Keeping your employees engaged and productive is a constant lesson in patience and perseverance. Employees who become bored with their work and stop performing can quickly influence others. Before you know it, you’ve got a mutiny on your hands: employees are “quiet quitting” and the work is not getting done. You can’t fix this problem by micromanaging, which employees overwhelmingly resent. So, how do you boost employee productivity? Here are four best practices to keep happy employees performing without overseeing every step they take:
1. Install a Website Blocker
In this digital age, humans are more connected than ever, and the internet can become a huge distraction. Screen time is up virtually across the board, and the workplace is no exception. If your team members can get online and shop, browse social media, or mindlessly Google fun facts, they will. It’s truly not their fault. Many people feel like toggling over to a fun website helps break up the tedium of the day. But before they realize it, they’ve spent hours on Facebook and their work is still not done.
You can help your employees stay on task by removing the temptation of hopping to non-work websites. A website blocker will filter out the most commonly visited social media, entertainment, and shopping sites. Your IT team can also monitor which sites your staff visits and set specific blocks on anything suspicious or unapproved. This approach creates a healthy boundary and keeps your system and your data safe at the same time.
2. Offer Remote Work
One of the hardest parts of work for many people is that the 9-to-5 structure simply doesn’t fit their lifestyles. It’s challenging to make doctor and dentist appointments, run errands, and go grocery shopping, among other things, when your whole week is spent at work. Most employees have to ask for time off, stress out about missing time in the office, and then lose valuable sick or vacation time. This leads to lower employee satisfaction and, as a natural byproduct, lower productivity.
The remote work option is the most obvious solution to this problem. When you allow your employees to come and go freely from the workplace, they feel more empowered to set appointments and run the errands they need to. And they’re more likely to get their tasks completed on time. Rather than insist on a strict schedule, you can create a rough 40-hour workweek. This way, you trust your employees to get their work done whenever and wherever it’s most convenient for them.
3. Set Deadlines and Let Go
To take this approach further, many companies are offering flexible work arrangements that empower employees to truly take command of their schedules. Until recent years, micromanaging has been almost the expectation across organizations. When a project needs to be completed, a manager will assign roles and then constantly check in with the team on milestones. Many middle managers have become micromanagers, driving employees to become bitter, resentful, and less productive.
The perfect response to this trend has been an entirely new one: employee autonomy. The thinking goes that you hired an employee because you value their skills. Now, you have to trust that employee to employ those skills in the interest of your projects and productivity. One way to put this trust into practice is to meet with your team, discuss the project, collaborate over assigned roles, set deadlines, and let go. Employees, in large part, will rise to the occasion and make you proud.
4. Be Available and Supportive
Finally, there are few experiences worse in the office than feeling like someone is constantly criticizing you. It was a common practice in professional settings for management to always be looking for ways to improve the employee. The result is the “quiet quitting” trend you see now with many employees biding their time until they find a better job or retire. Humans don’t need constant criticism, and they won’t respond well to it.
Instead, you can shift that energy to become available and supportive. When you show your employees that you’re here for them as a resource, not a critic, they’re more likely to come to you when they need help. The rest of the time, they’ll work freely on their own and feel confident that you’ve got their back. Just be sure that when they do come to you, you make yourself available and that you’re open to their ideas.
Employees Want to Work
In the end, your teams want to work. It’s a natural human urge to want to be productive and find passions in daily life. Especially if you have a company your employees can be proud of, you can easily engage them in your mission, vision, and values. For decades, the business model has been to micromanage, criticize, and set strict schedules.
Today, more and more companies are realizing what they’re employees really need is more freedom, trust, and independence, with healthy boundaries, of course.
Install website blockers and implement policies around your productivity and performance expectations. Then, create an honor system backed by supportive management and rewards for those who exceed expectations. Before you know it, you’ll have happy, healthy, productive employees eager to fulfill your company’s vision.
Angela Spearman is a journalist at EzineMark who enjoys writing about the latest trending technology and business news.
