Five Ways to Improve Your Employees Productivity

Humans are lazy by nature and employees will only do as much work as they need to during their working day. This means that you will likely lose out on profit as they fail to sell more expensive products or higher quality services. Boosting their motivation to work harder is important and you can do this with or without financial incentives. Here are five ways according to www.realbusinessrescue.co.uk to improve your employees’ productivity levels.

Offer Cash Bonuses

One of the most common ways to improve productivity levels is by adding a financial incentive. There are different ways that you can add bonuses into your employees’ salaries. The first is through a commission – a percentage of the sales made or a set figure for each extra product being sold. For example, someone selling glasses could gain a £1 bonus for every extra product their sell for the lenses or someone selling jewellery could gain a set percentage of products over a certain amount.

Another option is for all the bonus money to go into a pool and the person with the most sales at the end of the month gains that. This can be beneficial but you run the risk of those who sell well but not as often bothering less about making the extra money for others, knowing that they will not gain it. You also run the risk of refunds as employees push for the sales but lack the quality.

Offer Extra Time Off

Cash bonuses work well but they are not always possible. If you have no extra cash available, considering offer extra time off as the incentive. This could be turned into a competition where the person to make the most sales at the end of the month gains an extra day’s holiday and the person coming second gains half a day off. People love to get extra time off and will be willing to work harder for that chance.

The problem is that this may only temporarily increase the sales while the competition is held. To keep the sales high, you will need to regularly offer this type of bonus. One option would be to offer an extra half hour or hour off during a working day for a set number of sales above target.

Give Praise and Recognition

More often than not, employees want to know that they are doing the job well and that you appreciate them for this. Giving praise and recognition for the work, in front of their peers, will make them want to work harder to continue to make you happy. This can be offered in numerous ways including through employee of the month or through announcements in staff meetings.

Show Your Employees Their Career Prospects

If people believe that they are in a dead-end job, they are less willing to put any extra effort in. Show your employees their prospects within the company and how their extra effort could pay off. This could be on a chart that is always on show in the staff room or through regular meetings to discuss an employee’s productivity levels and assess the skills and whether extra training is needed.

This would also involve giving staff extra responsibility for their hard work to prove that there is a way to progress up the ladder. As others see that there are prospects, they will start to put in the extra effort.

Add More Social Gatherings

Getting to know your employees on a more sociable and personal level will help to increase their productivity. While it is important to keep personal and business life separate, knowing more about you and why you have set up the company and what you want from it will help them understand more about why you want it to succeed. It will give them the push they need to do more to help you in your dreams – and could make your dreams theirs.

The Christmas night out is one annual event that many workplaces hold but consider a BBQ in the summer or regular events after work. Avoid making these compulsory for your employees though as they will start to resent you for taking up their personal time.

There are many things that you can do to help improve the productivity of your employees. While financial incentives will help, these are not necessary. Extra paid time off, social gatherings and showing the career options could help to motivate employees more so that you gain more profits. Give your employees a reason to work harder than doing the bare minimum to get their wage.