5 Strategies for Developing a Productive Workforce

Workforce productivity holds the key to business growth, profit and the ongoing development of the enterprise. Organisations that are able to create an environment that is conducive to productivity tend to have happier employees who are more loyal and committed, who do more for the business and who generate more, whether that’s in terms of profit or innovative ideas.

This has a knock on positive impact on the experience that customers have of the brand, as well as the culture of the business going forward.

Strategies for workforce productivity

Strategy 1: Define clear performance goals and objectives

Employees are at their most productive when they have something to aim for. Setting short-term goals – and long-term objectives - provides a target to work towards, daily challenges and a way to measure progress. This translates into a focused employee who is working in line with the objectives of the business, who can monitor their own progress and get satisfaction from the results.

Strategy 2: Invest in training

Training contributes to productivity in many ways, from giving your workforce a more advanced set of skills to apply to their roles, to delivering an additional motivation to do better. Seminars, workshops, online training courses, mentoring, team-building and retreats can all help to shape employees who can deliver more.

Strategy 3: Introduce reward and recognition

Extrinsic motivation is a powerful tool when it comes to driving a workforce towards greater productivity. Focusing on new ways to reward positive behaviour or recognise outstanding achievement in your employees can be a trigger for better productivity in the workforce overall. This could take many forms, from publicly acknowledging those who hit sales targets, to introducing a staff rewards programme with vouchers or experiences for those who do exceptionally well.

Strategy 4: Foster a positive culture of innovation and teamwork

99% of the time, most of us function better in a team than on our own. Working on bringing those in your business together and encouraging them to collaborate as a team provides a huge boost to productivity. When working as a team employees can share and improve ideas and concepts, help to motivate each other and work together to bring the poorest performing individuals up to a better standard.

Strategy 5: Take the time to clearly define roles

When an employee is in the wrong role, productivity drops through the floor. If they are bored, or unable to keep up, they can quickly becoming demotivated and start to drag the rest of the team down. So, when defining roles within your organization, make sure that you have the right people in the right place – if you’re not sure whether employees feel satisfied and happy then ask them. Feedback like that can be essential to ensuring your business is as streamlined, effective and productive as it can be.