As a manager, have you ever thought how employee engagement can boost productivity? We list six steps you can take to build engagement across your team.
As a manager, recognising the crucial link between employee engagement and productivity is vital for improved business performance.
The UK is losing up to £78 billion a year in lost productivity. Much of this is down to UK businesses not being as efficient or ‘productive’ as their international counterparts.
Workplace productivity hinges not only on operational efficiency but also on engaging your employees effectively to get involved and commit.
In this blog post we discuss ways as a manager that you can improve your employee engagement, leading to greater business productivity.
What is productivity in the workplace?
According to Open Sourced Workplace, productivity in the workplace is the efficiency in which tasks and goals of the company are completed and how each employee contributes to that. In economic terms, this is measured in output per hour of a worker’s time, output per job type and output per worker.
However, these only measures financially quantifiable outputs. Your team might be involved in energising new team members, discovering new sales leads or building new processes that can all contribute to improved productivity.
Driving the passion and enthusiasm of your employees through employee engagement can really help to impact this.
How to improve employee engagement for productivity?
1. Cultivate an open and inclusive communication culture
As a manager, strong communication with your team is key to better employee engagement, and better employee engagement leads to enhanced productivity!
Encouraging regular dialogues with your team, both formal and informal, will ensure your employees feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute to the development of the company through their ideas and insights.
This can happen through 1-1 sessions, team idea generation sessions or through creating easy online forms or documentation where employees can jot down their thoughts and ideas regularly and share them with the team. The important thing, however, is ensuring that you communicate to your team that their ideas are listened to and responded to.
2. Engage your employees through autonomy
Granting your team greater autonomy to act and make decisions will help them to grow and build self-respect for their involvement in your business. Empowered and engaged employees are more likely to take ownership of their work, leading to increased motivation and productivity.
This is more difficult than it seems, however it is important to allow the opportunity for team members to be autonomous. Over-micro managing employees will lead to individuals not feeling like they can fully contribute to the process reducing the chance for innovations to flourish.
3. Provide meaningful feedback and recognition
Regular feedback and recognition are essential for fostering a sense of accomplishment and belonging amongst your team. Whether this be through formal recognition programmes or check ins such as performance reviews or regular 1-1s, or simple expressions of gratitude in the day to day that help boost morale.
4. Make sure there are opportunities for teams growth and development
Your team is always growing and to help it be as productive as possible it always needs to be learning. It’s important to talk to your team about opportunities for their personal growth and development, but also areas that would benefit the focus of the business.
There are a variety of ways you can grow your team. Learning opportunities such as online or face to face short courses, more comprehensive certified learning programmes or peer-to-peer learning opportunities where they can shadow each other.
5. Promote work-life balance and wellbeing
Contrary to old fashioned beliefs, better work-life balance and employee wellbeing is key to driving productivity. 43% of employees in a recent survey said that flexible working boosted their productivity at work. Encouraging flexible work arrangements, investing in mental and physical health initatives and training staff to create a supportive work environment where employees feel valued and cared for can really make a difference. Not only does it improve the day-to-day but it boosts retention rates, meaning less recruiting and more productivity!
6. Build Strong Team Relationships
With hybrid or flexible working it can be challenging but it’s more than important than ever that you foster a sense of camaraderie and collaboration amongst your team members. Encouraging team-building activities, cross-functional projects and developing a sense of shared goals and ownership will help strengthen interpersonal relationships and promote a sense of belonging.
So what next for employee engagement?
As a manager committed to driving employee engagement and productivity, implementing these strategies is essential. By prioritizing employee engagement and creating a supportive work environment, you can unleash the full potential of your team and achieve sustainable organizational success.
Organisational and employee management, is a key element of our Help To Grow Management Programme. A 12-week programme that empowers individuals with the tools, techniques and skills to grow their business.
