There is no shortage of workplace strategies that claim to be the answer to all of your employee related woes. While setting clear goals, increasing communication, etc., are all important steps in the process of increasing and maintaining employee productivity, it is not the most imperative aspect.
Productivity starts from within; it doesn’t matter how many outward workplace strategies are in place to increase productivity if your employees are not comfortable and happy. While adding a plush sofa and snack bar to the office may help your employees to relax, the difficulty lies in the fact that no two employees are the same.
Therefore, a simple workplace strategy for increasing and maintaining employee productivity is to allow employees to personalize their workspace. While the open office concept is helpful in ensuring that employees feel connected to the team and are engaging in the office culture, there is something to be said for the individualized creativity that each employee brings to the office.
Besides allowing employees to make changes in their assigned work area, it is also important for you as the employer (or manager) to observe your employees and suggest changes that perhaps they feel overstep their authority. For instance, there may be a more introverted employee who is losing productivity due to being uncomfortably seated in the center of a bustling office. This problem can solved as simply as moving the employee off to the side where he can have the peace he needs to be productive.
You may ask, how far is too far when it comes to an employee decorating his workspace? Obviously, you do not have to allow your wildlife loving employee to have his pet raccoon scurrying around the office every day, but simple changes, such as allowing the employee to organize in a way that makes sense to him, will make the employee feel more at ease and should be encouraged. You will be pleasantly surprised by the results.
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