30 Ways to Make Your Employees 20x More Productive

30 Ways to Make Your Employees 20x More Productive

Yes, you can think of your employees as one of the most valuable assets in your business! 😀 

As long as you have good colleagues who work hard, you are always going to get a lot more done in business generally.

Hence, productivity is something that you should aim for as best as you can. Doing this ensures that your business succeeds much more easily.

In particular, it’s good to know not only know how to retain your employees but also how to actually make the most of your employees and get so much more out of each of them.

Wouldn’t you like to work in a workplace where people are motivated by being in control of what they do and are valued for the work they do? 

These days we all want to get a work-life balance and decide how to achieve results within defined guidelines.

Trust me on this, everyone wants to be in a place where they are wanted and are productive. As you would like to be in this sort of environment, so will everyone who works for you.

How then do you create the best environment for your employees? You might ask! For some employers, it might mean spending time efficiently for the profitability of the company.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways to do just that. So, how do you make your employees 20 times more productive?

1. Set and encourage team-based and individual goals

Your employees need to have personal goals within the organization goal to be very productive.

This goal could be a target, team goal, or personal milestone. This will help your employees focus better and therefore become more productive.

2. Set well-defined organisational goals

The very first step to being productive is to set a goal. This will be the reference point to measure productivity and will also serve as a motivation for your employees.

Ensure you define your organizational goals which your employees can work together to achieve. An organizational goal that brings employees together will boost the productivity of the employees.

3. Stay On Top Of Their Training

Training is an absolute necessity for improvement. Provide training for your employees to become better at what they do. This will help them become a better employee and perform better.

The more you train people, the better they will work, and the more capable they are going to feel in their work too. For training to be effective, it is very important to plan and inform your staff ahead.

It’s important that you personally keep on top of their training and do whatever you can to keep them learning all they need to learn. They will appreciate this and work harder while also being given the tools to work efficiently.

4. Reduce regular meetings

Regular meetings often become too redundant to be productive. Cut down meetings for every trivial interaction. Regular meetings often end up being a sheer waste of productive time.

Only meet when there is an essential and game-changing situation or there is an absolute need for the meeting such as brainstorm sessions to solve a problem.

This will give your employee more time to be productive and cut downtime loss due to meetings.

5. Be productive as a leader

Followers can only be as good as their leader. The same applies to you. Your employee can only be as productive as you are.

To get more out of your employees, you need to be more productive as well. Set a great example for your employee. They will naturally imitate you and be just as productive as you are!

6. Build trust

One of the few things everyone, without any reservations, wants is to be trusted. You want it, I want it, and everyone wants it.

To build a trust culture, you have to trust your employees first and then teach them to trust themselves. Delegate without micromanaging.

I don’t mean you have to give a laissez-faire attitude but you should trust your employee enough to allow them to do their jobs.

7. Know your employees

You cannot get the best out of someone you do not know just like you cannot optimize a system you are not familiar with! To make your employees more productive, you have to know them.

You shouldn’t only know them as the people you give orders to but also know them personally. Your association with them will help you have a genuine interest and better understand them.

You could also discover top talents and sustain them. You may not notice this if your relationship remains official only. Another plus is that your employee will like you more and would like to work with you and that would boost the productivity of your organization.

8. Propose, don’t apportion

Make it a practice to offer and suggest a responsibility rather than assigning or allocating the responsibility. People naturally respond well to suggestions.

When you make a suggestion, your employee is free to contribute and this will make him/her have an input (idea) in the task. It is proven that people do better at a job if it is their idea.

9. Allow Freedom

An extension of building trust is to allow your employee a degree of freedom.

If you trust your employee to perform a task, allow them to carry out the task in a way they want as far as it is within the stated guidelines.

As a manager and a good team player, you have to take a step back sometimes to give breathing room to your employees. Ample space allows innovation and increased productivity.

10. Push when necessary

It is sometimes pertinent that you push your employees to do what they think they cannot do. You need to accelerate the learning and productivity of your employees through mentorship, training, and guidance.

Challenge your employees to take on a task they would rather shy away from and help them through it. This is a sure way to make them more productive.

11. Encourage healthy competition

Asides from acing a competitive exam, you need to allow healthy competition in your workplace. You must encourage and create an atmosphere where your employees can have a friendly competition.

This will ensure that all employees are at their best always. Allow inter and intra-departmental competition.

As the good book says that everyone in a race strives to be the best. Healthy competition is a good way to ensure every employee is productive.

12. Acknowledge progress

All your employees will have their areas of strength despite some weaknesses. While you give constructive criticism, also acknowledge their strengths.

Spot the areas they are making progress and recognize their progress openly.

Ensure you let your employees know their current state and encourage them to be where they could be. You can do this verbally, through actions, or recommendations.

13. Conduct performance review

Performance review is one of the ways to increase employee productivity by holding them accountable.

In its raw form, it is gradually falling out of favour but the various modern iterations still have a place in many organizations.

Performance review gives a perfect opportunity to evaluate your employee’s performance through constructive analysis of strengths and weaknesses.

14. Celebrate accomplishments

One of the best ways to motivate people is to celebrate their wins.

Recognize and celebrate all the wins together – small or big. As much as you recognize the accomplishments of the team, recognize the accomplishment of individuals as well.

You should also give rewards and recommendations for each breakthrough.

15. Use the best technology

Science and technology increase productivity in the workplace. They have made a lot of tasks easier to do now than ever before.

Your employees need not spend long hours on a task that could be done quicker with technology.

There are automated software and machines that could help your employees. Encourage your employees to use these productive techs for their work.

