When you hire your first employee, your approach to business should evolve and change around your new recruits. This is because hiring an employee is expensive and requires a lot of planning, thought and effort. So in order to get the most out of our employees, we need to assign them enough work for them to be viable investments that we can see a return on. Unfortunately, as you hire a couple of employees, you’ll probably notice that there is seemingly less and less work for them to do, and it’s not possible to keep them productive the entire time.
However, who’s to blame for this? Is this something unavoidable in the world of business, or are there steps that you or your employees can take to ensure they are always being productive?
Keeping employees on track
One of the first tasks you should manage as an employer is the schedule of your employees. After all, if you’re not directing your employees and giving them jobs to do, then you aren’t making much use of them. Whether it’s giving them an order to create a new logo, maintain a website or approach new clients, you need to give them a work schedule to follow in order for them to maintain productivity. You can’t expect your employees to do everything on their own because they could end up doing something that you don’t want.
In order to accomplish this, you’ll need to look for the best work schedule app to fit into your office. Usually, the best ones have cross-platform compatibility, allowing you to view the schedule both on a mobile device and a computer. This allows for easy editing and sharing of your schedule, and your employees can stay on track by viewing it on a mobile device. This means you can push out and share the schedule from an easy-to-edit location such as a computer, making it far more convenient than trying to type things out on a small phone device.
It’s important to let your staff know about the scheduling app so they actually follow it. Not everyone will be used to using a scheduling app at first, and you may want to write up a brief guide that explains how to use or register it. As long as you keep the schedule updated and remember to share it with your staff, it will help keep them on track so they remain productive throughout the entire week. Failing to do this means your staff will need to constantly ask you for advice or help, or they might need to figure it out on their own and work with no general direction given.
You can’t solve every issue as an employer
Let’s get one thing straight: being in a position of power doesn’t mean that you’re everyone’s parent. If your employees have small issues or personal problems, then it’s generally up to them to fix them. Your employees need to act with intuition at times and they need to try and sort issues out among themselves. For instance, if there’s a dispute between two employees then they should automatically go to your human resources department or settle it themselves instead of going to you. As another example, they shouldn’t be coming to you when they have basic computer issues such as it not booting or a keyboard not working. They should learn to speak to your tech team or fix it themselves.
There’s going to be a strong temptation for you to try and help your employees with their problems. Unfortunately, it’s a waste of time and you shouldn’t teach them to rely on you. Instead, teach them to be self-reliant with small tasks and only approach you for important things.
There are, however, certain times where showing a bit of care for your employees can go a long way, especially if it’s a personal issue that is negatively affecting their work. Once again, your employees shouldn’t develop a reliance on you to help them get over personal issues, but it does strengthen the bond between you and your staff and it helps to maintain a healthy working relationship knowing that you can trust each other. In short, try to limit what you do and don’t help your staff with. Don’t try to push your way into your staff’s lives if they don’t want help, and don’t take responsibility for all of their issues.
Giving your employees some autonomy
One of the biggest issues with getting your employees to be more productive is what you expect from them. A lot of employees simply follow orders because they aren’t given the freedom to solve issues and do work as they choose. In a sense, this makes it hard for them to gauge what can and can’t be considered autonomy, and what could be considered going against what their employer wishes. For instance, if there’s a design project going on and you want a specific logo to be made, the employee in question could be an expert on design and suggest some alterations that could benefit the final design. However, they might see it as going against what you have requested and they might be scared to suggest changes.
To prevent this, you want to ensure that you give your employees some level of autonomy so that they can adjust their workflow around their own creativity and decisions. Not only does this improve their productivity overall, but it also encourages them to work independently meaning that you spend less time micromanaging their tasks and work and more time focusing on your own work. This increases your company’s overall efficiency and gives you a huge boost to productivity.
It’s important to give your employees some kind of autonomy when they are first introduced to your company, such as during your startup stages or when you interview them. This way they won’t fear giving out suggestions, and it’s also crucial that you don’t shut down their suggestions as soon as they’re mentioned. Take the time to explain why their suggestions haven’t been considered, or let them know that you appreciate their ideas and will keep them in mind.
Supporting your employees
There’s nothing worse than an employer that doesn’t actually support their employees. If you’re running a business that requires a lot of hard work and dedication, then you need to be supporting your employees with anything they need. This could be something as simple as a new piece of software or equipment to make their lives easier, or it could be something more personal such as a bit of emotional support.
Make sure you’re constantly looking out for ways to improve your staff’s productivity. Something simple like a weekend team-building exercise could do wonders for your employees, and it doesn’t take long to gather interest for it. A lot of people won’t speak up if they need something such as a new keyboard, a day off or even a new set of stationery to do paperwork with. Encourage your staff to mention any improvements they need and try to support them however you can. This will ultimately improve your bond with your staff, make them more productive, and empower them to make decisions based on what they think will benefit your company the most.
Assuming you strike the right balance between giving them autonomy and supporting them, you’ll be able to grow your business and train a team of staff that are not only skilled at their jobs but are passionate about their work and have the ability to contribute to your business in a more meaningful way.
