Organizations that want to get ahead in today’s market must constantly look for ways to improve employee performance. When employees perform at their best, everyone benefits.
Uncover techniques to enhance employee performance and elevate your organization’s success.
The importance of improving employee performance
Employees are the heart of your organization. Fulfilled employees are more motivated and productive, which means better performance in your organization and toward personal goals. Finding ways to improve employee performance and satisfaction go hand in hand.
When employee performance improves, so does revenue, customer satisfaction and your bottom line. But you have to actively support it. For managers, that means working to remove barriers to productivity like repetitive tasks, workflow bottlenecks and distractions. For leadership, it means empowering employees to perform at their best through tools, technology and policies that drive productivity and efficiency.
Providing employees with development opportunities not only improves work performance but also enhances job satisfaction. Satisfied employees are more engaged, which means more productivity, higher levels of innovation and better retention rates. It’s a win-win for both the employee and the organization.
Causes of low employee performance
Several factors contribute to low employee performance, ranging from personal employee issues to bad internal policies. Some common reasons for low performance include:
- Inefficient time management
- Low morale or engagement
- The wrong tools or technology
- Lack of alignment around company vision or goals
- Poor communication and collaboration
- Limited or ineffective training and skills development
- Unachievable expectations or unmeasurable goals
- Internal conflict among colleagues
It’s every manager’s job to identify and mitigate these issues for their team members, especially when they’re out of an employee’s control. This includes advocating for changes to company culture or policies standing in the way of higher employee performance. It’s a big ask for any leadership team, but intentionally and strategically fostering a culture of support goes a long way in creating a high-performance culture in your organization.
10 strategies to enhance employee performance
Identifying areas for improvement is the first step in boosting employee performance. From there, implementing the following 10 strategies will create an environment that fosters growth, motivation and continuous improvement.
1. Define and analyze performance metrics
Improving performance means defining it through benchmarks and seeing where your company’s current performance lines up or misses the mark. While basic performance analytics like how often employees meet deadlines or the general quality of work produced are helpful, workforce analytics solutions like ActivTrak provide deeper, more actionable insights.
Tracking when, where and how work is done — and done best — shows management clearer paths toward excellent performance. Equipped with the right data, managers quickly see where employee performance is lagging, improving or going strong. Meanwhile, leadership sees how policies or tools affect productivity so they’re empowered to change course as needed and have the data to back up decisions. ActivTrak provides a holistic view of performance across individuals, teams, departments and the entire company — showing trends and possibilities that would otherwise be missed. Dashboards for individuals, managers and leaders provide everyone with insight into how their performance measures up to goals, empowering everyone with accountability for their contributions.
2. Communicate effectively and promote collaboration
Employees, managers and teams need to connect in meaningful ways to ensure performance goals are being met. This includes regular one-on-one meetings between individual contributors and their supervisors as well as team standup meetings. Of course, it’s important to ensure meetings are necessary or they’ll impede productivity and performance.
Leaders and executives also need to communicate company objectives clearly to ensure everyone is on the same page. While they’re useful for sending out major announcements, company-wide emails no longer count as effective communication. Most employees receive more meaningless emails in a week than they can possibly digest, and it’s easy for important messages to get lost in inboxes. Good communication means finding innovative ways to get your message across succinctly and effectively.
3. Set clear goals and expectations
Goals must be measurable and clearly defined for every level of performance within your organization. They also need to align with the company’s overall strategy to be meaningful. Set clear goals for individual contributors, teams, managers and the company overall so you can measure progress effectively. This includes granular project details like deadlines and deliverables as well as larger goals like annual revenue numbers. Employees need to understand what they’re aiming for from the beginning of their tenure and as priorities shift.
4. Provide regular feedback
Regularly providing constructive feedback to employees helps them understand their strengths and weaknesses and guides them toward better performance. While annual performance reviews are often helpful, most employees need more regular check-ins on how they’re doing. Give employees feedback on how they’re hitting goals or missing targets, along with suggestions for improvement. Use data to reinforce performance feedback and provide actionable recommendations.
5. Encourage continuous learning
It’s important to train and develop your team to set them up for success, but that doesn’t end after onboarding. Offering employees ways to develop new skills over time increases your organization’s knowledge base while giving people a chance to improve job satisfaction. CFO.com reported that a quarter of employees want to quit their jobs because they lack the support to grow. By encouraging employees to attend workshops, conferences and training sessions, you foster a culture of continuous learning and development. Access to online learning platforms and mentorship programs further enhance employees’ skills and knowledge while tying them to you company’s culture and success.
6. Recognize and reward performance
When employees feel recognized for doing a good job, they’re more likely to want to continue performing well. Provide channels for rewarding continuous high performance as well as one-time achievements. The classic “employee of the month” award is one way to reinforce positive behavior and encourage continuous improvement. Performance-based bonuses, extra time off or even simple “thank yous” also go a long way. Giving colleagues a way to praise each other’s work in official ways is another way to encourage morale and recognize employees for their contributions.
7. Promote collaboration
To pursue company goals effectively, teams need to collaborate. This includes both internal teamwork and cross-departmental collaboration. Leaders need to identify where teams are dependent on each other and what silos are preventing effective collaboration. Managers and employees need to share insights and tips without oversaturating communication lines. Start by putting the right tools in place, including project management, file sharing and communication technology, to ensure teams can work together effectively.
8. Offer flexible work
One surefire way to ensure your employees feel trusted and understood is to provide flexible work arrangements. Surveys repeatedly show employees want more control over their time and more options for creating a better work-life balance. Most employees feel they know how and when they perform best, but productivity monitoring solutions also provide these insights to help managers create policies that maximize productivity.
9. Avoid micromanaging
Trust is paramount in any functioning organization, and employees perform better when you trust them to do their jobs. Managers should avoid micromanagement, even for high-stakes projects and goals. Constantly checking in or telling employees how to do their jobs in minute detail creates frustration and resentment, which often leads to disengaged employees. One way to minimize the urge to micromanage is to use project management software where team members proactively post updates and track progress, keeping everyone in the loop and allowing managers to step in only when a major bottleneck occurs. Productivity monitoring software also shows managers work is being done without having to constantly ping employees and pull them out of their flow.
10. Prioritize employee well-being
Putting your employees’ well-being first is more than a trend – it’s essential for success. Healthy, satisfied workers are better workers, period. At the same time, when employees feel their employers care about them as human beings, they’re more likely to stay in their roles longer and positively impact the workplace culture. Basic health benefits and paid time off are a good start when prioritizing employee health, but taking additional steps to promote well-being ensures employees are capable of performing their best.
Improve employee performance with ActivTrak’s Workforce Analytics
Leverage ActivTrak’s comprehensive workforce analytics software to gain deep insights into employee productivity, well-being and performance. This award-winning platform empowers you to set achievable goals for improvement and quickly identify when employees should be recognized and rewarded. Plus, empower managers to trust employees by giving them visibility into work — and justify remote or hybrid policies with data. Join the 9,500+ customers who trust ActivTrak to transform their organization’s productivity and employee engagement.
Contact our sales team today to get started and improve employee performance in your organization.
