Contributed post –
Keeping your team productive is a hard task, one more suited to some than others. It can be eternally draining to try and stay positive all the time on an individual level, let alone bringing everyone along for the ride. Being productive isn’t always about getting more done, sometimes it’s about doing things to a higher standard. For hundreds of years, those who own businesses have been trying to get more out of their employees. There are tried and tested methods. Some work, some don’t. The key thing to remember is that everyone is different, what works for some members of staff won’t work in the least for others. Here are a few tips to get you started. You might have already experimented with some, but the others can give you further ideas to try.
Make Sure Your Environment Encourages Productivity
It’s extremely important that people feel comfortable. To feel that way you need to make sure the environment is a good one. This ranges from making sure they have comfortable chairs right the way to ensuring the temperature is right. The structural integrity of the building needs to be maintained at the outset. You can find out about roofs at this link. Once the roof and walls are weather proof and doing their jobs, you need to think about what’s inside. Make sure there are comfortable break rooms and relaxation areas so your workforce can disconnect from their work and take some time to re-energise. A TV or radio in there can make it even better. On this note, listen to them. What do they want to see in their breakroom? You can score double points here by showing you listen to your workforce.
Show That They’re Working To Something
You need to make sure that they know they’re working towards something for themselves. It’s all well and good hitting company related targets and doing well for the company, but there will be a point when they think about themselves. You can go down two routes here. Either the promotion route or the bonus route. If you set bonuses you need to make sure they’re achievable. Otherwise, there’s no point and it will just anger people. Same with promotions. They need to be achievable. If you give someone to work towards, to strive for, then they’ll work all the harder.
Keep Morale Up
Again, there are a lot of ways you can do this. In the first instance, things like team building days are always a hit. There are all different kinds of things you can do from paintballing to hiking. Might be worth canvassing your team to see what they’d prefer to do. Giving collective rewards is good too. An unexpected day off goes a long way and once again shows your team you appreciate good work when targets are hit. You need to listen to your team. Make sure you take their problems seriously and do all you can to address them. Afterall, if you don’t care about them, why should they care about you and your business?