Are you struggling to find ways to make your employees more productive? Do they seem distracted by Facebook and not committed to their job or your company? In today’s social media saturated world, it may seem difficult to keep your employees focused. So what can you do? Here are four ideas to get staff on your side and have them producing results.
Set clear goals
In order for your employees to produce results and reach their productivity potential, they need to know what is expected of them. At some organizations, it may be perfectly acceptable to spend one hour surfing the Internet everyday and seven hours working; or it may be considered normal to count a lunch break towards the eight hours worked. The truth is that more and more employees are bouncing between jobs from company to company, and each organization has a different set of standards and expectations. If it’s not communicated to your employees what yours are, you can be certain that they’ll make up their own.
Additionally, your employees need to know what results you expect them to produce. Maybe that means they need to sell a certain volume of products each month, or maybe it means they need to consistently score a four-star customer satisfaction rating. Whatever it is, your employees need to be aware of your expectations and have some sort of goal to shoot for. This gives you a way to see the results each employee is producing. Then you can try to find a solution to increase the productivity of your lower performing staff.
Be personable with your employees
Have you ever had a boss that rarely interacted with employees and that everyone feared? Maybe he stayed locked away in his office most days or ignored staff members as he quickly strode through the office never cracking a smile. Do you think employees want to produce results for a boss like this? They might, but it may be out of fear of losing their job rather than genuinely wanting to help that boss and the company at large.
Interact with your employees. And not only about work. Ask them how their weekend was. Find common interests to talk about. Take the time to get to know them. It’s easy for employees to not produce results or care about their job if the business owner is unapproachable and distant. On the contrary, if the owner is personable and friendly with staff, it is harder for an employee to slack off and not commit to the company’s growth. It’s natural for employees to work harder for a person they know, rather than one who’s “all business” and persistently unavailable.
Listen to your employees’ feedback
To go along with being personable, take the time to gather and listen to your employees’ feedback. If you show that you value their opinions, they’ll feel part of the team and organization. When this happens, they’ll be more committed to your goals and will want to see the company succeed as much as you do.
Of course that doesn’t mean you need to take every bit of employee feedback and run with it – it simply means keeping an open mind. Your team will respect you more and work harder for you as a result.
Provide reliable equipment
This is a no brainer. But if an employee doesn’t have the reliable equipment and tools to complete their job, their productivity levels will plummet. A broken computer, crashed server or faulty Internet connection will have your staff twiddling their thumbs and playing with their phones in no time. If it’s your technology that’s the culprit in this situation, Managed Services represent an exceptional solution to prevent your IT from ever breaking down in the first place. What does that mean for your staff? Less downtime, more productivity and more results.
Interested in discovering more ways to boost employee productivity? Want to learn how Managed Services can ensure the reliability of your IT and prevent downtime? Contact us.
With social media distractions, difficult-to-monitor remote employees, and increasing numbers of staff working on personal tasks at the office, achieving maximum team productivity can seem virtually impossible. So what can the business owner do? Here are a few tips that are sure to have your staff more focused and producing results.
Google Now just got better – the app, which acts as a digital assistant akin to Apple’s Siri for iOS devices and Cortana on Windows Phone, now benefits from further support on Android tablets. Google has added a further 70 cards from third-party apps, which brings the total number to more than 100 and makes for an even richer overall experience for Android tablet users of Google Now. As a result, you can get more done than ever and do less of it yourself – here’s the lowdown on the latest release.
While folks on iOS limit themselves to friendship with Siri and Windows Phone users make do with Cortana, greater support on Android for the Google Now digital assistant means it’s becoming possible for you to achieve even more on your Android tablet with reduced effort. Though Google Now has for some time been supported on Android, the recent addition of cards from a further 70 third-party apps – giving a total of over 100 – means the experience just became even richer. Here’s what you need to know.
With Google Now, it’s possible to get more from your Android tablet device and organize your life with less effort. Google Now is a digital assistant service that offers similar help to that of Siri on Apple’s iOS devices and Cortana on Windows Phone. But the recent additional support for a further 70 cards from third-party partner apps means the experience is richer than ever. With the features of over 100 external apps now supported through Google Now, it’s easy to reap the benefits with less effort than you might expect.
When it comes to working in the office, a lot of things can hamper your productivity. Some of them are easy to deal with, such as redundant email checking and social media updates, while others are more difficult to handle, such as sudden power outages. The latter can be a real productivity killer, especially if your company relies heavily on Internet connectivity to perform day-to-day operations. But there are several methods to ensure productivity, even during power outages – here’s how.
Power outages can be a most unpleasant surprise, especially when you’re in the middle of an important task with your clients via Skype or using the Internet to assist in your daily business activities. With that in mind, what can you do when you’re facing a power outage for hours? You can hardly loiter around waiting for it to come back – the longer your business stays offline, the more trust you lose from your clients. Here are some simple tips worth checking out during a power outage.
It’s late afternoon – you’re working on your desktop computer, providing live support to one of your clients. Suddenly your screen goes black and your Internet connection drops. Too bad your IT department announces that it will take several hours to restore power. Sometimes disturbances like sudden power outages can impair your business reputation and productivity. Consider applying the following tips to keep your productivity humming during power blackouts.
Do you ever feel as if your “to do” list is never ending? Do you spend your days trying to keep pace? If you’re constantly feeling worn out at work and ever ineffective, there may be deeper problems at play than a long, bulky to do list. We’re talking about habits. And here are a few that are surefire productivity killers you need to ditch now.
Do you ever feel like you’re just sludging through the day, moving at a snail’s pace and feeling completely ineffective? Next thing you know, it’s five o’clock and it turns out it wasn’t just a feeling, you barely accomplished anything. So what’s the problem? It might be that you just have some bad habits. Here are a few that may be killing your productivity.
In today’s world of ever-changing technology, information overload and endless to do lists, it can seem hard to keep up. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to just get more done? While there’ll likely always be tasks to accomplish and something to do, there are certainly things you can change to boost productivity. And that starts with identifying bad habits. Here are five of them you should kick now to bring your productivity to an all-time high.
We now operate in a business world where we no longer work on just one device. Instead, we switch regularly between our office PC or laptop, a smartphone while on the move between meetings, and perhaps a tablet to keep on top of work while on a business trip – or to catch up on emails while watching TV in the evening. You might even hotdesk between different locations in your office or across multiple sites, using a different computer each time. It’s important that, wherever you work, you have access to the information you need to help you do your job smoothly and efficiently. That’s why Opera’s introduction of bookmark syncing on its mobile and desktop browsers is a particularly welcome one.
