How to Effectively Boost Employee Performance For Business Growth

Getting employees to be at their best isn’t as hard as people think it is. A lot of times, these employees want to be on top of their games but do not have what it takes. Given the right opportunity, they’ll produce stellar performances and become your shining stars.

If you’re struggling, right now, to get your employees to raise the bars and produce great results, don’t fret. All you basically have to do is take the following steps and you’ll get the desired results.

1. Create a pathway for employee success.
2. Keep your employees actively engaged.
3. Improve workplace communication.

Below, we’ll examine each of these steps in detail and you’ll discover the exact strategies that top organizations employ to boost the performance of their staff. Just copy and paste these strategies and watch your employees become top performers within a short period.

The interesting thing is that you don’t have to be a large corporation to get similar results.

A. Create a pathway for employee success

There’s no gainsaying that human resources are the most valuable forms of assets in every business organization. This is why most organizations focus on human resource management, knowing fully well that it’s the ultimate key to their growth and development.

When employees are inspired at work, their level of productivity increases, and so they’re able to get a lot more done. Employers and business owners must realize that success is never achieved by sucking out their workers' last drop of blood. Rather, the only way to achieve success is through a value-driven policy that’s geared toward employee empowerment.

According to Paul Hebert, a human resources expert, the approach should be: “What can we do to help?” rather than the “you need to shape up” approach often used by some employers.

Getting the best out of your workers requires a great amount of work. But when you think of what your business stands to gain in the long run, helping your staff attain their goals becomes your priority.

Here are three ways to help your employees succeed in their assigned roles:

1. Set organizational goals

The importance of goal setting in an organization can never be overemphasized. These are strategic objectives that outline the expected results of each employee and the organization as a whole. Goal setting helps employees prioritize their activities and focus on important tasks to achieve these set objectives. It also makes it easy to evaluate performance. Your duty as a leader is not restricted to setting goals only; it also involves creating the framework to make these goals achievable.

One way to help you reach your goals quickly is through the application of the 10/90 rule. The rule says that the first 10% of the time you spend developing absolute clarity about what you want to do will save you 90% of the time once you get started with the task. With this, employees can rest assured that they’ll deliver their KPIs and become valuable parts of your organization.

2. Provide adequate empowerment

Another proven way to help your employees succeed is through empowerment. Employee empowerment boosts performance and also brings about job satisfaction. It involves equipping them with the tools and skills so they can work independently, giving them a sense of ownership, respecting their ideas & innovations, and allowing them to do their job without someone constantly looking over their shoulders.

A large percentage of employees seek new jobs daily because they’re not adequately empowered. Therefore, it’s your duty, as an employer of labour, to provide growth paths even if it is not so convenient for your business. This results in a happy workforce, hence a progressive workplace.

3. Motivation

According to Lou Holtz, “Ability is what you’re capable of doing, but motivation determines what you do.” If you want the best from your workforce, then you have to find a way to keep them motivated. One of the best ways to motivate your employees is to create a system that rewards their achievements. This is a powerful way to show that you appreciate their contributions and it’s a good signal that you want them to do more.

A simple word of appreciation does a lot to elevate one’s psyche and can light up one's fire. After all, everybody likes to be praised for their good work. Apart from saying “thank you” there are other powerful ways to reward employees. They include but are not limited to honorable mentions, an award for excellence, promotions, and occasional cash incentives.

B. Keep Your Employees Actively Engaged

Employee engagement is the emotional and functional commitment employees have toward their organizations. Employees can produce great results far beyond their companies’ expectations when they’re properly engaged. That’s because they feel inspired, confident, and empowered to work.

As beautiful as the sound of this, only a small percentage of the corporate workforce is actually engaged at work, and this situation has become a nightmare for many organizations. According to a recent Gallups report on workplace engagement, only 15 percent of employees across the globe are actively engaged at work. The implication is that more organizations will not be able to achieve their goals.

The employee engagement index in the U.S shows that about 34% of the workforce is engaged and 13% are actively disengaged. As a result, almost $11 billion is lost annually due to low employee turnover.

But how can companies overturn this unpleasant situation for a more engaged workforce? The following tips will be of help.

1. Make work people-oriented

For any organization to succeed, employees must be involved at certain levels of decision making. The company’s culture and values should reflect mutual consultation and inclusive participation between top management and the junior staff. It doesn’t have to be about you alone.

The moment employees know that their opinions also count, they’ll start doing everything within their capacities to help the company achieve its set goals. And when these goals are met, they want to do more becuase they feel they’re a valued part of the business, not just robots waiting to take instructions from their masters.

