Top Tips to Improve Employee Performance
Every organization wants to encourage their employees to perform to the best of their abilities, and because of this, focusing on improving employee performance has become a strategic imperative for many organizations. With recruitment costs rising, organizations are encouraged to try and improve their existing employees’ performance before firing and replacing them. It’s simply not profitable or practical to turnover employees whenever you see a dip in performance. As new trends in performance management emerge every year, it can be a challenge to determine exactly what the best ways to improve employee performance actually are. Here, we will talk about some sure-fire, easy-to-improve ways to drive stellar employee performance.
Ensure You’re Conducting Regular Reviews
Making sure that every employee can benefit from regular performance reviews is one of the best ways to improve employee performance. While putting this into practice, this will look slightly different for every organization. Studies show that companies with managers who communicate regularly with employees see their engagement at work soar. These days, the traditional system of performing one annual review simply won’t cut it.
Quarterly employee reviews are highly recommended, accompanied by very frequent check-ins and the provision of feedback to ensure employees remain engaged. With annual reviews, events or problems being discussed have often passed long before employees receive praise or hear about their shortcomings. Employees may find it difficult to recall exactly what behaviors or decisions they made or even why they performed them. The fact of the matter is, in the contemporary workplace, you can’t afford not to communicate with your entire workforce regularly.
Regular reviews also allow leaders to deal with barriers, issues, and obstacles in a timely manner before bigger problems arise. It’s important to address any issues or setbacks promptly, not months after they occur. Remember, feedback can be used for either acknowledging good behavior or challenging undesirable behavior, but it should always be delivered in a positive way.
Put an Emphasis on Development
Another important element of improving performance is prioritizing employee development. Without development or room for growth, your organization will likely see retention rates plummet. It is vital to engage employees as soon as they step through the door, particularly in the first few months of employment, where failure to emphasize development can quickly lead to turnover.
A lack of training is a major factor behind many organizations’ astounding turnover rates. In fact, research indicates that 74% of employees feel they can’t reach their full potential at work due to a lack of training and development. When starting a new job, failure to train employees adequately can leave them feeling unprepared, which causes stress and anxiety, and will eventually cause them to quit. Additionally, your organization can’t hold employees accountable for their failures or shortcomings if they haven’t been properly trained.
In order to combat this, your organization needs a performance review template that managers can use to support new hires. This procedure must be communicated by managers during onboarding. New employees will not only be able to voice their concerns early on, but managers can address any training gaps before employee morale drops. Remember, development doesn’t just apply to new hires; it should be an ongoing process for your entire team.
Work to Encourage High Morale
Culture is key when it comes to encouraging your employees to perform at their best. Positive company culture doesn’t only benefit your employees; it’s also directly correlated with organization profitability. If you want your employees to perform well, morale needs to be high, and for this to happen, you need to have a great company culture.
Employee morale is a major driver of improved performance, which is why you need to prioritize morale-boosting measures in your organization if you want to keep employees engaged.
Foster a Culture of Transparency
Transparency in the workplace can go a long way towards helping employees feel connected to the business and boost morale. If employees have clear and attainable communication between coworkers, their leaders, and other departments, it’s much easier for them to perform well.
Moreover, employees should thoroughly understand their role within the company and the purpose of their job. Following a performance review, employees should have access to employee evaluation forms and employee review questions. This helps to keep employees focused on their role and responsibilities, as well as gives them the transparency to review their performance and goals should they lost direction. Maintaining employee engagement and peak performance involves being transparent as well as helping employees reach their goals if they feel stuck. While transparency is important, remember that employee evaluations should never be accessible to other employees.
Make Sure Employees Feel Empowered
Micromanagement is one way to prevent high performance rather than encourage it. While some might be ok with micromanagement techniques, most employees will feel very restricted by a lack of freedom. Many leaders feel like they can get employees to perform better if they’re constantly watching their every move, but this isn’t the case. Employees should feel empowered by autonomy and ownership of their work in order to improve their performance, especially for long-term employees.
Of course, in order to be successful, autonomy should always be accompanied by a strong development program that helps your team understand their responsibilities and their job role. Leaders who invest in helping their employees thrive by encouraging autonomy and simultaneously providing the necessary tools and resources for growth and development will see increased productivity.
Poor employee performance is something that all organizations strive to avoid, and for good reason. If your employees aren’t performing well, it’s a strong indicator that something is very wrong within your organization. What’s more, it’s going to cost you money. We live in a time with access to a plethora of helpful performance management techniques designed to encourage high performance, but discerning which techniques to use can be tricky. To make things a bit easier, start by following these simple tips to boost your team’s performance.