4 Ways to Ensure Your Employees Stay Productive

Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash

Your employees are the heart and should of your organization. Therefore, if you want our company to succeed and enjoy tremendous growth, then you’ve got to make sure that your employees are happy and productive.

Unfortunately, there’s evidence of dwindling productivity in many industries. But this is where it gets interesting: in those same industries with poor-performing employees, there are companies whose staff are more productive.

If you’re currently struggling with a lack of productivity in the workplace, want to build a culture of efficiency from the get-go, or want to get your employees to achieve more, then you need to take specific steps like those in this article to make that happen.

Optimize Your Office Space

Improving workplace productivity often requires the firm to optimize where people work. Look at your office floors and see if there are ways to realistically improve on the various workspaces. Start by looking at the lighting.

Did you know that employees who have more natural light in their office tend to sleep better at night? This means that they are likely to be more productive the next day at work. Maybe consider introducing some plants to the office floors.

Apart from their decorative benefits, plants tend to energize workers and increase worker focus by extracting more carbon dioxide and producing oxygen during the day. Abundant oxygen tends to keep people alert, focused, and less tired. This is why casinos tend to pup a lot of oxygen into their spaces –so people can gamble for longer.

Prioritize Safety

People want to go to work feeling like they’re safe and not likely to be injured at work. This is why you must have adequate safety protocols in place. In the construction industry, for instance, a poor safety protocol and implementation can lead to a construction accident.

If workers don’t feel safe, chances are they will be distracted and worried about potential hazards. This impairs their focus, leading to less-than-optimal outputs. So, make sure that there are clear signs, plans, and execution that you consider worker safety a priority.

Create a Seamless Communication Culture

Train employees to communicate effectively and efficiently. Surveys have shown that the average worker spends an average of 13 hours on email-related tasks every week.

Yet, with proper training and efficiency, they can probably cut it down to less than half that. Train employees to only attend to emails during specific times of the day –the exception being support staff or high-priority emails sent to emergency addresses- and keep emails short and to the point.

This will improve communication and help people spend more time on important tasks. Once everyone understands that, they’ll find ways to adjust and adhere to the new instructions.

Eliminate Unnecessary Meetings

Finally, cut down on the number of meetings that you have every day or week. For example, you can have two 30-minute standing meetings every week.

One at the end of the workweek to outline the next week’s goals and get the staff thinking about it, the second on Monday morning to remind staff of those goals. This way, people can have clear directions for the week and avoid spending less time on irrelevant banter.