How to Improve Employee Productivity in the Workplace: 17 Effective Strategies

Since the so-called Great Resignation emerged in the past few years, employers have been looking for ways to get work done without affecting their bottom line. However, onboarding and offboarding recruits and employees is costly for any company in terms of time, finances, and resources.

The best way to ensure fluctuations in headcount do not affect the functioning of the business is to improve the productivity of all current employees. How, though, can leaders and HR professionals work to improve employee productivity in the workplace?

Let’s look at why employee productivity is important for a company’s growth. We’ll also look at several strategies that can help improve productivity across the board.

What is Employee Productivity?

Employee productivity refers to the quality and efficiency of implementing the services and goals assigned to them. There is no standard unit or metric to measure employee productivity. For instance, getting work done quickly does not equal high levels of productivity, while slow-paced work does not necessarily guarantee a high quality of work.

The measure of productivity differs widely across the company, between teams, within the team, and on individual projects. Similarly, every employee requires different motivational entities to remain productive. These are the reasons why HR professionals and company leaders are always looking for innovative ways to improve employee productivity.

High employee productivity generally refers to completing work to the expected standard (or exceeding it) within a specified time frame.

Why is Employee Productivity Important?

Delivering high-quality work on or before a deadline saves a company costs and resources. When all employees are committed to being productive, this directly reflects on the company’s profits and growth.

Let’s see why investing in improving employee productivity is a wise decision for companies.

Increase in Business Profits and Growth

If a team is comprised of members with different engagement levels, it can affect team dynamics. Naturally, the neutral or disengaged employee will take more time to complete a given task or leave it incomplete. Such actions can affect the team’s quantifiable outputs, indicating less productivity, and also can affect work with dependent teams.

On the other hand, if all team members are actively engaged with their work goals, it boosts their productivity and helps the team meet its goals before its deadlines. If each team and group within the company follows this principle, the effect of delivering quality output gets compounded, directly showing in business profits and client satisfaction.

Improves Employee Satisfaction and Retention

Productivity leads to better work results, which in turn leads to appreciation and rewards for the team and individual members. When employees see their work being valued and appreciated, they become motivated to continue working similarly to beat their own records.

As a result, employees stop finding reasons to feel demotivated and look for other opportunities. Employees remain productive when their job roles are well-suited to their skill sets, provide them with appropriate challenges, and garner recognition. Naturally, companies see higher employee retention rates and save costs in hiring and offboarding.

Promotes Collaboration and Teamwork

Productivity is not limited to individual output. A team’s combined efforts lead to better quality of deliverables. Therefore, it becomes essential for leaders to facilitate teamwork and realign their team dynamics to remain inclusive of all team members.

Moreover, highly productive employees know whom to approach to get their work done, both within and outside their teams. Productivity is, therefore, a great result of engaging and collaborating with peers and clients, which forms the backbone of a productive work environment.

Factors Affecting Employee Productivity in the Workplace

Every company’s leaders and HR professionals aim to ensure their employees contribute their best at work. However, achieving this goal has many challenges. What may help one employee remain productive can negatively affect another’s productivity!

Here are some reasons why achieving 100% productivity among employees remains challenging:

1. Workplace Environment: In recent times, working remotely has shown a significant increase in productivity among several employees. In contrast, a study shows how remote work has increased working hours and reduced productivity for certain employees. Similarly, workplace ergonomics, like subpar seating arrangements, external noise, poor lighting, and lack of recreational spaces, can also affect employees and their ability to do better work.
2. Company Culture and Leadership: A company’s workplace culture and the attitude of managers and leaders can significantly impact employees' productivity levels. For instance, companies that do not follow inclusive workplace ethics can see disengagement and less productivity among employees of different diversities. If a leader remains unmotivated and is unavailable to team members' needs, their lack of proactiveness can directly affect the team’s dynamics.
3. Employee Engagement and Motivation Levels: Improving employee commitment to goals and pushing them to do better helps them become more productive. However, if a team is comprised of less engaged and motivated employees, the negative energy can spread to other members and reduce overall productivity. On the other hand, teams with highly engaged and active employees show great progress and development.
4. Technology and Tools: Employees can finish their work faster without compromising on quality when equipped with the right tools and skills to ease their work. Appropriate technology, software tools, AI insights, and analytics help employees increase productivity. A lack of appropriate tools and technical support can make employees burn their energy on cumbersome and repetitive tasks, wasting precious time and resources.
5. Burnout at Work: A significant factor affecting employee productivity at the workplace is overburdening employees with work beyond their limits. Such scenarios happen when companies face sudden employee turnovers or prolonged absences among team members. These situations lead other team members to work overtime by completing jobs beyond their scope, leading to burnout. Burnout is physically and mentally draining for employees and directly affects their regular productivity levels.
6. Flexibility and Work-Life Balance: Companies have realized the importance of promoting flexible working hours to ensure employees get time to spend with their family and friends. Such measures promoting work-life balance have proven to improve productivity by keeping employees satisfied. More companies are developing special leaves and hybrid working policies to ensure employees stay motivated while contributing their best to their work goals.

