This story is a guest contribution from Betterworks, a provider of performance management and goal-setting solutions for enterprises.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employee productivity was a bumpy road in 2022, decreasing by 1.3% overall and marking the largest annual decline since 1974. While productivity increased in Q4 of 2022, it’s still on the mind of the C-suite. As a result , maximizing productivity with the people you have is of central importance.
The connection between employee productivity and performance management
Maintaining productivity ties into many facets of the employee experience. Feelings of achievement, fairness, belonging, inclusion, and engagement all lend themselves to a more satisfied workforce that is ready to charge ahead—and the right performance management solution serves as a performance enabler. It cultivates these sentiments by combining agile goal setting, alignment with strategic business objectives, and frequent and meaningful conversations between employees and managers. This also includes peer feedback, recognition, and career development. These items are all combined into a framework that enables employees to maximize their effectiveness and feel good about their work.
Resilient companies focus on their people
While organizations cannot control macroeconomic factors, they can maximize productivity to benefit their companies and employees. UKG’s recent report on emerging trends shaping the global workforce calls for optimizing organizational plasticity to alleviate the stress and sense of overwhelm that many people feel. Companies can come out ahead by learning how to adopt a growth mindset and seize opportunities during challenging times. This involves strengthening people and culture, and focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B). Additionally, it includes practicing strategic workforce management with investments in workforce management and planning tools to set up sustainable and flexible operational processes that adapt and grow with employers quickly.
Five keys to maximizing employee productivity
Organizations can take five key actions to maximize employee productvity and the employee experience simultaneously to accomplish more during leaner times:
- Use agile goal setting.
- Clearly communicate strategy.
- Promote companywide transparency and accountability.
- Generate visibility.
- Enable upskilling for all employees.
Drive greater productivity through agile goal setting
Strategic goal setting, alignment, and achievement are necessary for any successful business, and even more so when the stakes are higher during an economic slowdown.
When everyone is rowing in the same direction—from the CEO to the individual contributor—the goals that matter most are prioritized and activities synchronized. Employees focus their efforts on the highest-priority tasks. Higher goal achievement means higher output, or a productivity gain. When employees see that their work directly contributes to better business outcomes, they feel pride and achievement and are more likely to be engaged. The result can be a virtuous cycle that continues to drive employee productivity.
When employees see that their work directly contributes to better business outcomes, they feel pride and achievement and are more likely to be engaged. The result can be a virtuous cycle that continues to drive employee productivity.
Clearly communicate strategy for higher productivity
Researchers from the MIT Sloan School of Management and CultureX found that organizations that pursued leadership communication, transparent information sharing, and strategic clarity were among the most agile in the early months of the pandemic. Their research suggests that leaders who will be the most successful at navigating a recession are those who commit to a handful of strategic priorities with clear guidance and make sure those priorities are understood and used to guide choices throughout the organization.
They also found the factors that matter most in helping managers and employees understand business strategy are clear and consistent communication from top leaders. When that happens, leaders at every level explicitly linked their team’s objectives to the overall strategy.
This is what a performance enablement approach encourages: the development of goals and associated metrics that align with the needs of the business and a focus on continuous communication and feedback, both vertically (through different levels of the organization) and horizontally (across teams, departments, and individual employees).
This is an abbreviated version of an article published by Betterworks, a UKG Partner. Read the original post here.
