6 ways to improve employee performance & efficiency

People are a company’s biggest asset – but they’re also a major overhead. Running a successful business means striking a balance between operational costs and human skills. And the more efficiently each person works, the better your results will be.

To help you get the most out of your workforce, here are six of WhosOffice’s top tips for improving employee performance and efficiency:

1. Get your resourcing right

Often, team members aren’t working as efficiently as they could be because they’re simply spread too thinly. Resource planning isn’t just an overall headcount; it’s important to look at your staffing needs at team and individual level, to understand where additional recruitment may be required.

For many companies, employee efficiency will look different day-to-day or shift-to-shift, depending on operational and customer demands. In this situation, creating a series of optimised shift plans can ensure that your business is resourced correctly all year round.

2. Encourage company-wide communication

With the right number of people working in each team, the next step towards greater employee efficiency is company-wide communication. Team members that share knowledge, understand the impact of their workload on others, and aren’t afraid to delegate when they’re working at full capacity are much more productive than those who work alone.

With 30% of UK professionals now working from home at least part of the week, it’s important that your business invests in digital tools to facilitate strong remote communications. For example, putting an online shift planning system in place will give employees full visibility over who else is working if they have any queries or support needs.

3. Clearly define responsibilities and workload

One major source of professional inefficiency is job ambiguity; people don’t know where their role ends and someone else takes over, which can result in tasks falling between the cracks.

There are two ways to avoid this happening, the first of which is creating a clear job description. Staff can then refer back to this on a regular basis.

The second way to increase employee efficiency is by improving task planning and management capabilities. Clearly documenting tasks that need to be carried out daily, weekly and monthly and assigning responsibilities to each staff member will remove grey areas and focus people’s priorities.

4. Match tasks to employee skills

Sometimes teams are working together to complete critical tasks, but they’re not choosing the best-qualified person for each job.

Formalising your task planning structure will allow you to match tasks to employee skills, so essential activities are completed quickly, accurately and competently. It also helps you to plan tasks that require specialist skills when the right people are on shift – for example, jobs that can only be completed by an employee with certain certifications.

Creating an online HR portal that documents all the skills, qualifications and experiences of your team is an effective way to view your total talent pool and select the best people for each task.

5. Invest in employee efficiency tools

We’ve already mentioned several tools for improving employee efficiency – including shift planning and task management systems – and these can help to get the best out of every staff member.

While your current processes might be working ‘just fine’, there are ways to run your business even better. For example, you can reduce the amount of time people spend on admin tasks like managing annual leave by moving to an online holiday calendar; centralising information and making it quicker and simpler to request, review, approve and track time off.

6. Reward hard work

All of the tips we’ve discussed so far have focussed on optimising your set-up for maximum employee efficiency. But well-run companies focus on more than staff input and output.

People work their hardest when they’re feeling motivated, and 78% of staff say they’re more productive when they are rewarded for their efforts.

There are so many ways to thank staff for their effort and loyalty – from employee of the month awards to team drinks, financial bonuses and extra days off. Even small gestures can make a huge difference to people’s continued contributions.

7. Listen and learn from employee feedback

A company’s biggest untapped knowledge source is its workforce: if you’re only making decisions from the top-down, you could be missing out on innovative new ideas for increasing employee performance and efficiency.

Many of the most successfully-run firms encourage staff at all levels to contribute suggestions and make constructive criticism, to workshop how things can run better. And peer-to-peer feedback is also valuable in helping colleagues collaborate effectively and get more done.

Combining an open, welcome attitude to staff feedback with investment in efficient tools like online shift planning software will create a culture and structure that nurtures employee productivity. Helping your business to turn hard work into strong results.

WhosOffice shift planning and task management software empowers companies of all sizes to run efficiently and maximise people’s productivity. Book your free WhosOffice demo to find out more.