Common Causes of Low Productivity

In addition to the general workplace-related factors that affect employee productivity, there are other reasons employees exhibit poor productivity at work. Such factors are mostly specific to employees and their attitudes, which can make productivity measurement and improvement a challenge for HR professionals.

Poor Communication

We learned that productivity is a significant result of employees collaborating and working as a team. Proper communication forms the backbone of successful collaborations and team dynamics. Employees who fail to communicate their needs and requirements often find themselves lost within a team, ultimately unable to deliver to their fullest potential.

Lack of Clear Goals and Expectations

Sometimes, recruiters hire talent based on a generic job description and place them in roles that do not interest them. A lack of clear work goals and requirements is a major reason for employee turnover across organizations. Similarly, when team leaders fail to set accurate goals and targets for certain team members, they can feel alienated within the team and thus remain less productive.

Inadequate Training and Skill Gaps

Not being adequately skilled in certain areas can make employees feel they do not belong there. Companies that fail to train their employees in relevant tools and technologies face productivity issues among employees. Companies must recruit members by providing clear and accurate job descriptions and ensuring new recruits have minimal or no skill gaps with their existing employees.

Workplace Distractions

Employee engagement is definitely a great way to bond employees with each other outside of work. However, if such activities are not well spaced and planned properly, they can distract employees from their work. For instance, weekly team lunches or outings that extend beyond the given lunch hours can reduce employees' work hours, thus reducing productivity.

Less Motivation and Disengagement

Our insights on motivation and engagement show that productivity directly results from higher employee engagement and motivation levels. Even one disengaged member within a team or group can lower productivity and work quality, thereby delaying the team's expected output. Similarly, those with low self-esteem and motivation can spread negative energy, resulting in mass turnovers or absences that can waste company costs and resources.

17 Effective Strategies to Improve Employee Productivity

Improving employee productivity is one of the key tasks of HR professionals to ensure their most valuable resources, aka employees, stay satisfied and reduce retention. Just like different employees have different motivational requirements, there can be multiple ways to improve employee productivity.

Here are some common ways to improve employee productivity at the workplace that have been adopted across several companies worldwide.

1. Set Clear Goals and Expectations

Productivity is one measure that varies across employees and teams within an organization. So, it becomes important to set clear goals and tasks that employees must fulfill. Their managers and team leaders must fairly evaluate their performance against existing benchmarks. Such performance analytics indicate productivity within teams and can show how employees' contributions are making an impact.

Setting realistic and measurable work goals and tasks helps employees remain productive and consistent in their work.

2. Encourage Employee Engagement and Recognition

The work done by one employee cannot be compared with that of their peers as the goals and tasks for each may differ depending on their team and work division. However, apt recognition by their team leads and members for completing critical tasks on time can show that employees are valued for the work they do. Such actions make employees believe they are productive and must strive to do better next time.

Similarly, engaging with employees within their teams, peers, leaders, and those with common interests helps employees learn what they need to improve their productivity.

3. Improve Internal Communication

We learned how poor communication can lead to low levels of productivity, causing employees to lose motivation to work. HR professionals and company leaders must develop several online and offline strategies to encourage open discussions among employees. Employees must sense that their feedback and opinions are valued, which makes them realize they are important assets for the company.

Online intranet portals, discussion threads, peer recognition, chat groups on common interests, daily team meetings, and group check-ins are some ways to improve internal communication among employees.

4. Promote Work-Life Balance

Employees spending long hours at work is not an indicator of productivity. Several surveys show that employees are productive even when not present at a physical office. Also, most remote workers can get the work done while managing their personal lives. These actions prove that when employees can balance their personal and work lives, they can be satisfied and productive even in the short time they devote to their work.

