It’s only natural that there are likely to be periods where your productivity isn’t necessarily at its highest level. Sometimes there are personal issues that might affect your performance, at others it might just be that you’re not enjoying working on a certain project or it could just be as simple as you’re not “in the mood” that day. Whatever the reasons behind your drop in productivity, you need to remember that first and foremost you are there to do a job and you need to try your hardest to produce your best work, no matter what’s going on.
There are tons of people searching on sites like www.jobstoday.co.uk each day, and you’re in a very fortunate position to be in a profession as thousands are struggling to find any work at all, especially since the recession struck the UK and businesses closed down leaving even the most experienced of workers looking for a new opportunity.
From an employer’s perspective, you need to make sure that you’re doing everything you possibly can to keep your employees producing their best work. That doesn’t necessarily mean cracking the whip or taking action against those that are underperforming, it just means that you need to find a new way of motivating them to help them to enjoy coming to work each morning.
So how can you do that? One of the best ways is to make sure that all employees are treated like individuals. It doesn’t matter if you have ten members of staff or a thousand; you need to make sure that everyone has their own specific targets even if they’re working as part of a team to achieve a goal. Giving people their own aims will encourage them to do their best to hit those targets and that will have its own obvious benefits for the company.
While it’s important that you give people individual targets, it’s just as crucial that you don’t end up micro-managing people. Yes, provide all of the support you can but don’t go too far and end up standing on people’s toes and doing the work for them as they will start to feel under-valued and as though you don’t trust them enough to do the job they’re employed to do. Look after them, but give them enough slack on the leash to be free to do their work.
It may be that you need to offer some kind of incentive in order to improve productivity. If output has been steadily decreasing, it might be because they’re not as motivated as they once were because they’ve got into a routine. By offering an incentive such as a bonus on their pay, a round of drinks after work on Friday or money towards the Christmas party, they’re much more likely to commit to the task at hand to reap the rewards on offer.