Most employees behave very similar to children. They fiddle around twiddling their thumbs together when there is nothing to do. They grunt, moan, and groan when they must get up in the morning to go to work (children go to school). And the biggest similarity is the rush of excitement they have when it is time to go home. If your employees are acting and behaving like children, how do you think this affects your bottom line? How do you expect your company to make the necessary expectations to meet and exceed your goals?
Molding the Perfect Employees
Building a successful company begins with having a productive team. Having a productive team usually comes from the influence of a great leader.
1. Add Emotional Incentives
Even if your employees are not working for commission, look for ways to offer some benefits for working hard and getting the job done quicker. Many of you reading this have employees who earn a fixed income for a certain amount of work. From an employee point of view, if the work is done the job is done for the day. An employee who has nothing to do can cause distractions to other employees who are working. Like a domino effect, this encourages inefficiency throughout the office. From an employer’s point of view, if an employee finishes their work early, they should be given more work. Unfortunately, since both the employee and employer usually don’t see eye to eye, the employee begins to work slower to avoid getting new work. Even if you do not offer them a brand new car, something is better than nothing. Something as simple as allowing your employee to leave a few minutes early can almost instantly increase their motivation. Some examples of incentives include:
- Go home 1 hour early on Friday.
- Better parking spot
- Extra break time
- Leave 15-20 minutes early on any given day
- Free lunch
- The most comfortable chair in the office
- Small cash bonuses ($50 or $100 can motivate most people)
2. Create a Positive Environment
The work environment alone can quickly change the productivity for everyone in the office. As powerful leaders, we must ensure the work environment is uplifting, exciting, and enjoyable. Zappos, an online retail sales company retains more trustworthy employees than a majority of the companies out there. During an interview on Mixergy.com, the CEO from Zappos Tony Hsieh said that his company does over a billion dollars in sales a year because of their customer service. To filter out the good employees from the bad, Tony offers his new hires $2,000 to quit and shockingly, hardly anyone takes it. Do a quick survey with everyone as to what type of environment compels them to be more excited to work there. Make the necessary changes and you will see a noticeably positive change.
3. Monitor your Employees
It is not necessary to discipline your employees for a sneeze that takes away 5 seconds from work, but it is important to monitor what your employees are doing most of the time. From wasting time on useless web pages to chatting with friends, pay close attention to how they spend their time during work hours. Preventing your employees from doing what they are not supposed to be doing can increase productivity miraculously. Let’s say you have 20 employees who take away 10 minutes each day to do personal things on the computer. That over 3 hours each day of lost productivity. Invest in employee monitoring software that gives you the freedom to monitor everything your employee does from anywhere in the world.
4. Communication
Do you even know the names of all your employees? Sure you are busy, but if I were to tell you that personalizing your relationship with your employee can dramatically raise the level of their performance, would you do it? All you must do is spend 5-10 minutes each every week talking about their challenges, hopes, and dreams. Having a well connected employee also makes it easier to address concerns or issues around the work place.
5. Create Teams
Create teams by mixing up the skillful employees with the ones not so much. Friendly competition can easily speed up the work flow and be fun for the employees along the way. Reward the winning teams each week with a free lunch, VIP parking spots or the other incentives listed above.
6. Learn the Power of Motivational Speaking
Imagine having Tony Robbins speak to your staff every morning before they start work. Do you think your employees will feel good and excited to be there? Spend a few weeks reading books on personal development, leadership and public speaking and learn to be a powerful motivator. When you have the ability to speak with power and influence you will be able to persuade your employees to continuously have a positive mindset.
7. Give Employees a Say in the Company
Have you ever heard of an incident when an employee had some crazy idea that was accidentally discovered and helped a company make millions of dollars? It interestingly enough happens all the time. Your employees are constantly working with you product/service every day, so naturally they will begin to develop ideas that can potentially help the company grow. Let them know that they have a say in what goes on and you will begin to see a growth in your employee’s commitment and interest in the company.
The more productive your employees are, the quicker the company will grow. It may sound simple and obvious, but working on employee productivity is an ongoing task. Create a game plan on how you can implement these 7 strategies right away.
Great post, we do all of these things in our company and it really helps. Going to work on the incentives part a little more though…
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Exactly, helps boost “company moral”.
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I liked the Emotional incentive
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My FAVORITE part was numbers 2 and 3 directly contradicting eachother…
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Steve, since so many people take time away from work and spend it on websites like facebook etc., it becomes necessary for employers to keep their team in check. This DOES not mean that it still can't be a positive environment. Take Zappos for example, do you really believe that their computers are left unmonitored? So yes, employees can work in a positive environment and be held accountable for what they should be doing. There is nothing contradictory about that.
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It's usually the best thing that gets people fired up about working harder.
