Whenever the new year comes around, we like to start thinking about how we’re going to get the most out of the year ahead. But staying motivated throughout the year as your workload changes can be difficult, and you can end up missing your optimistic targets…
If keeping your own productivity up is hard enough, then how can you possible go about keeping a whole team of people on track?
Don’t panic! We’re here to share some ways to help your employees work smarter, and to get them smashing their targets all year round!
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1. TRACK REAL-TIME PROGRESS
Far too often, objectives and KPIs are set at the beginning of the year and then pretty much forgotten about until it’s time for the annual review. But this means they’re essentially meaningless, making a brief appearance and then quickly being swept under the rug before they can do any good.
But with an online performance management system, objectives are on hand whenever you need them, and you can update your progress towards them as it happens. This keeps the objectives relevant and at the forefront of thought at all times, helping employees shape their activities towards meeting them, and boosting their productivity!
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2. EQUIP YOUR STAFF WITH PROPER TOOLS
There are plenty of tools around these days to help with productivity. For example, you can use software to build customer lists, schedule your social media posts, sync all of your documents between devices, or just about anything really!
There might be costs involved, but making proper use of these tools can sometimes be akin to having your own personal assistant! And these tools will never be as expensive as an actual assistant, plus they’ll never call in sick, take long holidays, or leave you for a competitor.
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3. GET YOUR EMPLOYEES ENGAGED
We’re not talking about pairing off your employees and getting out the wedding bells! We mean that your staff should feel completely engaged with everything they’re doing, and should feel as though they’re an integral part of the company.
Getting your employees to be passionate about what they do will make them much happier overall. For the past ten years NEF, the new economics foundation, has been publishing its Happiness at Work Survey. Their research has consistently shown that happier employees show a 10% decrease in staff turnover and show a 5% increase in productivity. This could save your business a whopping £110,000 ($170,000) a year!
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4. BE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU EXPECT
If you want your employees to be hitting their targets, you need to be absolutely clear about exactly what it is you want them to achieve. That’s why mapping out the KPIs for each objective is such a powerful tool, since it sets individual targets for each activity an individual should be doing!
Another great way to keep everyone on track is to clearly map out all of the skills and behaviours expected of someone in their particular role. We’ll talk more about this in the next section when we talk about competencies!
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5. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
It often seems as though there’s too much to do and too little time in which to do it. But if you swamp employees with work then the quality is sure to decline. Rather than have people rushing things, you should try to balance their workloads so that they have more manageable and realistic targets to meet.
This will actually save you time in the long-run, as a job half-done generally has a habit of coming back to bite you later on. Also, ensuring that employees can actually meet their targets will mean that they won’t be disheartened when all their hard work ends up falling short!
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If you’re looking to supercharge your performance management efforts, then check out our Performance Centre! As well as being an online solution, it’s fully integrated with our Academy LMS, so you can keep all of your learning and performance management in one place!
Sign up for a free tour here:
