6 Fast and Easy Ways to Improve Work Performance

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Improve Work Performance|6 Fast and Easy Ways to Improve Work PerformanceHow productive is your business?

A common way to measure organizational productivity is to look at your bottom line. If revenues are growing year over year, you can conclude that your company is productive.

However, that’s a simplistic way of measuring productivity. You need to evaluate the rate of output per unit. In this context, a unit is an employee.

Are your employees putting out more quality work within a defined timeframe? Is it taking them longer to complete a task that should be taking a few minutes?

If yes, you need to know how to improve work performance. Continue reading for more insight.

1. Find Out Why Performance Is Low

To fix something that’s broken, you must start by finding out the broken part, right?

Similarly, to improve the performance of your employees, you need to begin by establishing why they aren’t performing to your company’s expectations. Once you have this information, it’s easy to implement effective performance improvement measures.

So, how do you gather this information?

If yours is a medium-sized or large organization with several employees, it can be difficult to pinpoint the problem, right?

In this case, what you need to do is to run a survey. Issue questionnaires that enable employees to provide anonymous feedback on the challenges they’re facing. You can also ask them to provide suggestions on what the organization can do to improve their productivity.

2. Assess the Workload Per Employee

Sometimes productivity suffers not becomes an employee is incompetent, but because they simply have too much work to do within a short time.

This is why you need to evaluate the workload of each of your employees and determine whether it’s within their capabilities. If it’s too much for them to handle, an obvious solution is to reduce it.

Another option is to hire more employees and split the workload among them. Of course, a larger team is be suited to complete the work faster and improve the overall productivity of your company.

3. Create Organizational Policies That Boost Employee Productivity

Did you know your organizational policies could be harming your employees’ productivity levels?

For example, let’s say your company doesn’t prohibit employees from using social media during work hours. This isn’t a bad thing, especially if your organizational culture is “fun and hippy.”

However, this policy could be doing more harm than good. Social media is a major distractor for anyone, so if your employees are working while chatting with their friends on social media, their productivity will certainly take a hit.

The gist of this is you need to develop organization policies that boost employee productivity. Banning or minimizing access to things that distract your employees is a good place to start.

You can also allow them to take frequent breaks. Studies show a strong correlation between more breaks and improved productivity.

4. Ensure Office Environment Promotes Productivity

Ever walked into an office that looked so cluttered you wondered how anybody gets anything done? You definitely wouldn’t fancy working there.

Now that you’re an employer, it’s your responsibility to provide an office environment that promotes employee wellness and boosts productivity.

There’s a lot you can do to create an office space your employees will love.

To start with, there should be plenty of natural light. This means windows should be large and exposed to sunlight.

According to neuroscience research, people who work in an office that receives 173 percent more exposure to sunlight enjoy at least 46 more minutes of sleep every night. A well-rested employee will come to work energized and ready to crush the day’s goals.

Ergonomic workstations also play an important role in improving employee productivity. Other office design ideas to implement include creating collaboration spaces and bringing in office plants.

Tweaking office design might not look like a fast and easy way to improve work performance, but it is. All you need to do is hire an office designer to implement these changes.

5. Provide Efficient Work Tools and Equipment

Do you use a legacy computer in your office? Certainly not.

Therefore, you have no reason to let your workers use legacy or outdated tools and systems to do their work. These will only slow them down, no matter how hard they try to get things done faster.

If your company still has old computers and other pieces of office devices that look like they belong in a museum, you ought to invest in more advanced and efficient technology.

While at it, be sure to automate as many functions as you can. With a good enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, automating business functions with an aim to improve productivity is now an easy job. Try it!

6. Train Your Employees

You can provide your employees with the latest tools and equipment and base them in fancy offices, but if they don’t have the right occupation skills, their work performance will suffer.

To solve this problem, train your employees regularly.

A mistake some employers make is assuming that just because they hired qualified employees, they don’t need to invest in additional training programs. Don’t make this mistake.

As technology changes, so do your employees’ roles and responsibilities. They need to continually update their skills and knowledge in order to remain competitive.

Take the initiative and enroll them in occupational training programs.

