Boosting Staff Productivity the Easy Way
Managing staff can feel difficult at times. When you first start out with your business, you’ll likely do everything yourself, but this will only get you so far. It’s impossible for one person to specialise in absolutely every area of running a business and you’re going to have to bring in specialists to take care of everything from product design, to web design, marketing, order fulfilment, manufacturing and more. But with these helping hands comes another type of hard work – keeping your staff in line and ensuring that they are bringing value to your business in exchange for the salary you’re paying them. Staff aren’t always going to be as productive as possible of their own accord. Instead, it’s going to be up to you to manage them well. Here are some steps you can take to help yourself on this journey.
Avoid Sticks
When it comes to encouraging people to do what you want, there tend to be two approaches the “stick” approach and the “carrot” approach. The stick approach tends to focus on punishment for failing to do what you want. This could include threatening people with job loss, increasing workload, carrying out disciplinaries and other actions that can make your employees feel insecure in their roles or embarrassed and emotionally hurt. This is no good. Sure, you can scare employees into working harder to some extent, but this can cause them to burn out or to simply have enough and seek another role. Instead, you need to consider carrots. This is a reward or incentive that is positive and encourages your staff to try hard.
Training
When you hire your team, they are likely to be up to speed in their field of specialism. But as time passes, techniques and approaches can change and your team need to be aware of and keep on top of these advancements in their fields and niches. This is where training comes in useufl. Offer your staff ongoing training opportunities that can help them stay as current as possible.
Correct Equipment and Tools
Of course, you can have the best staff in the world, but if they don’t have the equipment or tools they need to do a good job, they’re not going to perform well regardless. Make sure that you are providing your team with everything they need, whether that’s the latest manufacturing equipment, budget for marketing campaigns, Dedicated Servers to work from and more.
Rewards
As we mentioned above, rewarding your staff for hard work and positive behaviour is beneficial for everyone involved. Some ideas of rewards will vary depending on what your staff value as individuals. But some good ideas tend to include bonuses, promotions, payrises, commission and more. You also need to remember that rewards don’t solely have to be financially based. Words of affirmation and encouragement can go a long way too.
Hopefully, some of the suggestions above will help you to create a productive and satisfied staff base. This will benefit you and your business in so many ways!