5 Factors That Affect Employee Work Performance
Excellent employee performance helps organizations succeed. The more the employees provide competent results, the better the company’s chance at growth; statistics show organizations with productive employees enjoy 21% more profit than businesses with less efficient employees.
However, several factors go into boosting employee performance. Implementing practical strategies in your company’s work policies also supercharges workers’ performance and generates more profit for the business.
This article explains five top factors affecting workforce performance and actionable tips for increased productivity.
Let’s get started.
Factors influencing employee performance
Five crucial factors determine employees’ performance at work. Let’s discuss them.
1. Feedback with performance reviews
Feedback is a critical factor in boosting workers’ performance. Although it can be challenging for many employers, employees want constructive feedback from their bosses. According to a survey by Harvard Business Review, 72% of employees believe corrective feedback improves their performance. In addition, 60% of employees want feedback on a weekly or daily basis. They want managers to recognize their efforts and constructively evaluate their shortcomings.
Feedback keeps employees engaged. By identifying their strengths, workers feel valued and encouraged to do better. Reviewing their weaknesses also gives them room to improve. For example, 43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week compared to 18% with low engagement.
In addition, 98% of workers are disengaged when managers don’t give feedback. Since engaged employees are more committed to their roles with feedback, it ultimately boosts their performance and productivity. Therefore, an effective way to improve your workers’ performance is to provide constructive feedback regularly. Keep your input timely, tactful, and specific. These examples of helpful performance review phrases are insightful for giving effective employee feedback.
2. Punctuality (provide parking spaces)
Punctuality is an essential factor in boosting workers’ productivity. Consistent punctuality means every worker attends important meetings, fulfills their responsibilities efficiently, and meets clients’ expectations. However, showing up late hampers productivity and efficiency. For example, employees who resume late are less likely to complete their daily responsibilities at the designated time.
A critical way to ensure workers clock in early is to provide an efficient parking management experience. Parking space problems for employees lead to inconvenience and traffic congestion, hampering workers’ punctuality. In addition, constant packing space struggles leave workers exhausted upon arrival, preventing them from executing their roles effectively.
However, efficient parking spaces reduce traffic and eliminate the stress of thinking about where to park. To ensure better processes, adopt an efficient management system to optimize parking spaces. Doing this improves employees’ punctuality and attendance, enabling them to deliver their roles efficiently.
3. Employee engagement
Employee engagement is an essential factor in boosting workers’ performance. Highly engaged workers outperform their colleagues, go beyond their roles and work passionately toward the company’s success. Contrarily, disengaged workers are often unmotivated and disinterested in their roles, delivering below expectations. As a result, rather than enhance profitability, disengaged employees cost companies $3400 to $10000 yearly and increase the turnover rate.
One of the most important factors that affect employee performance is culture. A positive and supportive culture can lead to increased employee engagement, which can lead to improved productivity and profitability. To measure your company’s culture, you can take the culture index test that helps companies to identify areas where they can improve their culture and create a more engaging work environment for their employees.
Employee engagement influences every aspect of the organization, from productivity to revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, etc. Workers who are happy and invested in their roles impact the company’s development. They will exceed expectations on their deliverables, provide positive experiences for consumers, and boost the company’s profitability.
For instance, call centers can now increase employee engagement and productivity, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately achieve higher productivity levels in a dynamically evolving environment with the use of a scheduling app for call centers. This innovative tool employs advanced algorithms to create optimized schedules that align with call volume patterns, ensuring an even distribution of workload and preventing overstaffing or understaffing scenarios. The result is a workforce that experiences improved work-life balance, reduced burnout, and enhanced job satisfaction. By granting employees a greater sense of autonomy over their schedules and enabling real-time adjustments, the app fosters a more engaged workforce that can better manage their energy levels and personal commitments. Consequently, this leads to a substantial increase in productivity, as employees bring their best selves to each interaction, resulting in enhanced customer experiences.
4. Company culture
Research shows 67% of employees believe their work culture is positive, and 66% believe it impacts their daily work. The reason is simple; a positive work culture enhances productivity, enabling them to deliver better at work. In contrast, a hostile work culture causes workers’ dissatisfaction, decreasing productivity and turnover.
In addition, a toxic work environment induces stress; stressed workers are unmotivated and disengaged from their roles. So, they deliver below expectations and produce a low output.
Therefore, boosting your employees’ performance requires creating a company culture that helps provide a positive workplace environment. This includes creating worker-friendly policies, enabling an inclusive work culture, and promoting positive team interactions.
