Employee productivity and efficiency at work are two major concerns of employers, especially this time of COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s why most business companies provide innovative practices that would help their employees work productively and efficiently.
It is a challenge for every operational manager to drive his employees to work efficiently since most of the employees this time have a work-from-home arrangement.
But with the best ways and practices to be observed by the company, there’s still a possibility that the employees can satisfactorily comply with the guidelines and expectations of the company. It is only a matter of handling its employees with care and extra passion in this time of difficulty.
As managers of the company, thinking about the best practices that drive employee efficiency at work is very challenging. So, if you want to make sure that you can push them to perform their maximum effort towards great results, then it would be better to keep in touch with the succeeding discussions.
This article will give you some pieces of information and tips on how to drive your employee to work productively and efficiently.
What is Employee Productivity and Efficiency?
Productivity and efficiency of the employees in a certain business are two major factors that greatly impact the achievement of the organizational goals.
Managers or employees can assess their employees based on these two essential factors. Typically, these two – productivity and efficiency – are both useful for building fantastic work ethics.
If you learn how to manage these two aspects and understand its difference, your business will reach its success. So, understanding the important variables between efficiency and productivity is necessary.
Take a glimpse at the following to plainly understand its difference and importance to your business:
Productivity
This factor allows you to know the degree to which tasks are being completed, or outputs are being developed.
If you measure productivity, some things will get more complicated than that. Of course, you need to consider whether if it’s the office or physical work, especially if the job itself needs quality factors based on the industry’s requirements. Productivity is said to be an important part of having a successful company.
Efficiency
This factor is about a comparison between the number of outcomes and the performance for the production, considering the resources being utilized – time, money, and labor.
In other words, this measure if there’s any waste during the production in your company. Some companies considered efficiency as more necessary than productivity.
But for others, these two factors have usually proportionate when it comes to usefulness and significance.
These two factors are both needed to produce quality products and services in the business company. Employers should weigh and properly manage these two aspects to make sure that everything will be in proper order.
Drive Efficiency at Work with These Best Practices
As managers, of course, thinking about the major benefits of both company and employees are our main responsibility.
So, to drive the employees’ efficiency at work, it would be better to execute the following excellent practices:
1. Setting expectations
Setting expectations for your group and colleagues is necessary because it could help you achieve your organizational goals. If there are no expectations being set in the company, then there would be inefficiency at work.
Thus, this may affect the relationship with one another and would provide a negative impact on the so-called “teamwork” in your workplace.
If you set an expectation within your team, then they will exemplify their best performance level to reach your expectations, resulting in the attainment of your overall objectives.
2. Don’t micromanage
As managers of the company, it would be better not to micromanage your team or the situation. It is good to let your employees perform their tasks based on their initiative and way of doing things, resulting in better outputs.
Sometimes, micromanagement is a cause of conflict since there are some employees who don’t want to be overly controlled. As operational managers, you just need to make sure that your employees are productively and efficiently doing their job.
In this way, you can have a better working relationship with them while encouraging them to perform well for the benefit of the company.
3. Delegate properly
Delegating tasks is another way of driving your employees to become more efficient at work.
If you give them the tasks and specific jobs to do, then they can exemplify their tasks based on the given timeline and guidelines.
Delegation is especially important, whether you’re managing your current company or starting a new business. You won’t be able to do everything yourself and will need help.
From time to time, you may just do some monitoring of their tasks to make sure that there’s progress on the tasks being assigned to them.
4. Match skills with tasks
Matching the skills and tasks and potentials of the employees to the available tasks would somehow help them to perform well. This is also a way of driving them to become efficient and productive at work.
Furthermore, they can make sure that they can demonstrate a better performance level at work since they already know what to do on the tasks.
5. Improve communication
Talking to your employees from time to time would somehow improve camaraderie and working relationships. In this way, they can feel that they belong to the group. Thus, they will be inspired to accomplish their tasks well based on the given timeframe.
6. Set time for training and development
It would be advisable to conduct training and seminars as part of their career growth and development. All these things are a good investment to perform well in their workplace.
7. Recognize efforts and achievements
If your employees did a great job, then you also need to recognize them as part of boosting their self-esteem.
Their ego will also be touched since you, as operational managers, somehow acknowledge their efforts. This is also a way of driving them to become more productive and efficient at work.
