I have a problem with the word ‘productivity’. I keep seeing the word ‘productivity’ pop up and it bothers me. To me it seems very subjective, for example remote workers saying they are ‘more productive’ working from home, while others say they are ‘more productive’ working from the office. But there’s got to be more to it, because it seems that this is just a feeling, rather than a hard measure of output. What are they measuring, and how do they know that they couldn’t have achieved that in another location? It’s like the face cream you use – how do you know if it’s working when you don’t know what your face would look like if you didn’t use it?
So, unless you are building widgets and can build more in one location than another, then how do you measure productivity? How do you know if productivity has increased in different scenarios? What are the actual steps you can take to really improve productivity?
In the ELMO Software 2024 HR Industry Benchmark Report, productivity pops up all over the place, but again it’s never defined. There’s a section ‘tackling the productivity predicament’. According to this report, the three top things in Australia that negatively impact productivity are employee disengagement, leadership capability and lack of prioritisation. In NZ, it’s lack of prioritisation, leadership capability and lack of clarity on goals and performance. The report makes three recommendations to improve productivity:
- Address employee engagement by addressing issues such as change fatigue, burnout and poor wellbeing. (we can help with that!)
- Being rigorous with the prioritization of goals and performance management, aligned to a broader framework of organizational key results.
- Ensuring adequate leadership capability to train, motivate and retain key talent.
These are all big-ticket items, which take time to implement and to see the results of. By the way, we can help with all of this, starting with our team leader training, great for both new managers, and grass-roots refresher training for experienced managers.
But in the meantime, here are our top five ideas for things you can do that can have immediate results. And they involve speaking to or consulting with everyone in your organisation – which is a huge engagement booster itself.
- Ask where the inefficiencies are, and how to resolve them. That’s bottlenecks, double-handling, unnecessary red tape, death by forms, and overly complicated processes. These things frustrate the heck out of people.
- Give power to the people – see where you can give people down the hierarchy more decision-making scope or more responsibility. This builds autonomy with the bonus of efficiency gains.
- Have weekly check-ins with your people and ask them regularly about the barriers they are facing to getting their job done as efficiently as possible. Your job as a manager or team leader is to remove barriers. So do it.
- Review your technology – is it helping or hindering you? For example, Microsoft Teams might be great for collaboration, but it gets overcrowded, so do you need to use SharePoint better for storing documents? Where could you be using more AI or automation?
- Get to know each of your team members a little bit better and share yourself authentically as well. People want to do a good job for people they like – how well do your team members like you?
I also have a problem with the phrase ‘getting the best out of your people’. Instead, we suggest framing your efforts as ‘creating an environment where everyone can thrive’. When everyone is thriving, work gets done, turnover decreases, and workplaces are harmonious. The above suggestions set everyone up for success, people will thrive and so will your business.