HR professionals and leaders must reframe company policies to measure employees’ productivity based on their outputs rather than the time they clock in and out at work.

5. Invest in Employee Training and Development

Even the best-skilled employees must consistently brush up on their basics and stay current in their areas of expertise. Failing to keep themselves updated can make employees feel they are no longer fit to work in their roles. Such thoughts can affect their productivity. With the right training and hands-on experience, all employees can be sufficiently skilled to contribute to their team’s tasks.

Companies should encourage sufficient learning and development opportunities within their intranet or promote learning from external platforms to retain skilled employees.

6. Leverage the Right Technology and Tools

A lot of employee effort goes into logging their work and manually performing certain mundane and repetitive tasks. For managers and leaders, it can be more cumbersome as they must ensure no work goes unnoticed and consistently monitor their employees' productivity. With the right tools, every technical and non-technical task can be fast-tracked and monitored to the fullest.

For instance, HR teams can use some of the best HRIS systems to automate several mundane yet high-risk tasks and devote their valuable time to communicating and engaging with employees to better understand them.

7. Reduce Unnecessary Meetings

We discovered how workplace distractions can lead to low productivity. Engagement initiatives meant to help employees can consume a huge portion of the productive time employees devote to their work. One example is having continuous meetings throughout the day, leaving little or no time to actually execute plans.

While team and group meetings are an integral part of employee engagement, the time and formality spent on these can be reduced. For instance, daily standup meetings can happen online or at workstations rather than in person in another designated meeting room in the interest of saving time.

8. Promote a Positive Work Culture

Just like how productivity is measured by an employee’s work quality, it can be used to motivate others in a team or group. Productive employees can promote friendly competition within teams. For instance, if an employee completes a task to a high standard others may want to take it up as a challenge to finish the same work with better quality or performance metrics.

Employee productivity can spread from leaders to team members, thereby resulting in a positive work environment with highly motivated employees.

9. Implement Employee Health and Well-being Programs

When employees find their needs satisfied, they can worry less and devote their energy and effort towards improving their work productivity. Many companies provide mandatory well-being programs and perks for this very reason. From paid and unpaid leaves, childcare support, and mental health support to team outings, cultural celebrations, and much more, such initiatives help employees feel satisfied about their workplace.

HR professionals must constantly refine and renew their engagement and well-being initiatives based on their relevance and acceptance among employees. Such programs must not become distractions and reduce employee productivity.

10. Reduce Micromanaging to Empower Employees

A lot of effort is wasted in continuously reporting and briefing employees on every small amount of work. Similarly, managers and leaders waste their precious time consistently meeting employees and wanting to know every tiny detail about the team’s work dynamics.

Employees feel more productive when they have the power and autonomy to work independently and collaborate whenever required and at their convenience (in the case of flexible or remote work). Constant micromanaging from peers and leaders can make them feel incapable of completing their work, thereby lowering their productivity.

Leaders and managers must provide sufficient autonomy for employees to work on their own terms while abiding by their goals and deadlines.

11. Enforce Strong Team Bonds and Team Engagement

Not having like-minded members on their team can cause employees to collaborate less with such members, which can reduce their productivity and visibility within the team. For this reason, teams with diverse members must have common areas and hobbies to bond on. For instance, teams can attend workshops together and perform scenarios that involve discussions and negotiations. Such activities help members recognize the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and how they can be used when meeting their work goals.

During one member's absence, others can pitch in to split work evenly so that none feel overburdened. In the same way, collaborating with employees with similar interests across teams helps employees work better and be more productive.

12. Offer Career Development Opportunities

It is common for employees to feel less productive during periods of less work or non-challenging work tasks. However, such instances can make employees feel they are no longer worth working for the company and start looking for better opportunities. Employees can use such periods of less productivity to learn several skills to work better in subsequent tasks.

Companies must offer sufficient career development opportunities if employees feel their job role is not justifiable for their skill set. Remote learning programs, short-term team migrations, collaborations with different teams, and technical roles can help employees utilize their skills without costing the company much.

13. Provide Attractive Compensation and Benefits

Just like health and well-being programs, direct and indirect benefits play a major role in satisfying employee needs. Such benefits are crucial to keep employees motivated and, thus, remain consistently productive. Moreover, employees always seek competitive compensation packages from companies offering similar job roles and benefits.

