Identifying habits that may be lowering your team’s productivity is critical due to the economic effect it can have on your business. Corrective action to remedy these bad habits must be swift and effective to improve the work environment for team members.
Answering Service Care has succeeded as a business for more than 40 years on the strength of its organizational structure and company culture passed down from a high level. That said, we have worked with a lot of companies and observed less productive cultures in practice.
Reasons Why Employees Have Low Productivity:
Some employees may not understand the importance of their role. Why would they care what the impact of their actions or inactions are if they don’t completely grasp what they are supposed to be doing and why?
You must ensure that you have outlined specific goals for your team or “Key Metrics.” Employees must understand the importance of meeting those metrics and explain the repercussions of underperforming (loss of clientele, downsizing, pay cuts, etc.). You do not want to scare your employees, but you need to make sure they have a clear understanding of their stake in your business. It would be best if you conveyed the importance of their role to them.
Daily Habits That Make You Less Productive:
Let’s say the company has a rule against using computers for personal use. Employee A gets caught surfing the internet; as a result, disciplinary action is taken. A week later, Employee B gets discovered doing the same thing; no corrective action gets taken. Employees notice these things. The inconsistency displayed by the management team in handling both agents may embolden some employees to disregard the rules. They may think they’ll get away with it as Employee B did. Perhaps employees feel that this time, management is playing favorites. Either way, it doesn’t bode well in fostering a productive environment.
Managers play a crucial role in employee productivity. Your employees look at their behavior to determine what is acceptable vs. what is unacceptable. If there is a manager that often comes in late, employees will not take your attendance policy as seriously. Starting late for shifts and call outs also lessen productivity. It’s a slippery slope with a domino effect. Thus, it is essential to reinforce the rules and guidelines you put forth for your employees and that proper disciplinary actions escape no one.
Lack of Acknowledgement:
Let’s face it; we all like to be acknowledged for our accomplishments. Employees need to feel validated, especially considering millennials make up the largest segment of the current workforce. These are a generation of people who grew up getting an award for merely participating and have been told how special they are their entire lives.
You don’t need to follow the same trend as the school systems and parents but try to maintain a recognition program for employees that deserve it. When someone goes above and beyond, and no one acknowledges them, they might feel unappreciated. Not only are you liable to get less productivity out of that person going forward, but they are likely to spread their negative sentiments to other coworkers. The employees around them may, in turn, ask themselves, “why should I do all this if it means nothing?”. This will hurt your productivity overall. Company culture takes no small amount of time and energy to implement, but demotivation can tear through a small business in a much shorter time. Some things you can do to acknowledge employees include:
- An employee of the week/month/year award
- Sponsor a class they are taking or a conference they’d like to attend
- Give a free movie ticket, coffee-shop gift card, or a free company t-shirt
- VIP parking spot or a time-off coupon
You want to ensure you are tackling these issues before they become the norm. The future of your business depends on sustaining motivated and engaged employees. Remember, low productivity equals low profitability, and we are all in business to make money. One of the best ways to improve productivity is to implement an answering service to handle overflow incoming calls freeing employees’ time. Answering Service Care can provide this service and give business owners reasons for celebration. Call us on (800) 430.6511 or get in touch by email.
