3 Steps To Genuine Productivity At Work

How do you know when you need to increase productivity at work? Does this sound familiar? You’re making the rounds at work, checking in on your employees and trying to make sure that everything is running smoothly. Everybody looks super busy, typing away at computers, talking to potential clients, so on. Then, as you get closer you realize that your employees are, for lack of a better term, “faking it.” This is something that needs to be fixed. The truth is that asking your employees to be productive at work is just as much for their own health and wellness as it is for your profitability.

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Problem #1: Slacking Off Online In Spite Of A Full Workload

The easiest way to curb this type of fake productivity is to block certain sites on the employee network. Of course, this gets tricky if you have people working for you whose jobs are to monitor your company’s reputation online. The better way to curb this activity is to install monitoring software on all of the office computers. If you set it up as an “I’ll trust you until you give me a reason not to” environment (as opposed to “I refuse to trust anybody because a few bad apples ruined it for the whole bunch”), your employees will be encouraged to stay on task and their productivity will go up.

Problem #2: Slacking Off Because They Don’t Have Enough To Do

Sometimes an employee will start to slack off not because he doesn't care about getting the job done but because he’s already gotten the job done and has nothing else to do. The first thing you need to do is get to the bottom of why he has free time. Is he waiting on someone else? Is he simply a good worker who works faster than the others in his team? The “fix” for both of these scenarios is to elevate your employee. Give him more responsibility. Make him the leader of the next team project so that he’s motivated to keep the people he is waiting for to be more productive. Offer him more duties (with a raise in pay, of course) for which you want him to be responsible. More will get done and your employee will feel emboldened by the trust you have in him to carry more on his shoulders.

Problem #3: Office Politics And Office Gossip

Nobody wants to be a part of a sales meeting that devolves into gossip about someone else or feel like they need to kiss up to one employee to make another work relationship smoother. Office gossip and politics are a real pain in the… you know. The best way to deal with this is to foster an atmosphere of openness. Encourage employees to speak up when they feel uncomfortable—not just to you but to each other. Encourage an environment where nobody gets shut out simply because they won’t join in on the mocking of another employee (or that they get mocked themselves). Encourage team work. This is a lot easier if you work hard to hire employees who seem compatible personality and work-style-wise. A productive work force is a healthy and satisfied work force. Try using these suggestions to get your employees in shape. Article Author: Amanda GreenPhoto Credit: Shutterstock