point 3 for clarifications
- Hold a virtual bulletin board that circulates recent announcements, new assignments and also people’s birthdays too. It helps you connect with your co-workers because a personal connection is always a valued one.
3. Worth Ethics
Eliminate the word “employee” and replace it with “team player” because it adds an esteem to that position and removes the “I” in team work. Assign work based on the work volume and provide a deadline to your team. Flexible timings will help get the best out of each team.
One should remember salary is paid for the quality of work done, not the quantitative hours spent in office. Encourage your team players to pursue their hobbies, or play a tennis match to ease their mind and body. It is also possible the zero work hours can be misused, so deploy effective internal controls to monitor any misuse.
Also listen to your employee’s feedback after the completed task, assess the changes they would like to see and implement them if it helps. Cut out on the traditional Saturday and Sunday weekend. Introduce “2 week days off” concept which helps them do some other personal chores, like running an errand with a government office that is closed on the traditional weekends.
4. Praise in Public, Reprimand in Private
This rule is classic. Make sure your constructive advice is taken well by keeping the person’s weakness hidden from others. Accept the fact that a person having the skills of accountant can do a better job of a marketer. Run personal questionnaires that help you find out what the employee is interested in. Also push people to work in different departments so that they have an overall experience and choose the department they most love. Sometimes, our personal life affects our work live adversely. Not everyone would be comfortable sharing their personal problems with co-workers for obvious reasons. Hire a mental counselor who can help them deal with problems.
On the other hand, bring out people’s achievements and contribution to the company in paper and hang it on the bulletin board to show your respect for their achievements and contributions. This will not only boost their interest but also inspire others to do things differently.
5. Bring out the Whacky Side
Some of our professions require us to be serious all the time but that’s not who we all are on the inside, right? So encourage your team players to think outside the box in executing work. Award them credit points for working in other departments, announce humorous titles for each person and always make it a point to pool in different people that’ll help them bond internally.
Your team players have to look no further to enjoy because the workplace is so much more fun and rewarding. They say, “A smile is a curve that can set everything straight”. You’ll realize it when you walk in to your office and countless set of smiles greet you. Indeed making your company one of the best companies to work for. And soon happy customers will follow.
