How to Boost Employees Performance in 3 Simple Steps
A company’s success depends on reliable hard-working employees focused on reaching set goals. And every business owner knows this. However, workers are not robots, and managers need to face and tackle the issue of poor performance more often than they would like to.
This especially rings true in the remote work era, when managers may struggle to keep their remote teams constantly motivated and engaged in their work.
Before you reach out for extreme measures and start firing long-term underachievers, try asking yourself these questions:
- What are the causes of an employee’s poor performance?
- What can you do to help them get back on track?
This article will offer plausible answers to these questions, helping you to better understand the employee performance issues and tackle them effectively.
Who’s to Blame for Underperformance?
The road to poor performance is a two-way street. While employees are responsible for finishing their tasks efficiently and within set deadlines, managers need to provide them with clear guidelines and additional support to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Of course, when employees fail to meet the expectations and job requirements, in the long run, it may be a good idea for them to start thinking about a career change.
However, more often than not, employees fail to reach set goals because managers tend to assign massive yet vague targets. When people don’t know what exactly they’re expected to do, or where they should start from, they’ll become frustrated and stressed out about their workload. And nothing kills productivity like constant stress and pressure.
Furthermore, someone’s performance may plummet because the manager has changed well-known practices or started applying new tools without communicating these changes on time. When workers are blindsided like this, their performance will probably suffer until they adapt to the new circumstances.
If you want to avoid making these mistakes that can devastate your team performance, keep reading. You’ll find ways to help your employees become highly productive and boost their performance.
1. Set Clear Goals From Day One
Setting clear expectations and responsibilities related to every role in your company should start with the hiring process. By listing clear job requirements and responsibilities, you’ll ensure that only highly competent candidates apply for specific jobs.
What’s more important, breaking large projects into smaller steps and achievable tasks will help employees understand what they need to do to finish the project and focus on reaching set goals.
By taking this step you’ll create a long-term strategy for keeping your employees highly productive.
2. Offer Frequent Feedback
Times of providing cryptic vague employee performance evaluations are far behind us. The Millennials, who will make 75% of the global workforce by 2025, are result-driven employees who want their achievements to be recognized.
At the same time, they want to know their weak sides, so that they can work on them and improve their performance. For this reason, you need to offer objective performance evaluations frequently.
Luckily, an array of efficient digital tools, like productivity monitoring software can help you do this. Namely, productivity monitors provide you with real-time insight into employees’ activities at work. To find out how you can use this data to recognize and reward hard workers and identify issues that may lead to poor performance click here.
Once you see what prevents employees from performing well, you can show them how to fix issues on the spot. Or you can offer needed support and training so that they can overcome specific obstacles and fulfill their potential.
3. Foster One-on-One Communication
Talking about employees’ poor performance isn’t easy. Since this is a serious and sensitive issue you need to keep it as private as possible. Employees who often fail to do their job properly are already ashamed and worried about their future in your company.
So instead of tackling their performance issues in front of other team members, try having an open and honest one-on-one conversation where you’ll find whether you can help them fix these issues. Also, encourage them to talk sincerely about this problem, offering potential solutions.
These three steps can go a long way when it comes to improving employees’ performance.