16. Give incentives

It is not practical to give a large raise or a fat compensation every time to motivate your employees. You can use small incentives to achieve the same end.

Oftentimes, the small incentive is more than enough to give that extra push to your employees to be more productive.

Small incentives such as coupons, gift cards, and cash prizes are easier to fulfil and enough to get your employees more productive.

17. Break the routine

Routine is a good tool to make work faster, but in the long run, it might affect productivity. Routine can lead to monotony which could bore your employees and affect their productivity.

Asides from maintaining your brand consistency and quality of product or service, it is good to diversify to keep your employees from becoming robotic and unproductive.

Breaking the routine is also an opportunity for your employees to display innovation which will make them more productive.

18. Value them

It is without a doubt that you need your employees to run your business successfully. Recognize that teamwork is key and show this to your employee.

It is not enough to value those that work with you, you must show it. In a bid to show them, ensure you carry them along with the organization’s goals and objectives.

Include your employees in your plan. This will make them feel valued and know that they are a functional cog in the system.

19. Encourage breaks

If you want your business to be one of those careers that make a difference in people’s lives, you need to give your employees a break.

A break is as important as work. Adopt an organizational culture that encourages breaks between works.

We are wired in a way that we are more productive when we are fresh. Allowing breaks between works for your employees ensure they remain fresh and productive.

20. Focus on excellent work-life balance

A popular quote says “everything worth fighting for unbalances your life”. Work often eats into the personal life of workers to meet up with work targets.

More work doesn’t necessarily mean more productivity. You, as the employer, must breed a culture that not only gives importance to work but also the lives of your employees.

Employees with a sound and healthy life are often more productive.

21. Encourage innovation

Productivity is directly linked with innovation. Innovation brings ethics and values that encourage growth.

Your employee will naturally be more productive if you allow them to be innovative.

Allowing your employee to have input in the process is a sure way to make them more productive. Employees are more likely to see a work through when they have input in the process.

Give room for your employee to try out new things, methods, and approach to solve problems.

22. Consistency is the key, use it

We have established that too much of routine can ruin the productivity of your employee. While too much of routine is bad for productivity, too much flexibility is even worse.

To ensure that things run smoothly and efficiently, you need to be consistent. Take your relationship with your employee as an example.

Let your relationship with each member of your team be consistent. Be agreeable with everyone and stamp your authority if the need arises.

23. Respect your employees

Respect, they say, is reciprocal. People often perform better when they feel they are respected. Know the importance of respect for others and build a work environment where there is mutual respect.

Respect must show in the employee-to-employee relationship as well as an employer-to-employee relationship. Mutual respect guarantees better performance and productivity.

24. Two-way evaluation

No one is perfect but we all need to work toward perfection. Hence, the need for a two-way evaluation. An employer’s evaluation is as important as an employees’ evaluation.

Mutual evaluation ensures you also get sincere and adequate feedback on your performance as an employer.

This will help you improve your performance and the performance of your employee. In the end, both you and your employee would become more productive.

25. Focus on the solution

There is more than a way to solve a problem and there might be better ways to solve the same problem you might have overlooked. You need to communicate this respectfully.

Don’t be so policy and guideline-oriented that you wouldn’t allow creative problem-solving to come into play.

As long as there is a result and the path to the result is within a reasonable limit, you should encourage your employees to be creative.

26. Equip your employee

With the right set of tools and equipment, no task would be impossible. You must adequately equip your employees for the task you are giving them.

This will increase their productivity and ensure the job gets done seamlessly.

Having the right tools readily available is also a motivation in itself. It is a good way to show your employee that you care about them, the job, and how they carry out the job.

27. Appreciate your employee

What better way to make your employee more productive than to motivate them?

The easiest way to go about motivation is through appreciation. Praise your employee for all jobs done, either small or big. A simple “thank you” can go a long way.

Beyond the verbal appreciation, show it through your actions. The recognition that is felt when an employer appreciates their employees often make the employees (even the ones that are not praised yet) more productive.

They will be willing to do more.

28. Focus On Development

One of the things that are most likely to help keep your employees working for you is if you are helping to develop them.

This means finding opportunities to continually train and teach them. Give them more responsibility and generally help them to grow within their roles and into new ones too.

If you are developing your staff in the right way, they are going to work better and appreciate the job a lot more. Both are hugely important for you and the business in general.

29. Tailor To Their Skills

Each employee has their own unique set of skills. The more that you can make of those skills, the better. So it is definitely worth thinking about what you can do to make that a reality.

It’s important to pay attention to what each person’s skills are and use them to their advantage as best as you can.

This will show you as being one of the best types of managers around too, which is always going to help boost the relationship between you and them as well.

30. Keep Turnover Low

When it comes to staff turnover, you really want to aim for it to be as low as possible. That means that you are not having to bring in loads of new staff all the time.

Essentially, this comes down to a couple of important points: keeping them happy in their jobs, and using permanent recruitment solutions to ensure that you are hiring the right people for each job in the first place.

By keeping turnover as low as you can, you’re going to have some significant benefits of bond-building. Your employees will also be a lot happier in their roles too as they become good team players.

Bottom line

Making your employees more productive is not about dangling carrots or establishing stricter laws. It is an art that encourages individuality, engagement and appreciation.

So, helping your employees become more productive also involves identifying employees’ strengths and making every effort to utilize them in suitable tasks.

This will also make your business more successful. So, it’s something you are going to want to look into as much as you can.

These 30 ways will help to make your employees more productive. This really is the best of both worlds.

Putting the above tips into practice will help you make much more of your employees in no time. You can share your thoughts in the comment section. 😉