Aashish Sharma — May 14, 2019 — May 14, 2019
We are all aware of the fact that workplaces and their productivity are largely influenced by the mental and physical condition of their employees.
A workplace where all employees are happy, energetic, motivated, and determined to give their best will always thrive and flourish as compared to a workplace that houses unhappy and demotivated employees.
The biggest tip is to build in processes with your team to set up everyone around you to provide the most amount of leverage possible. Your reports should be proactive in planning and organizing in the way they update you and get input from you. That will increase the efficiency of not only you, but them also, and will free up your mind to think about the more urgent and needle-moving items. – Anna Podolsky
Here are 7 practical and effective tips that you, as an employee, can use to ensure that your people put their best foot forward every working day of the year.
- Dangle a bone:
There is nothing better than motivating your employees using something that they’ve been working towards achieving for a long time. Some people need extra pay, some are looking for that promotion, new mothers may be looking to get their baby to work, while some others may be struggling to have their ideas implemented in the new project.
Anna believes that there can be no better force than one’s personal goals to help drive them to a greater cause. Whatever it may be, use it to your benefit to motivate your employees in your direction.
Use the “If you do this, you get this” tactic. You don’t need to wrongly use their commitments and hard work. Instead, you can subtly give them something that they’ve been working towards in exchange for their hard work, zeal, and commitment.
- Feed your employees:
Who doesn’t like being fed? Now you don’t have to go all out with feeding your employees two full-blown meals every day, but you can at least set up snacks and beverages. This will take your employees’ minds off organizing their meals every day.
Most people struggle with carrying their own food to their workplace daily. Plenty others find it way beyond their budget to buy lunch every day in the middle of working.
Providing snacks, in turn, will reflect in the overall productivity of your team. You can set up rules to ensure that your employees don’t carry out wastage of food.
- Celebrate failure:
Encourage your people to voice their opinions and ideas. Usually, people don’t do it for the fear of being wrong or misinterpreted. An impractical or undermined idea usually makes one seem like a fool before everyone else.
You can totally eliminate this possibility by persuading your employees to carry out tasks in a way they think is best without having to worry about things going wrong.
Not only encouraging failure but also celebrating failure will ensure that your employees learn and grow in the best possible way. This will only redeem itself in the form of your company’s overall growth and development.
- Set up a calm space:
One cannot stress enough on the importance of a healthy and sound mind. People working long hours often tend to fall prey to demotivation, lack of enthusiasm, unproductivity, stress, and anxiety. This may take a heavy toll on one’s physical and mental health.
Meditation plays a major role in combating such conditions. Podolsky strongly believes in meditation. In fact, her day starts off with 10 minutes of meditation on a strict basis which allows her to take on the day’s affairs in a positive manner.
Mediating regularly brings about a sense of peace, calm, and quiet thereby replenishing your energy reserves to take on the next assignment with a renewed will.
You can set up a small space in your office which your employees can use to meditate and relax. It paves the way for relaxation in the long run which will only steer the productivity of your team in the right direction.
- Criticize respectfully:
Nothing is worse than an employer publicly humiliating their workers time and again. It is best to voice your suggestions respectfully to your employees if need be.
The ideal way of doing it is in private. And, very importantly, criticize the habit or the action instead of the person doing it. It is very easy to get personal in such matters which will only make it worse in the long run.
Psychologists suggest using a ‘sandwich’ strategy while giving out criticisms to anyone. Start off by complimenting their work. Follow it up with the suggestion of improvement or criticism that you’d like to put up. make sure you don’t get personal on this front.
Lastly, finish off with a compliment too. This will not just remind them of the good work that they’ve been doing for the company but will also rightly motivate them to take the critic in a healthy manner, thus paving way for more professional successes.
- Organizing motivating sessions:
Let’s be honest. Workplaces can get pretty boring. Day after day working in the same manner with the same set of people around can get pretty mundane, especially in a place with little to no challenges and enthusiasm.
In order to address this, you can use weekly or monthly motivating sessions for the entire team. You can have a meditation or Zumba session where staff can let down their guard.
Podolsky says, “I try to be as transparent as possible, and we have weekly team meetings where the team and I share updates and what’s coming up and the focus for the week.” This is one of the best ways to keep everyone in your team on the same page.
You can even conduct one-on-one follow-ups and guiding, encouraging sessions about their productivity and work ethics. You can use these private sessions to boost their morale and also help them address their weaknesses and shortcomings if any.
Even better, keep a detailed weekly or monthly record of each employee to see how they’ve improved over their course of time with you.
- Leverage, leverage, and leverage:
The biggest tip to boost professional productivity, according to Podolsky, is to leverage as many tasks as possible. Teach your people how to leverage their tasks to the right ones. Your employees should not be spending their time and effort in carrying out mundane activities that can be done by a junior employee or even a bot.
Instead, use your employees’ talents by allowing them to work upon something of their caliber. Better still, ask them to try new things every once in a while, to push the boundaries of their comfort zone even further.
This is the same attitude that has nurtured Lyka’s growth, and, if implemented correctly, will prove to very beneficial for your employees too.
Summing it up:
These tips and tactics will only work if everyone puts in their collective efforts towards this cause. In addition to that, the entire team needs to be consistent with these plans. Only then will you be able to see the team flourishing at its optimum best.
The employees and employers will witness better productive levels, a calmer and relaxed state of mind, and peace and harmony prevailing in the workplace.
Podolsky also believes that it is quite crucial to ensure that each one of your employees is working at their finest. Only when you seriously venture on this course, you can rest assured that the overall productivity of your workplace will also rise by several notches in the long run.
Having said that, you can read more such gems of professional pieces of advice from Podolsky on her blog. She shares her experiences, mistakes, and wins so that every employer and entrepreneur can learn and understand the ways of running a successful professional team.
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