Five Ways To Improve Employee Performance

A business is only as good as the people running it, and when employee performance is lower than desirable, things tend to go off track. But there is often a way around such lows. It is your duty as a manager to help your staff do better without being a slave driver. Here are five proven ways to give them a boost.

1. Provide what they need.

Let’s begin from your own side of the table: have you given your staff the resources they need to work well? These resources could be educational materials to help them learn new techniques, tools to reduce waste and increase productivity or a comfortable office environment. Before you query staff for not delivering, be sure you’ve done all you can to empower them for success. And if you’re not sure what they need to do well, just ask.

2. Break down the vision.

Every business should have a vision, really, what’s yours? Do your employees understand it? If you’re struggling to communicate your vision to the people you’re managing, it will be hard for them to have a sense of purpose, faith in your business and faith in their ability to succeed. Inspire your employees by sharing the vision of the business in the most simple way you can. Let them absorb it and measure their work by it. Don’t be surprised when they become the primary guardians of your vision, protecting it and spreading it.

3. Create happiness and satisfaction.

Nigerian businesses generally have a ‘use and dump’ reputation when it comes to people management. Recently, there was a conversation on Twitter about the abuse of the term ‘internship’ by startups in the country, with so-called interns being worked to the bone in exchange for chicken feed. A good manager should rise above such a shameful thing and make sure staff are never in doubt that the business cares about their well-being as much as the work they are paid to do.

Provide perks, particularly those that help preserve work-life balance. Make your staff happy by acknowledging what matters to them. Send cards on birthdays and family events and negotiate discounts on such things as cinema tickets, auto repairs and gym memberships on their behalf. A little love goes a long way.

4. Make training a culture.

Training and development are the springboards to advancement. They prepare your staff to take on more responsibility and increasingly complex roles. Develop a training plan for every employee. Do not let a week pass without your employees learning new skills or improving on old ones. With a culture of training in place, you will be able to promote your employees into new roles instead of hiring to fill those spaces.

5. Be clear about goals, assessment and rewards.

You can’t send people on a mission if they don’t know where to go and what to do. That’s just a fool’s errand. Set direct goals your employees can easily comprehend. At the same time, define your method of assessing their performance and the rewards for good work. That way, employees will understand what is at stake and what they will gain from giving their best.