2. Reward both hard work and result

Rewards have also been identified as a way to enhance employee engagement. Advancement in career, sponsored courses, and words of appreciation are some of the ways to reward employees. However, companies should make sure they’re rewarding both hard work and results. They have to stop making the mistake of rewarding results alone. This typically sends the wrong signals to other employees whose results aren’t easily noticed.

For example, how do you measure the result of a lower cadre staff like the drivers who drive the company’s top executives? Since their performances are tied to those whom they drive, it’s difficult to measure it. So in their case, you should be rewarding their hard work and not result.

3. Provide an opportunity for growth

Employees are more likely to stay in organizations that value the growth and development of staff. Providing an opportunity to grow within the organization is a win-win situation for both parties. The employees are able to maximize their potentials which in turn creates a path for expansion for your business. There are numerous ways organizations can help their employees grow. This includes drafting a development plan, pairing employees with mentors, helping them build their networks, challenging them with tasks and assignments, and welcoming creative ideas.

In the end, organizations must realize that employees are the heart of their businesses. They’re the ones who implement company policies and make strategic plans work. Therefore, any opportunity to facilitate growth and development must be fully exploited.

C. Improve Workplace Communication

Communication is the heartbeat of every organization. Good communication creates a more cohesive work environment. It also makes employees more comfortable in the workplace and develops a deep sense of ownership in them.

Once there’s a break in the chain of communication, business operations begin to break down and chaos sets in. That’s why organizations are investing heavily to facilitate effective communication in the workplace.

The term ‘communication’ is broad. It goes beyond mere interaction with colleagues and reporting to line managers. It involves executing integrated communication campaigns that span the lifetime of an employee’s tenure. What this means is that organizations must be able to provide communications that engage and retain their employees.

Effective workplace communication can be achieved in 4 easy steps. Here’s how.

1. Equip employees with communication skills

Apart from possessing the technical skills to execute a task, having good communication skills is a big plus for prospective employees at the interview stage. It shows that they can easily relate with the other team members to achieve their set objectives. On the flipside, teamwork also benefits communications because the more workers are able to function within a team; the better is their communication skills.so it’s a two-way thing.

Organizations shouldn’t just train employees to write, speak and listen effectively alone. They should also train them to give useful feedback, be aware of other peoples’ emotions, maintain positive attitudes, use humor, and resolve conflict amicably within themselves, as all these add up to strengthen communication.

2. Hold periodical meetings

It’s very important to always keep employees in the loop about the organization’s progress. Feedback is crucial to organizational success and one of the best avenues to share feedback is during meetings. Why? Because it gives you the opportunity to critique everyone’s work and address issues on the spot.

These periodic meetings could be annual, quarterly, monthly or weekly reviews, depending on your company policy. But you must never restrict your meetings to when there is an emergency situation. Again, sending internal memos and progress updates via email are effective for information dissemination, they can’t produce the same impact as holding these meetings. It improves communication and increases engagement levels.

3. Send regular progress reports

Having adequate information guides employees to make the best decision. Apart from holding regular meetings where situational reports are verbally given, management should also make it a point of duty to send progress reports that everyone can keep in their archives for future reference.

Sending progress reports to your employees through email in a downloadable format or through hard copy prints doesn’t enhance communication alone, but also demonstrates transparency on the part of management. This consequently increases trust and loyalty among employees.

4. Invest in tools

Smooth communication is driven by the availability of tools. There’s no way you can achieve effective communication within your organization if you do not have the requisite tools. These tools are the channels through which your messages are conveyed, creating a free flow of information that helps you get tasks completed.

Basically, these tools help you to organize your team, communicate the details of your new projects to them, and forge collaborations.

The following are the essential tools for workplace communication:

Messaging tools: for private and group chatting. Examples are Slack and WhatsApp Business.

Video messaging tools: for organizing meetings, conference calls, and group collaboration. Examples are Zoom and Skype.y

Staff alerts tools: for on-the-go notifications and grabbing employee attention. This is mostly used in an open office environment. They’re mostly digital signages that are displayed on a central screen and can also be personalized and used as pop-up notifications on individual employee screen.

Conclusion

So far, we’ve examined the 3 ways to boost employee performance. We further broke each of these steps into relatable chunks for better clarity. Everything we’ve discussed in this article points to the fact that your employees need your help to post great performances at work and that you need to show up for them. But it’s not that complicated, all you basically need to do is set the tone for formidable workplace culture and remove every obstacle from their path. This way, everyone is happy and more efficient because they have everything that’s required to help them succeed.