Your employees are the soul of your business. Together, you’ve faced endless challenges day after day. You’ve been a solid unit, with a resilience that can’t be found at any other workplace. However, the hours can feel long, and it’s justifiable that this ongoing hard work could cause team burnout.
Committing 40 hours or more every week and spending almost every minute of the workday invested in completing ongoing projects can eventually take a toll on you and your employees. As strong as your business usually is when facing adversity, you could collectively or individually find yourselves losing focus. Your employee productivity will decline as a result of this fading energy among the team. Their minds are overworked, and they can no longer cope, causing a general halt or slower completion of tasks.
So how can you keep your employee productivity up so your business continues to run smoothly and successfully? These are some strategies to overcome staff burnout and maintain effective productivity.
1. Add Some Fun
Sprinkle in a dash of fun to the office space! Often, what is lacking in the workplace is the lightness of fun and entertainment. Your employees likely show up every day understanding the seriousness of work. This may cause them to associate the office with negative characteristics like being boring or mundane.
When employees are bored, they’ll likely be missing energy that helps them stay alert and focused when working. That is why adding touches of fun like casual Friday, or celebrating each other’s accomplishments, or unique competitions for your business can help spark a light within them that will boost their mood and improve mental clarity. This will reduce workplace stress, which is a heavy source of work-related burnout.
2. Offer Growth and Helpful Resources
Inspiring your employees is vital for ensuring they remain committed to their work. Improve your employee productivity by offering opportunities that they can aspire toward. If they know that their hard work will lead to a better job position in the company or a higher salary, they will be more committed to working hard and proving their viability as a candidate. Having hope for future rewards will keep them motivated when completing their present tasks and facing their day-to-day workload. They’ll also carry an optimistic attitude when working for your business, which will benefit the content they produce for you, and can spread a general atmosphere of positivity around the office.
3. Show Your Appreciation Through Rewards
To paraphrase a quote from Impact, when someone feels appreciated and valued at their company, it reinforces the commitment they’ve made to said company, and incentivizes them to continue contributing and achieving excellence.
By demonstrating to your team that you are grateful for their hard work and dedication that has helped your business function daily, you will offer a positive reward that makes it worthwhile to them. You can improve employee productivity by simply showing respect for their time commitment to your business and recognizing their value to your team. You can do this with a kind, appreciative speech or e-newsletter message. Or, you could host a ‘thank you’ luncheon with free food, prizes, music, and other entertainment. This is a great immediate reward that will make your employees feel good.
You could also boost morale through bonuses that compensates for when they’ve gone above and beyond to exceed your expectations and those of your clients. A monetary bonus will be a great motivator for them to continue working to their best potential.
4. Promote Exercise Breaks
To help your employees work at their best levels, you need to ensure they feel their best. This is why wellness and fitness programs help boost employee productivity. Consider workplace walking or finding space around the office where your workers can stretch, get the heart pumping, and find the energy boost that even coffee can’t offer. This mini-fitness break can have notable mental benefits. That way, your employees will return to their desks refreshed and with a clear mind to help them face the rest of their day.
5. Offer Mental Health Resources
Mental wellbeing is important in office culture. It’s easy to get stressed from a heavy workload. Keep in mind that these are people who have their own personal lives balancing with their careers. The stresses in both realms could leave them mentally exhausted and therefore, less productive. Helping your employees access mental wellness resources, like by including professional aid in your benefits package, can help improve how your workers function in the workplace.
6. Evaluate Your Workload Designation
If you recognize that your team is worn out from their heavy day to day workload, it may be worth re-evaluating how much you are delegating. You may be overwhelming them with too much responsibility, causing them stress and lower employee productivity. They will not be able to offer quality or efficiency if facing unrealistic deadlines, crammed workdays full of meetings, and too many assignments at once.
Prioritize what you need to have your employees complete soon, and what can be held off until they have the room in their days to manage another task. In the long run, they’ll be in a better mental state to develop valuable finished products.
7. Monitor Productivity and Watch for Excessive Overtime, Skipped Lunches, Weekend Work by Tracking Time
To understand the degree of your employee productivity, consider investing in time tracking software, like actiTIME. Through this platform, you can monitor the hours that your team members are plugging in to decipher if they have too much on their plate or if they are working at less-efficient levels than usual. With this data, you can initiate new plans to ensure your employees take the breaks they need, find the motivation to get more done in regular work hours and enjoy working for your business. In the end, you’ll have a revived, inspired team that will work at their highest productivity levels than ever before.
Originally published at actitime.com
