3 Creative Hacks to Boost Employee Performance

The way we work has changed forever in the past year. And we need to put new systems in place to maintain the habitual levels of performance, to get the most out of our efforts. As remote work becomes more prominent, it’s getting harder to keep the employee performance levels high.

That’s why it’s time to roll up our sleeves and start assessing the factors that impact our workdays differently. Let’s take a look at some of the hacks that will help you and your team reach the desired goals:

Hack #1 to Boost Employee Performance: Work on Communication

Across various industries, remote work changed a lot of aspects of work. But it particularly affected one of the key segments: internal communication. Most of it shifted almost exclusively to online and many people still haven’t come to terms with this change.

The days of water cooler talks seem distant and large scale live presentations for the whole company may never return. But there are some changes you can make in your everyday approach that can make the difference:

Interpersonal Communication

Chat-based interactions make most of our days when working remotely. That’s why you need to start scheduling one-on-one meetings with your colleagues regularly. These don’t have to be long, but they will help you identify potential roadblocks together, talk about uncertainties and work towards a solution. Certainly, we can misinterpret many of the issues, which can needlessly escalate even though they could’ve been easily defused. Try keeping up with the personalized approach by maintaining follow-ups on the challenges you discussed or by using handwritten notes to show the person that you dedicated a portion of your day to them and your communication.

Productive Group Meetings

Contrary to one-on-one calls, sessions with multiple employees can often turn into unproductive wastes of time that go on for too long. The first thing to consider is the goal of a meeting. Is it necessary or could we resolve the subject in a more efficient way, such as a shared document? The number of people is also essential – only invite those you need to be involve directly, and if there are more members of the team that need to participate let others give them a rundown.

Hack #2 to Boost Employee Performance: Control the Timeframe

One of the more noticeable issues that came up throughout the past year was that it’s becoming increasingly hard to separate working hours from the rest of the day. Even when the remote workers are putting in extra hours, they can be quite unproductive.

That’s why you need to get a grip on overall activities and make sure you focus on work and you’re not wasting energy:

Manage Working Hours

Start tracking time needed for tasks and plan for the average workday. Make sure that you account for all the issues that may come up and how they delay the daily schedule. The more insights you gather, the easier it will be to start working smarter without endless multitasking that usually doesn’t get any tasks done.

Employ Flexibility

If your company isn’t on a strict schedule that demands to carry out tasks at a specific time of the day, go for time personalization. Not all of us have our best ideas in the morning. So it would be better to put those hours in the evening when the work is actually getting done. That way, nobody’s feeling that they’re working all the time just because there are some common expectations about what a proper workday looks like.

Get Feedback on Deadlines

Keep track of ongoing projects and tasks, and figure out the priorities. When you have a good understanding of what you need to do and when, it becomes easier to create a system both for yourself and for your team. As well as to proceed with other steps and wrap things up. By combining time tracking with future plans, you should know how long things take and if the current plan is viable.

Hack #3 to Boost Employee Performance: Master Workflows and Processes

Having time data under control provides you with an opportunity to set up an efficient routine that will minimize the chance for time-wasting. Start from the number of working hours and deadlines, working your way up to turn those insights into actionable steps:

Remove Roadblocks

After you assess the activities and focus on those that take too much time, check if there is a way to simplify or delegate differently. It can often turn out that too many people are involved which makes the workflow lag. Employ reports you created from time data to find a way to streamline. Recurring activities should have a certain template that helps you get the task done in optimal time.

Automate When You Can

Another thing that can contribute to making everything more efficient is automation. This has become somewhat of a buzzword, but we don’t just mention it by chance. The marketing automating solutions demand has been rapidly increasing and it’s likely to increase even more. When you manage to automate simple, repetitive tasks that can often take up hours at a time, that leaves you with more working hours to distribute towards activities that can’t be trusted to software or AI. In fact, humans no longer handle many parts of various businesses – from customer service, technical skills testing of employees to filling in databases. If employed properly, this allows for a smoother process and faster progress.

Moving Forward for Better Employee Performance

Key activities that will allow for better performance and more efficiency are communication and adapting. You no longer need to apply strict, one-size-fits-all models. Tailor-made processes are the only way to stay on top of your game while also maintaining happiness levels. Moreover, make sure your employees are learning together which is a great way for brainstorming in the future. They can build a firm knowledge base by using the benefits of podcasts, self-development books, and educational platforms.

Keep gathering relevant data, listen to your team and be ready to experiment to discover new methods. Implement those that work and remove those that don’t so that you keep the peak performance going.

About the author:

David Wachs is a serial entrepreneur, David’s latest venture, Handwrytten, is bringing back the lost art of letter writing through scalable, robot-based solutions to write your notes in pen. Developed as a platform, Handwrytten lets you send notes from your CRM system, the web site, apps, or through custom integration. Used by major meal boxes, eCommerce giants, nonprofits and professionals, Handwrytten is changing the way brands and people connect.

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