In order to retain the best talent, companies must provide attractive compensation packages similar to or way above their competitor companies.

14. Create a Workplace Employees Want to Come to

While employees do prefer flexible and remote working, nobody would refuse to come to the office if their efforts were valued in a great workplace environment. Sufficient transportation benefits, free meals, a variety of options at the cafeteria and pantries, recreational spaces, indoor sporting facilities, walking tracks, fitness zones, and more s make a lot of employees come to the office, refresh themselves, and show improved productivity at work.

Several companies often float feedback forms and surveys to measure the success of such initiatives and adapt them according to majority requirements.

15. Use Metrics to Track Productivity

Measuring productivity can vary between teams and groups. HR Professionals and leaders must decide on reliable metrics that can help monitor a team’s performance. For instance, teams focussing on IT services and support can use the time taken to resolve a ticket or query as a productivity measure. Similarly, testers' productivity can be measured by the number of bugs they detect and ensure they are not false positives.

Companies can motivate employees to perform better in subsequent tasks by tracking and recognizing those who have shown consistent productivity.

16. Set Realistic Deadlines and Avoid Burnout

Productivity depends on the ability of an employee to ensure quality delivery of their work within a given deadline. Some employees can do exceptional work in a shorter time, which can be a goal that others can achieve in the future. However, one person’s abilities must not challenge another’s work abilities. Therefore, the deadlines for work tasks must be reasonable so that most employees working in similar job roles can complete their work within the allotted time.

Also, employees must not be burdened with tasks in the absence of one or more team members. Employers must look for sufficient intervening solutions from other teams or must ensure that members who are taking time off complete important work before leaving.

17. Encourage Breaks and Downtime

Whether employees work remotely or from the office, employers must encourage their teams and leaders to take mandatory breaks for their physical and mental well-being. Skipping lunch breaks and breakfast to attend meetings or discussions can impact their productivity during the day while also affecting their health over the long term.

Leaders can encourage the entire team to take a break and hang out in the kitchen for informal discussions on topics other than work. Similarly, employees must take breaks to visit recreational areas in offices or the surrounding neighborhood to get fresh air before returning to their workstations.

How to Measure and Track Employee Productivity

As discussed in the previous sections, no single unit measures employee productivity. This is because productivity varies between different teams. For instance, some teams do not contribute towards profit numbers but can support teams that directly bring business to the company.

Depending on your teams’ requirements, here are some measures to choose and track employee productivity in companies:

1. Time taken to complete a given task.
2. Quality of work done to be compared to existing benchmarks.
3. Number of work goals met within a given time frame.
4. Number of employees required to complete a task.
5. Profits derived from a given task deliverable.

All these metrics are crucial to determining the current productivity levels and allowing the company to make important decisions about raising or cutting hiring costs.

How Revaluate180 Helps Improve Employee Productivity

Productivity is a congruence of efforts from both employees and their team members. First, employees must know how their work provides value to their company. Then, they must believe in working with their team to ensure their work derives the required profits and appreciation.

Reevaluate180 focuses on holistic employee development and team building to ensure companies have employees giving their maximum effort at the workplace.

Our Employee Development Program consists of specially curated initiatives that help employees grow and adapt themselves at different stages of their careers while utilizing their maximum potential. Such individual development programs provide clarity to employees on what they can expect from their companies and how the company can fuel their productivity.

Moreover, our Team Building and DEI initiatives help employees engage best with their team and have no communication barriers. Our tailored workshops are specially curated to help teams navigate challenges in their teams and establish smooth team dynamics.

Our corporate insights prove that our workshops and development programs help small and high-level C-Suite team members realign their goals and work productively towards common goals.

Final Thoughts: Building a Culture of Productivity

We looked at many strategies for improving employee productivity to reap maximum benefits for companies. Productivity is a measure that varies between teams and employees.

Companies must ensure that all employees, regardless of designations and teams, work to their maximum potential, which shows in several ways. Since different employees have different factors that make them feel satisfied at work, employers must devise a wide range of initiatives to ensure their employees remain productive.

Contact us today for any assistance and support to improve the productivity of your employees and teams. Our bespoke workshops and trainings can help your teams perform better and yield you the desired performance results.