Improve Work Performance the Easy Way

As an employer, no one cares about the performance of your company more than you do. And to achieve higher organizational productivity, your employees need to step up. With this guide on how to improve work performance, you now have the information you need to implement changes that will yield fast, positive results.

Stay tuned to our blog for business and workplace tips and insights.

Employee Benefits: What You Should Know As An Employer

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Employee Benefits|Employee Benefits: What You Should Know As An EmployerAs an employer, one of the smartest things you can do is offer employee benefits in the workplace. Some employee benefits are pretty self explanatory and should come as a standard – such as water, tea, and coffee. Your team shouldn’t have to bring in their own basic refreshments.

However, you should offer more than the bare minimum. You want your workplace to be set apart from others, and your benefits to be a little competitive at least. Benefits vary from company to company, but they can easily make your workplace a more pleasant place to work for your team. Below, we’ll go into more detail on employee benefits and what you should know as an employer:

The Types Of Benefits You Can Offer

There are all kinds of benefits you could offer as an employer. This may include:

  • Health insurance (required to be offered by larger companies)
  • Dental insurance
  • Vision care
  • Life insurance
  • Paid vacation leave
  • Personal leave
  • Sick leave
  • Fitness

There are many optional benefits, and many companies offer the above simply to stay competitive. Extra bonuses, such as stock options, can also be a nice addition.

Employee Retention

Many employers are deciding to increase the use of bonuses, perks, and incentives to recruit and retain employees. Making the workplace more comfortable with benefits can ensure employees stay loyal and stick around in the long term. While you need to stick to a budget and you can’t be frivolous with spending, having benefits, bonuses, and perks that keep your employees happy will ensure more productivity, higher quality work, a more pleasant work environment, and more.

Creating A Nice Work Environment

While the benefits can help to contribute to a nicer work environment, they’re not going to do all of the work for you. Having Payroll HR in place will ensure your employees are paid on time and that everything is kept above board, which should be another concern of yours.

Setting Up Flexible Spending Accounts

Many employers set up flexible spending accounts, and these accounts are regulated by the government. The accounts allow you to set aside pretax dollars, and these dollars pay for things like daycare and medical expenses. They will decrease your taxable income as well as give more freedom to your team, so you should take advantage of one if possible.

Caring About Your Employees

Of course, providing benefits gives you the opportunity to actually make things better for your employees. The benefits should come from a genuine place of wanting to help them and caring for their wellbeing. An employer that shows they care will always stand out from the rest, and your team will be far more likely to stay loyal to you. Even offering things like verbal praise and support can go a long way to making the work environment nicer for them and encouraging them to keep going.

Many employee benefits are not compulsory, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer them. Wanting the best for your employees will go a long way. And that includes oral care for your employees with reputable dentists like the Dentist In Grand Blanc.

How do you make exit interviews count?

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Exit interview|How do you make exit interviews count?When an employee decides to move on, you should be seriously curious about the reasons why. Understanding why employees leave is gold dust in your hand – uncover a problem in the workplace you weren’t aware of, and you gain the insight to do something about it.

It may be too late to save your impending leaver, but if you really listen and can avoid seeing employee exit feedback as criticism, then you have valuable information to prevent other employees following suit.

So, when an employee leaves, how do you make the exit interview count? Here, I’ll be looking at the purpose of an exit interview, why it is important, and how you can use the information to improve employee churn.

The purpose of an exit interview

The whole point of an exit interview is to find out the real reasons your employee has decided to leave, what the employee considers to be the company’s problem areas, and how the company can improve. It is the perfect opportunity to get some frank feedback about the day-to-day operations in your business.

While a resignation letter may give you some indication of the reason an employee is leaving, employees (particularly in businesses with a poor culture) often don’t feel comfortable telling the real truth about their departure.

Leaving for personal reasons is a common cover for dissatisfaction at work. If you think it doesn’t matter why your employees are leaving, think again. The cost to your business is huge and letting good people go is potentially damaging. An exit interview is a real opportunity for learning and employers would be wise to listen and act.

Why is an exit interview important?

