As confirmed in the Autumn budget, Britain has a significant problem with productivity. Iain Bell from MintCentral, creators of brandable employee engagement applications, offers his advice on improving employee advocacy to maximise profits and increase productivity in the workplace.
Highly-engaged employees significantly impact your business, contributing to productivity and financial success. Enhancing employee engagement not only helps to counteract low levels of productivity but significantly improves profitability. An engaged and motivated employee will work harder, more efficiently and can be up to 22% more productive.
Seek out actionable feedback:
Start by creating and maintaining an ‘open door policy’ and actively pushing for constant feedback to improve all areas of the business by using internal surveys. This means staff will feel more engaged and confident that their views and concerns are being listened to and acted upon.
Investing in your employees by continually training and supporting staff is important in improving the happiness of employees. By taking the time to touch base with employees, from social committees to mentoring, co-workers and management can support each other both professionally and personally. Knowledge and insight into how people work best, for example which hours suit and pain points, help to create a better workforce. It can be used to improve workflows and better management. This helps achieve optimum levels of productivity.
Share information:
Encouraging and supporting employees to share, collaborate and distribute workloads more evenly helps decrease stress levels. By working together as a team, time-consuming tasks can be implemented more efficiently and successfully.
Happy work environment:
It’s the little things that often have the biggest impact, ensuring staff are happy and well looked after at work. While financial rewards are great, other, more creative incentives are beneficial too, such as free fruit, an early finish on a Friday or team days out.
Involve staff in the company’s future:
An engaged employee knows and understands where your business is heading and how it is going to achieve its goals. In most cases this requires good, open communication between management and staff, ensuring that goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely). Everyone needs to grasp their role and how their actions impact business goals and achievements. When staff contribute to the company’s success, it should be celebrated collectively.
Rebecca joined the HRreview editorial team in January 2016. After graduating from the University of Sheffield Hallam in 2013 with a BA in English Literature, Rebecca has spent five years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past she has been part of the editorial teams at Sleeper and Dezeen and has founded her own arts collective.
