Productivity is essential within the workplace to ensure that the business continues to grow. Although thinking about managing your workforce closely seems harsh, there are times where employees may slack in certain aspects of their workload or there are additional pressures that hinder their efficiency.
As a business manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that everyone does what they are meant to do and that good work rate levels are reached and maintained. It can be difficult to monitor your staff as you are busy with your own workload, so you have to implement a creative approach to this. This article will provide you with top ways to track your employees to ensure productivity.
Ensure Everyone Understands Their Work
Being efficient can be challenging when you do not know what you are doing. For this reason, you must start by ensuring that your workforce understands their work effectively. Productivity is not necessarily about getting the most work done – this also needs to be to a good standard. If your staff knows what they are doing, it also means they can be independent and you will not have to monitor them closely to ensure good work rate levels are maintained. Consider delivering appropriate training to all members just starting and to make refresher training sessions for those who have been with the company for longer periods of time. This may mean additional costs and time for you but it will be a positive when it comes to productivity.
Review The Work That Needs To Be Completed
One way to track your employment to ensure productivity is by reviewing what work needs to be completed and by when. A good approach to accomplish this can be to have a ‘to-do’ list for your entire team and make sure this is shared with everyone at the start of the week. This way you can track what needs to be done, every employee should be aware of what is required of them and you can monitor whether tasks are completed by the end of the week. This will give you an idea of the productivity levels within the company and you may even use this to investigate what measures to put into place to increase efficiency.
Have Appropriate Software in Place
A great way to increase productivity and monitor this is by making use of technology. This can be greatly beneficial for your company and for you as an owner. Instead of using the standard employees inflated timesheets, you can use appropriate software that will facilitate the way you monitor your workforce but also ensure that they are being productive. These programs offer abilities such as monitoring staff computer usage, to ensure they are not misusing their device and you can even implement digital timesheets so that there is no way people can input incorrect information regarding their attendance. For your workforce, this micromanagement may seem a bit tough but it will mean more success and fewer costs for your business overall.
Delegate Work Appropriately
You may know what needs to be done, but do you and everyone else know who is responsible for what tasks? If the answer is no. then you need to reconsider your delegation approach. Make sure that you delegate tasks appropriately. If you have a to-do list, as discussed above, for example, you can instantly assign the tasks to a specific individual. This way you can monitor exactly who is being productive and who is slacking.
Discuss Things With Your Workforce as a Team
Communication is key to ensuring that anything goes well within your company. This also applies to productivity. Team meetings should occur regularly so that everyone knows what is expected of them and what work is outstanding. In these meetings, you can also review what work has been done and raise any issues as a team. If there are issues relating to individuals specifically, these should not be discussed as part of this meeting, but individually.
Make One to One Supervision a Priority
As mentioned above, discussing issues with your workforce is a must. Although having meetings as a team is essential for you to monitor and discuss the team’s productivity, you are not always able to do this effectively as a team. If you do not already do this, consider scheduling appropriate times to sit down with individuals and review their work rate levels. If you find that there are any issues with someone’s performance, you can have a discussion about this and try to come up with effective solutions that will support your team.
Monitoring your staff efficiency levels is crucial so that you can assess and resolve any issues that may be having an impact on your business. Be sure to follow some of the tips discussed on this page to track your employees to ensure productivity.
Published by HOLR Magazine