5. Work-life balance
Employees’ ability to balance work and personal commitment effectively improves their dedication to work. However, poor work-life balance leads to stress, absenteeism, job dissatisfaction, and turnover. Therefore, work-life balance is critical in how employees perform at work.
Since workers experiencing positive work-life balance are happier and more fulfilled, they perform excellently. A positive work-life balance also influences workers’ well-being, reducing stress and other health-related issues that cause absenteeism and low productivity.
So, encourage flexibility, and breaks, review workload regularly, and offer health-related perks like health cash plans. Adopting these practices reduces work-related stress and allows workers to successfully manage their job and personal responsibilities, increasing their performance.
Tips for boosting employee performance
Implementing specific, actionable strategies encourages workers to perform effectively. Although every individual’s performance needs vary, there are essential tips you can implement in your work culture to boost workers’ productivity. Let’s look at them.
1. Measure performance
The fundamental way to boost workers’ performance is to review their activities and identify gaps. How fast is an employee’s growth in the company? How consistently do they deliver, and how better are they at their skills over time? Performance metrics will help you track workers’ performance in an organization and know where to improve.
Performance metrics vary based on companies and employee roles, from the quality of work to punctuality, teamwork, training, development, etc. Tracking workers’ performance based on these metrics helps you identify improvement areas and give constructive feedback.
2. Prioritize accountability
Accountability helps employees execute their tasks efficiently and continuously improve. Without consistent monitoring and feedback, workers are likely to perform below expectations.
Therefore, enforce positive accountability practices to improve workers’ productivity and efficiency. Do this through effective communication and constructive feedback. You can also identify their needs and supply tools for improvement. Primarily, accountability allows workers to deliver on their roles consistently. It also updates them on their performance to improve in relevant areas.
3. Encourage feedback
Feedback goes both ways. While it’s vital to provide regular feedback for employees, it’s recommended to encourage employees to discuss their challenges and how you can support them better. This opportunity promotes open communication between you and your employees, allowing them to express their concerns and ask for help when needed.
In addition, enabling employees to share opinions and offer suggestions on workplace practices and policies makes them feel valued. It includes them in decision-making, making them feel recognized and impacting their performance. Therefore, encourage workers to make suggestions, recommendations, and complaints to help the company provide proper support for better performance.
4. Embrace flexibility
Flexibility improves your workers’ performance by allowing them to work on their terms and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Without flexible work schedules, workers have an increased chance of being overworked, stressed, and disengaged, significantly reducing productivity.
Flexibility differs in workers, so check in with employees to understand the practices that can make their roles more flexible and enjoyable. Work-from-home opportunities, shifts, breaks, etc., are common ways to introduce flexibility in your workplace environment.
Employees in companies with flexible work cultures are motivated and engaged at work because they feel less micro-managed. They are also more productive during work hours because they take adequate breaks to relax and rejuvenate. As a result, they are less prone to burnout and more likely to be productive.
5. Train and develop your team
Training and development increase engagement and retention. Research shows 74% of employees think they haven’t maximized their potential and want more training. Also, 94% of workers agree they will stay longer in an organization if it’s invested in their training and development. Moreover, employee training and development doesn’t benefit workers only; it facilitates the company’s growth—companies investing in employee training gain 21% more profit.
Training and development primarily improve workers’ skills and experiences, enabling them to perform better at their roles and take on advanced responsibilities. This enhances workers’ performance and productivity, generating better results for the company. Adequate training and development also help employees build confidence in their abilities, handle tasks independently, and increase their commitment to the company.
6. Celebrate wins
According to studies, 80% of employees will work harder if they feel better appreciated, and solid employee reward and recognition programs reduce turnover rates by 31%. Spot Recognition of your employees for their efforts boosts their morale and encourages them to do more. Congratulatory messages, public appreciation, and promotions are ways to celebrate wins. The key here is to ensure workers feel noticed for their hard work because it helps them stay consistent and continuously improve.
Conclusion
Improving your workforce performance increases productivity and efficiency. It also boosts profitability, workers’ engagement, and retention. To enhance employers’ performance, track results, embrace accountability, and encourage suggestions from workers. In addition, promote flexibility at work; introduce training and development opportunities, and recognize employees’ achievements.
However, note that boosting workers’ productivity is not a one-off or instant activity; it’s an ongoing process. Therefore while you consider the factors discussed in this article and implement the tips, continuously review your strategies to create workplace policies that promote employees’ performance.