In todays’ economy where skilled workers are hard to come by, replacing a valuable employee isn’t easy. According to Breathe HR, over a third of employees leave their jobs because they don’t like the company culture. An employee is unlikely to tell you all of the reasons they are actually leaving in a resignation letter, or even in an informal chat.

But, ask them to give you some honest feedback as you would like to understand why they are leaving and be able to learn from it, and you are much more likely to get them to open up and tell some truths.

The best procedure is to ask your employee to complete an exit interview form and to attend an exit interview with the HR manager. It’s not a good idea to have an exit interview set up with the person’s line manager. This just isn’t good protocol if you really want honest feedback. If an employee is leaving because of poor management, they are unlikely to reveal that if the person they are dissatisfied with is the person conducting the exit interview.

How to make an exit interview count

An exit interview with a departing employee is only useful if the information gleaned doesn’t just fall into a black hole. Candid opinions should be considered in confidence by leadership and not shared to bad-mouth an employee once they have gone – this will only add to poor culture, not fix it.

The whole point of an exit interview is to improve your staff retention rates. Here’s what you need to do to make an exit interview count.

Look for patterns

When people leave your business, are they all giving the same feedback in their exit interviews? If so, it is extremely costly to ignore them – according to Accounts and Legal, the average employee costs SMEs £12,000 to replace.

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) estimate the cost of replacing an employee at a whopping £30,000, which they say includes £25,000 in lost productivity caused by the time it takes to get a new recruit up to speed.

If you don’t fix a problem, the likelihood is that more people will leave.

If more than one employee is telling you something is fundamentally wrong, then you need to do something about it. A small few changes in the workplace could make all the difference to the happiness of your existing employees.

Let your employee vent

An exit interview isn’t the time to argue against every point that is made and justify company actions. Let your employee have their say. Of course, there will be bitter employees along the way. Some of them will have genuine gripes, others will be disgruntled employees that can’t be pleased no matter how great your culture is. It’s up to you as a business leader to use your integrity to recognise when they have a point.

Understand psychological safety

How willing your departing employees are to share how they really feel will depend upon their personality, how psychologically secure they feel in your organisation, and whether they think you will actually be bothered to listen, take notice and act.

If your culture is toxic and an employee is leaving because they feel bullied, it is unlikely they will spill the beans. If lots of your people are leaving, yet they are keeping schtum, you may want to address any issues around psychological safety.

Employee engagement surveys

As most exit interviews happen when an employee has already disengaged (usually in the last week of their employment), it can be difficult to get a true picture of how most employees in the business are feeling. If you really want to understand your employees, why wait for them to give feedback when they leave?

Conducting regular employee engagement surveys serves the same purpose as an exit interview, but helps you to quickly pick up when employees are unhappy at work and take action to prevent people leaving. Let’s face it, exit interviews have a sense of ‘closing the door after the horse has bolted’.

Summary

Far too many companies follow good exit interview protocol but don’t utilise the information effectively. Feedback gets filed and not acted upon, or inappropriately shared to discredit an ex-employee, and then business leaders wonder why more people leave.

Making an exit interview count means acting on the information you glean from your leavers to improve your organisation and make it a better place to work. Don’t try and fight good feedback, especially if the same messages are being heard over and over again.

Be grateful for feedback that is difficult to hear. Interpret, reflect and understand the issues your leavers are sharing with you. See them as strategic improvement opportunities being handed to you on a plate. Remember, employees are your greatest asset. Learn from them, don’t lose them. Ask them to fill in the blank, “I don’t know why the company doesn’t just …..”

The effectiveness of an exit interview can be measured by the positive change it instigates.

5 Ways HCM Can Improve Talent Recruitment

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |HCM|5 Ways HCM Can Improve Talent RecruitmentThe right talent is essential for the success of any organization. However, sometimes it can be difficult and even time consuming and expensive to find the right people to work for you. Choosing the wrong person for the job can ruin your reputation and bring your profits down. Thus, no matter what it takes, you have to do your best to find the right talent. One of the steps you can take to make the recruitment process more successful is to use a human capital management (HCM) system. Such a solution can be helpful in five key ways

Job Posting

An HCM system can simplify the process of sending out job posts or Ads. With most systems, you can share the post to job forums and even social media directly from the platform. You will also get an option for employee referrals. Referrals from your employees have higher chances of turning out right because they are like recommendations from people you know. However, you still need to do thorough screening for the referrals, just like you would for the other applicants.

