Business leaders struggle with ensuring their employees are productive. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH
By REKHA KENT
In Summary
- Having the culture of long working hours where employees ‘eat, sleep and breathe’ work is not productive, contrary to what many may believe.
- Research suggests that more people are stressed than ever before, and this is translating into huge costs for businesses.
- Employees need a sense of purpose and clear direction to be productive.
All too often, business leaders struggle with
ensuring their employees are productive. This is difficult to measure!
There are many apps that are designed to help and measure productivity,
some of which are detailed below.
However, in the absence of a gadget that can measure
productivity, employers turn to monitoring the obvious things, such as
time spent in the office, late arrival to work, leaving work early, or
if their staff are having too many conversations by the water cooler.
However, these are by no means a measure of productivity.
Employees spend an average of about five hours a
day at their desks. Does that mean they are spending those 300 minutes
being productive at their desk? Simply sitting at a desk does not make
an employee productive. Having the culture of long working hours where
employees ‘eat, sleep and breathe’ work is not productive either,
contrary to what many may believe.
On the contrary, this culture would lead to staff
burnout and an upsurge in sick leave. A study of 600,000 individuals in
Australia, the US and Europe, published in the Lancet found that people
who work more than 55 hours a week have a 33 per cent greater risk of
having a stroke and a 13 per cent greater risk of suffering from
coronary heart disease. The study concludes that employers need to pay
more attention to the health risk factors of long working hours.
Research suggests that more people are stressed
than ever before, and this is translating into huge costs for
businesses. A US study found that 40 per cent of employees feel their
jobs are very stressful, 73 per cent regularly experience psychological
symptoms caused by stress, and to top these statistics, workplace
stress is costing employers $300 billion annually.
So the big question for employers is: how do you create a healthy and productive work environment?
Get a snapshot
A logical first place to start is to understand the
current situation in the workplace, by getting feedback from your
staff. Understand what is helping or hindering their performance.
An annual staff survey is a great way of
understanding what your employees are experiencing. It provides data
that enables you to focus on the right areas, and provides a benchmark
to measure your improvements each year.
Encourage exercise and movement
Encouraging staff to be active is also another way to help maintain your employees’ physical and mental health.
Exercise has many benefits: it helps relieve
stress, improves your mood, boosts energy, and combats health conditions
and diseases. In his book Eat, Move, Sleep Tom Rath advocates small
spurts of daily movement.
He suggests that it’s not about exercise, but being
active in little spouts throughout the day can help overall health. Use
the 2 in 20 rule: for every 20 minutes of sit-down work, get up and
move for two minutes.
Promote healthy relationships
The Health and Safety Executive in the UK states
that one of the biggest sources of stress can be relationships,
especially where there are problems, like bullying and harassment at
work. Encourage open and honest conversations and role model this.
Aim to create an environment where conflict is dealt with in a healthy way, and problems are addressed when they arise.
Have clear roles
A lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities can
also be a factor that triggers stress, and impacts negatively on
productivity. Ensuring employees are clear about their roles and what is
expected of them will enable them to focus on what needs to be achieved
as opposed to constantly questioning if they are doing the right thing.
Tamara Erikson carried out a study on team
RescueTime
RescueTime does for your productivity what calorie-counting
does for weight loss: It brings incredible attention and insight into
your actual habits. RescueTime is a free time-tracking tool that reports
the apps you use, websites you visit, and breaks you take over time.
And RescueTime does more than just create self-awareness.
It also helps you stay on track while you work,
blocking distracting sites and apps when you need to focus, and
quantifying your productivity goals, such as spend less than one hour
per day in email.
The writer is the founder and owner of Redstone
Consulting, a Nairobi-based performance consulting firm that focuses on
leadership development, change management, performance management, team
development and executive coaching; Email:
rekha@redstoneconsulting.co.ke
dynamics
at BBC and Reuters, and found that successful collaboration was better
in teams when each employee’s role was clearly defined. Role clarity
can help reduce stress and boost productivity.
Meaningful goals
Meaningful and clear goals provide an employee with
a sense of purpose and direction. Employees need a sense of purpose and
clear direction to be productive. This drives engagement and
motivation, where individuals feel that they are making a difference by
doing what they do.
It’s not just about understanding what needs to be
done, but why it needs to be done. Linking goals to the bigger picture
provides a meaningful context to the employee.
Having a productive workforce entails putting your
employees’ well-being at the top of your agenda. Leading employers are
shifting their focus to employee well-being. A study by Virgin Group
found that 59 per cent of organisations are maintaining ‘wellness and
engagement budgets’ and 31 per cent of organisations are increasing
these budgets.
As shown in the pcmag.com, there are some productivity apps you may want to check out as outlined below:
Any.do
Any.do is a collaborative (or personal)
task-management app for iOS, Android, and Chrome. It’s a beautifully
designed to-do app, but one unique feature, called the Any.do Moment,
sets it apart from others. The Any.do Moment nudges you to make a habit
of reviewing your daily tasks first thing in the morning so you’re never
caught off guard by surprise tasks and meetings later in the day.
Asana
Collaborative workplace management tools are
transforming how teams get work done together, and Asana was among the
first to make a real splash. Asana helps teams keep track of what needs
to get done and have both visibility into work and accountability, too.
Businesses, large and small, are using it to manage projects, get
employees off email, and inspire a new way of working. It’s said to be
one of the best productivity apps available today.
Evernote
Evernote is a wonderful productivity app with a
variety of uses. What started as a note-taking app for text, voice
memos, photos, and more has grown into a full-fledged business tool with
collaborative features. Excellent search capabilities, Evernote
indispensable for finding important information quickly.
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