8. Have a proper onboarding process
Your company should start doing the transformation process from the beginning of the selection process – the recruitment.
During the employees onboard to your company, you need to provide them the tools, pieces of information that they need, and a better working relationship so that they can feel at ease and comfortable while doing outstanding works for the company.
9. Consider flexibility in work schedules
Flexibility in work schedules can provide a lot of benefits to the employees. One of the things that this can give them is ample time to meet the needs of their family.
If they are not pressured at work, then they can be comfortable while working in your company while having a social life with other people. They can also attend to their family while performing their best at work.
10. Invest on the right tools
Proper tools in doing the job are indeed crucial to succeed on the tasks. If there are perfect tools to be used, then they can perform well, and nothing will be wasted while doing the process. Your employees can confidently do their tasks with ease and success.
11. Prioritize health and work-life balance
Having good health while working is indeed essential to every employee. You also need to make sure that they are physically or mentally safe and sound while doing their job.
If they are in good health condition, then they can think and perform well based on your standards and expectations. It would be better if there’s a balance between work and health to make sure that everything will be okay.
12. Build a culture of transparency and teamwork
Transparency and teamwork are essential in driving the efficiency of employees at work. These will help them to be inspired and encourage them to showcase their talents and potentials for the benefit of the company.
How to Measure Employee Efficiency?
There are several ways on how you can measure the efficiency of your employees. For your reference, you may take a glimpse at the following things:
a. Document the workflows of the company
It would be advisable to break down the workflow of the company and its business processes into a well-defined task.
Then, identify the responsibility for the completion of every activity. If you document the workflows of the company, then you will be aided on how to define such quantifiable metrics on its cost and time.
Workflow maps also support the leaders and managers of the company in the identification of the problem areas in the company.
Thus, these can help them in determining whether a certain problem lies in the procedure itself, like the bottleneck because of an extreme workload or due to the assigned tasks on the individual.
b. Use some benchmarks to measure the success of the employee based on the same role or job.
You may utilize some collected data and pieces of information to make some comparison of the employees’ performance in a similar job role. Then, you may apply some statistical analysis to determine the benchmarks.
From the benchmarks that you have arrived, you may now decide to move forward on creating objectives for employee workloads, budgets, and task deadlines.
c. Utilize a BPM software that can generate Service Legal Agreement (SLA) reports
SLA reports can calculate the time being used to do the tasks and processes completely. In fact, this software can calculate the efficiency of the employee in an accurate manner. You just need to set up the process, employees, and the cost of the tasks.
With this, it will help you to calculate the expected improvement times for the processes and tasks. This kind of software can also offer some visual aids, which include various types of reports and graphs, wherein you can use these reports and graphs as sources of data.
These three methods are things that you can do to measure the efficiency of your employee.
You may use any of these approaches or even a combination of these methods to make sure that you can accurately calculate the efficiency and productivity of your employees.
Start Improving Employee Efficiency Today!
How can you encourage your employees to become efficient?
If you’re an operational manager of a certain business company, then you need to become a bridge between the employees and your company.
You need to make sure that they are efficient and productive enough to attain the organizational goals set by the company. As much as possible, try to start improving employee efficiency today so that the best results will be achieved as soon as possible.
Here is your list of guides to help them to showcase their efficiency at work:
Prioritize properly
Prioritizing every task and delegating jobs properly are some of the things that you need to consider. The most important things needed for the success of the company should be prioritized first over other things.
You may delegate those tasks to your employee based on their skills and potentials so that the outcome will be based on the quality standards that the company is looking for.
Make a list of your biggest productivity challenge
Preparing a list of your biggest productivity challenges is another way of encouraging transparency and teamwork in your workplace.
If you also recognize everyone’s effort after attaining the quota or goal, then your employees will feel motivated to provide a high-performance level continuously.
The list of your biggest productivity challenges is somewhat a basis for your employees to work harder towards your overall objectives.
Unite your team members into one common goal
Having a team work towards one common goal is the nicest approach which you can do for good. Always remember that human resource is one of the important resources in the company.
If you unite your colleagues and let them understand the true essence of teamwork, they will also perform harmoniously to achieve your goals.
These things that were mentioned above are the best practices and approaches that you can do to drive efficiency to your employees.
You may start building strong camaraderie among team members, and the rest will successfully follow.