Applicants Experience

Another key benefit of using an HCM system is that it can give the applicants a great experience during the entire process. As a business, you should strive to build a good reputation, not only with your customers but with potential employees as well. You can make a good impression on potential employees by providing a smooth application process and proper communication after one has submitted their application. When you offer something short of that, applicants will have a bad impression about your business and may leave before completing the application or getting feedback. By investing in a good system, you can avoid losing top talent along the application process.

Timely and Personalized Communication

Generic messages aren’t good for both the employees and the applicants. With a good system, you can send personalized messages to all your applicants. A personalized message shows that you appreciate the effort of your applicants. And with such appreciation, the applicant may be disappointed if they don’t make it but they are less likely to walk away bitter.

One Dashboard

Another benefit of having an HCM system is that you can track everything from one dashboard. With one dashboard, you can avoid duplication and repetition. Also, when everything is being coordinated from one centralized place, there will be better collaboration among the parties involved in the hiring process.

Background Checks

HCM software (also referred to as human capital management) includes background checks. Examples of checks you can complete using the software include criminal record checks, identity, and employment checks. However, note that while these checks are useful, they may not be comprehensive. You will have to do more checks by yourself before making a decision to hire someone.

With the right HCM software, you will be able to recruit and hire the best talent without spending so much time or going through so many struggles. However, it is important to remember that not all systems have the same features. The benefits you get will depend on the features of the system you choose. Thus, check the features well when shopping for software for your business.

Five Strategies For Retaining Your Top Performers

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Staff Retention|Five Strategies For Retaining Your Top PerformersIt is hard to get ahead in the business world when you are constantly having to hire new staff. It is important that you are able to retain your top performers so that you can consistently perform, create harmony in the workplace and avoid the recruitment process which can be lengthy, stressful and expensive.

So, how do you retain your top workers? This can be a challenge particularly when you are a smaller business that may not be able to offer the same wages that they could command at one of the bigger brands in your industry. That is not to say that it is not possible, however, as there are a few highly effective strategies to try.

Flexible Working

The days of working Monday to Friday 9-5 are disappearing and it is important to recognize this as a business owner. You should offer your staff flexible working whether this is remote working opportunities or early starts/late finishes. This can boost morale, show that you trust and respect staff, and help with productivity levels.

Create The Right Office Environment

A job is much more than just a paycheck; it’s a place where people spend most of their week. Creating the right office environment ensures that people can feel happy, relaxed and focused each day which will help with workplace satisfaction. Here are a few tips to create the right environment:

  • Open plan and open door policy
  • High-quality equipment, furniture and tech
  • Allowing open communication
  • High-quality staff break room
  • Maximizing natural light
  • Plenty of plant life
  • Attractive office decor

Social Events

Leading on from this, it is also important to host regular staff social events. This can improve employee retention because it can help to develop chemistry between employees, as well as show that you appreciate your staff. You can throw more formal events, but you may find that it is the informal events which are most effective. These might include:

  • Afterwork drinks
  • Team lunches
  • Staff BBQ
  • Sport/exercise classes

Listen To Feedback

It is hard to retain your top performers if you are not listening to your employees nor taking notice of what they say. One of the best ways to do this is to employ satisfaction solutions like happy-or-not.com, which can help you to determine how happy your employees are and identify ways in which you can make improvements to boost morale.

Development

The best workers are the ones who want to progress in their careers, and so it is important that you allow them room to grow within your organization. This means that you should provide training opportunities and promotion from within, but you should also listen to their career goals and find ways to help them to achieve this within your business.

It is frustrating to lose your top workers to the bigger brands but this is unavoidable if you do not take action to retain employees. Even if you cannot match wages they could earn elsewhere, there are always ways in which you can keep hold of your top performers.