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Two words, AJ – Command & Control,
This is inhumane, my friend. It is cool you've put a picture from the Office Fever movie. Your article is so in the tone of the annoying manager Bob – “Hi, ya! Whaaaat's happening?”. I hope you haven't just quoted “How to Run Enterprises in the mid 50s (for Dummies)”.
These are my notes on your points:
1. Emotional Incentives.
Treat all of your employees as associates, and go even further by making them associates. So they'll be personally involved in the company's growth. The key is sharing over exploitation!
2. Create a positive environment.
What's positive and what's negative? Getting feedback is not enough. Scientists are unearthing tantalizing clues about how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep people focused and alert, and lead to relaxation and social intimacy. The results inform architectural and design decisions such as the height of ceilings, the view from windows, the shape of furniture, and the type and intensity of lighting. Check this out – I'm sure you'll find it very interesting http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?i...
3. Monitor Your Employees.
This one thing can be damaging for productivity like nothing else. A better approach is to give your employees information on their performance, so they can see directly how their work is affecting the company. Give them information on how do others perform as well.
4. Communication.
Personalizing your relationship with your employee is not spending 5-10 minutes each every week talking about their challenges, hopes, and dreams. This is so so far away from the truth. Anyway, why would anyone want to create a company so big where he don't know anyone?
5. Create Teams.
Create teams, because collaboration increases your productivity exponentially – eat-what-you-kill mentality can help you grow at best linearly. Check this out: http://memphis.bizjournals.com/memphis/stories/...
6. Learn the Power of Motivational Speaking.
Usually there's a mismatch between words and deeds. A better advice is – serve as a personal example. (check your post on Practice what you preach – great piece)
7. Give Employees a Say in the Company.
This should be: NEVER TAKE AWAY YOUR EMPLOYEES VOICE.
Giving implies that you've taken away something from them prior to giving it back.
AJ, have you ever ran a company?
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Comments on your reply:
1. sharing is great, but when you have people working without commission, there needs to be an incentive.
2. You make a valid point, I don't disagree with it.
3. Monitoring your employees is a must, especially when you have valuable customer data. Too many cases of inside-hacking happening now-a-days.
4. Spending time with your employees is important, why wouldn't you spend time with them to get to know them? Especially considering that you want to “treat your employees as associates”
5. From my exposure to several large companies, team work and competition is a very healthy environment.
6. As long your speaking is the truth and not a bunch of crap, your great!
7. Great catch on the language, but the fact of the matter is, many leaders/managers have taken it away.
Yes I have ran a company bro, for about 2 years. I've also observed, studied, and coached several companies from all over the US and Canada.
Your advice is absolutely fantastic and some of it is perfect to add. I'm not saying what I wrote is brand new, in fact, you may have read it some where else, but what I wrote works.
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I like it. The only one that you have to be careful with is “3. Monitor your Employees”. Where this backfires is when the employee feels that it is one sided. For example, if you monitor your employee and have an expectation of constant productivity, and at the same time don't respect your employees own non-work schedule you can come across as unfair and self centered.
Stay balanced when excessing your right to monitor your staff. The short term gain in productivity may be a long term loss in moral, passion and innovation.
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Hey Steven,
I disagree with you. Being able to monitor your employees is just a way to make sure the company's information is protected. Yes everything can be fun, productive, etc., and at the same time professional and precise.
I worked with a company that sold monitoring software, so I was exposed to several thousands of companies who WISH they had that kind of software because some employee for one reason or another stole some pertinent data.
Going to work should be fun yes, but it is also work that your getting paid to do. If one spends that time during work hours on facebook, games, etc, well than they are violating rules anyway.
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AJ,
If we are talking about protecting company information and keeping time wasters at bay then I have no problem with that. Just knowing that “Big Brother” could be watching helps to keep much of that at bay.
Now when you monitor your staff (in the same way you wouldn't mind having someone watch you) and combine it with the rest of your list, then it makes sense. And most likely, that was your intension.
Productivity must always be addressed with both the short term and long term gains in mind.
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AJ,
If we are talking about protecting company information and keeping time wasters at bay then I have no problem with that. Just knowing that “Big Brother” could be watching helps to keep much of that at bay.
Now when you monitor your staff (in the same way you wouldn't mind having someone watch you) and combine it with the rest of your list, then it makes sense. And most likely, that was your intension.
Productivity must always be addressed with both the short term and long term gains in mind.
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I'd say leading from a position of trust is important. The words we use influence the response we get, and the attitude we have invites how our influence is accepted. In the place of monitoring my staff I would choose to trust them to act toward the well-being of the organization and make sure my trust in them shows in how I am with them.
I think the culture it would lead within the organization would be far more valuable than the occasional discretionary use of their computers for whatever they like.
Vidyut
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I totally agree with employees acting more like children then you have to expect if you are the boss you are responsible for the teams productivity and failures.
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200 Minutes = 2 hours? lol
Let’s say you have 20 employees who take away 10 minutes each day to do personal things on the computer. That equals a total of 2 hours each day of lost productivity
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