Increase The Efficiency Of Your Employees With These 6 Simple Tricks

My experience with employee efficiency is somewhat unique due to my workforce being almost completely virtual. As such, efficiency can be a challenge, so I use a number of practices to ensure that my employees are productive. In contrast to many traditional workforces, I really believe in being as hands-off as possible; allowing everyone that works for me to do things at their own pace. This gives my employees a sense of freedom, which I believe is important for creativity and success.

When someone new joins my team, I arrange a goal-setting meeting via phone during which we discuss what they believe they’re accountable for, what their responsibilities are, their idea of good behavior, and what their main goals are regarding the position. I then do the same to ensure our visions for the position align. I find this really helps employees to feel motivated in working to the best of their abilities because we've taken the time to discuss what excellent work looks like, as well as their future opportunities within the company.

Contributors: Ameet Khabra from Hop Skip Media 

One of the most effective ways that I have tested over the years is real-time case studies. In its most basic version, you have the employee do 2 similar tasks: one the way they think they should be doing it and one with tools or SOP's that allows them to do it faster and more accurate. Majority of the time the employee almost instantaneously have an epiphany and seek to optimize all possible tasks.

Contributors: Kamyar Shah from KamyarShah

Gretchen Rubin’s groundbreaking work on “tendencies” reveals that we are motivated in different ways. Knowing your employees' style is key to understanding what will motivate people. You may have employees that will do best with a lot of accountability, while others want to be trusted to execute with minimal interaction. There is no one-size-fits-all, so the one thing that you need to have to become a good manager is FLEXIBILITY.

Contributors: Claudia Luiz from ClaudiaLuiz

McKinsey reports that productivity improves by 20-25% in organizations with connected employees, Gallup reports that Employees who exercise their strengths on a daily basis are 8% more productive and 6x more likely to be engaged also that teams with high employee engagement rates are 21% more productive and have 28% less internal theft than those with low engagement, also that employees who are engaged are 27% more likely to report “excellent” performance and that companies that increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.

Tower Watson report that 57% of employees who said they were very stressed at work felt less productive and disengaged, while only 10% of low-stress employees reported feeling this way. Cornerstone reports that work overload decreases productivity by 68% in employees who feel they don’t have enough hours in the day to complete their tasks. All in all happy employees equals productive employees.

Contributors: James Dodkins from ROCKSTAR CX 

Most employees love it when you show that you value their expertise highly and asking them for feedback is a great way to do that. You can use techniques such as active questioning to ask what they find to be most tedious, time-consuming or pointless parts of their jobs, then let me or at least help them automate or eliminate some of those activities. This will make them much more effective not only by making the job itself more efficient but also by making the employees more motivated.

Contributors: Jesse Nieminen from Viima 

Many employees find goals set for them by the management to actually be demotivating. Often the goals can be unrealistic or they might, for example, be more dependent on external factors than the success of the person doing the work. The key is to find the right balance of freedom and control. An obvious solution is to let your employees set their own goals. Some employees might find this slightly intimidating at first, but most will learn to love this as it empowers them to be responsible for their own success, thus motivating them to work more efficiently to reach ever higher goals. As a team leader, it’s simply your job to make sure that:

1. the goals are aligned with the higher-level objectives of the team and the organization at large
2. the goals are ambitious enough to constantly challenge the employee.

Contributors: Jesse Nieminen from Viima