Are You Helping or Hurting Your Employees?
The reality is that employees still leave their jobs due to a problem with their managers. A Gallup poll showed 50% of Americans have left a job to get away from their manager at some point in their career. Managers are a heavy influencer of workplace culture and worker productivity. Far too often managers undertake activities that end up hurting worker productivity. Another Gallup poll shows managers are responsible for 70% of employee engagement on the job. How can you tell if your management approach is helping or harming your workforce?
How to Set Goals the Right Way
If you find your employees failing to meet their goals, instead of cracking the whip, consider your actions first. For example, are the goals set too high so that they are unachievable? This could discourage your employees so that, instead of trying and failing, they may just stop trying to avoid feeling the disappointment.
Also, ask yourself how the goals were set. If you set goals on behalf of your employees without their input, you may not achieve buy-in of the goals. Goal setting can be highly effective, but managers and employers need to create an environment where the employee wants to succeed.
Try sitting down with your employees and teams to develop SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Make the rewards for these SMART goals every month or at least more frequently to keep your workers motivated. People can lose motivation if their goal extends too long.
These tactics will help you engage your workers in their own success and help you motivate workers, not demotivate them.
Working Smarter
What have you done to help your workers produce more while working less? Most managers think production is about the number of hours spent on the job, and as a result, many companies only allow the bare minimum of breaks during the workday. But there are plenty of studies that show a good break at lunchtime with a walk or time away from the work environment helps workers stay more focused.
When was the last time you gave some thought to workflows in your business? How many redundant tasks and busy work cause your employees to work longer than they should? How much time is wasted each day? Try sitting down with the leaders in your workforce to give some thought to how you can improve efficiencies so employees can take more breaks, not less. We think you will find that there are a lot of wasted hours in an eight-hour day. In many cases you could probably shave off an hour and allow your workers additional time throughout the day to rest and recharge. The reality is the lack of brain breaks throughout the day makes workers less productive. Engage your workforce by collaborating with these teams to think up new ways of working that can improve productivity and increase the happiness of your workers.
Partner With the Experts
Employers and managers can thwart productivity in a business by choosing the wrong set of actions and attitudes that have the opposite of their intended effect. The Custom Group of Companies can help your business by providing a better caliber of workers and managers. Talk with our team to discuss your options.
