Poor employee performance is one of the most significant problems that any company needs to address promptly. Ensuring that employees’ performance and productivity can be boosted is important if you want to establish a thriving business.
But when a company founder must oversee hundreds or even thousands of employees, how can they promote employee productivity effectively?
Well, the first step you should do is to identify the reason that influences this decrease in productivity. Below are some of the key factors that can lead to the decline of employee performance!
1. Not hiring the right manager
When selecting employees to be future leaders, it’s essential to thoroughly assess their performance, knowledge, and leadership potential. As one of the leaders in the company, a manager must offer guidance and be able to motivate their team members. Their role is very crucial to ensure their team members can produce the optimal work quality.
On the contrary, if a company is unable to hire the right manager, it could lead to stressed and demotivated employees. This will ultimately affect the team members’ overall performance. To maintain a harmonious work environment, it’s essential to hire the right and high-quality manager to prevent clashes from occurring.
2. Lack of understanding of shared vision & mission
Effective teamwork relies on team members sharing the same vision and mission. Achieving these goals requires strong employee performance to keep the team on the right path. However, team incompatibility can disrupt this harmony.
When individuals within a team don’t match well, it can lead to decreased employee performance due to misunderstandings, low motivation, and negative thoughts about colleagues. Therefore, it’s crucial to carefully consider the selection of team members, taking into account factors like personality, mindset, and background. Also infuse the company vision, and mission during the onboarding session to ensure each team member has the same value to hold.
3. Lack of transparency
Employee performance significantly affects transparency within a company, and transparency is a critical aspect that should be prioritized. It’s essential to be as transparent as possible in your company, from discussing existing issues and their potential impacts to sharing the decisions made.
Failing to implement transparency can lead to employees making assumptions about what’s happening in the company, which may give rise to damaging rumors that can harm the company’s reputation. Consequently, poor company image resulting from these rumors can negatively impact employee performance too.
4. No clarity of roles
When you establish a work contract with an employee, you typically outline their job description. However, over time, you might entrust them with additional tasks, either because you trust them or because the tasks seem minor. While this may be well-intentioned, it can lead to confusion about their role. When employees are unsure about their actual responsibilities, their performance tends to suffer, as they grapple with the uncertainty created by these extra duties.
5. Toxic work environment
Working in a toxic environment can greatly affect an employee’s productivity. Negative energy in the workplace, often caused by sarcastic colleagues, office politics, or ongoing conflicts among employees, can drain enthusiasm and hinder productivity. To prevent a decline in productivity, it’s essential to address and resolve conflicts within the office that contribute to a toxic work environment.
6. Outdated system
Using outdated and inflexible methods in a company can significantly reduce productivity. For instance, if another company has used automation tools to manage data, but your company still relies on manual data collection, it is only natural for your company to be left behind.
Your company’s productivity will suffer due to the extra time and effort required to finish a task. If you want to ensure your team’s productivity is increasing, it is a must to adopt modern technology in your company and automate processes to make managing tasks much more efficient.
7. Lack of challenge in daily work
When employees lack challenge in their daily work, eventually it can make them experience a drop in productivity. Repetitive tasks might be easier to do and new challenges can be intimidating. But new work challenges can help to add variety and excitement to work, especially for some people who find mundane tasks uninspiring.
8. Unstable company position
Employees can also become worried, anxious, and eventually demotivated when they are working for a financially unstable company. This might also make them much more focused on seeking new job opportunities elsewhere, rather than on the work that they need to do.
9. Declining health
Declining employee health is also another key factor that can contribute to employee declining performance. To prevent health issues, some things that you can do are avoiding overtime and working on holidays to help employees get their physical and mental break during the non-working day.
You should also provide employees with a clean and healthy workspace. A clean workspace can minimize the spread of airborne disease, and at the same time help employees maintain their work focus and productivity. Thus it is a must for your company to either hire a janitor for the office or use a professional cleaning services provider. For more info about the importance of the latter, you should check out https://www.luce.sg/services/office-cleaning.
10. Personal issue
Last but not least is due to personal issues. Personal problems, such as conflicts in personal relationships, family issues, financial difficulties, or unmet personal needs, can distract employees from their work responsibilities.
When employees are preoccupied with personal problems, it can disrupt overall team performance and impact their ability to complete tasks effectively. If you encounter this issue, it is best to invite employees to have a 1:1 session to address this issue privately.
Additionally, let them know that the company is willing to help them get through this hard time, but they also need to give assurance that soon they will be able to regain their old productivity and good work quality.
Once you’ve identified the factors that can contribute to an employee’s declining performance, the next step is to find the best solutions that can benefit both your employees and the company. Implementing good and comprehensive strategies is important to help improve employee performance and work morale.
