What do managers and employees have to avoid decreased productivity at work?

If it happens that your employees are not productive at the office, maybe the reason of this situation has nothing to do with their behavior during the program. It can be caused by the way in which management strategy is implemented by the company.

But why should we take into consideration the managers in terms of strategy management to avoid lowering employees’ productivity? Which are the aspects that the managers have to take them into account in terms of strategic management approach to avoid lowering employees’ productivity?

1. Make sure that you have a good management strategy!

Firstly, the companies intend to implement directly a monitoring system, supervising employees’ work. Companies skip the step of indentifying what is the problem. That could have roots on the management level.

According to studies realised among the different companies, it is clearly demonstrated that the management and the company’s culture are the roots of the organization. The management has to maintain a highly culture of the organization by finding different ways to motivate and invest in their employees. For example, a survey of the managers of a bank showed that their participation in the leadership training led to increase the sales credits with 20% and the personal sales with 47%.

2. Give attention and motivation to your employees!

A wrong organization has also effect on the employees because it makes them feel useless and think that they represent an insignificant step of the whole process. On the other hand, the managers should pay more attention to them, trying to motivate them in different ways such as offering financial or moral benefits. Also, they have to implement a “healthy” competition in the team.

According to a study realized in America, „Five-Factor Model of Personality and Job Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis”, attended by 25.000 employees, the factors that increase or decrease the motivation at the office as the personality of employees or the financial benefits were analyzed. After this study data was found out showing that the employees’ personality influences the satisfaction at work with 40%. Also, if people are more emotionally stable, extroverted, kind and hardworking, they tend to like what they do. But the biggest problem which influences the motivation at office is the management, which also has effects the employees’ personality. It was found out that the employees’ motivation is different from person to person and the managers should motivate them according to what they really need.

3. Organize your activities so that you prevent the stress in the team!

The managers have to organize the tasks and activities in order to avoid the stress, which influences the employees’ productivity. The managers have to take into consideration the deadline and clients’ needs, dividing the tasks in a proper way to avoid the overloading of some employees.

4. Involve your employees in the activities which make them responsible and also give them self-confidence!

The employees’ confidence grows when the managers give them an overview of their activities and performances. And not the least, the possibility to be involved in the important projects. Therefore, it is recommended for the managers to encourage the skills and abilities of the employees by offering them the possibility to be involved in taking decisions for the company.

In the Q12 study realized by Gallup, a consultancy company from America revealed that the good obtained performances of the employees were based on the clearness of the managers’ tasks. Also, the information given by the managers were very important to understand the tasks set. So, the employees need more than a description full of rules of a job. A good manager should not have only expectations from the employees. But rather to maintain a closer relationship with them, to discuss about their involvement in the whole process.

If we see the problem from the point of employees’ view we should be interested in the following issues:

1. Focus on the main activities!

It’s true that the productivity at the workplace can not be always at high standards, but the managers of the companies and departments have found out that the employees’ productivity decreases when appearing habits that could distract them from the activities, making the whole process more difficult. So paying attention to the tasks and being serious leads to the expected end of the project. Referring to these issues, it’s important that the employees not to be distracted by other activities, such as the permanent connection to the social networks, the long discussions with the colleagues, the incoming calls which are not important. Taking into consideration all these issues, it will help the employees finish the task on time and avoid the stress caused by their failure.

Searching for information based on this subject, we found out that the employees’ time spend at the office about 4–5 hours per day, the time left being spend on the other activities such as: social networks 48%, socializing with colleagues 33%, personal activities 49% and breaks 15%.

2. Prioritize your activities so you work easier!

When we talk about prioritizing activities by their importance, the employees usually tend to avoid as far as possible the achievement of the difficult stuff and prefer to start with the easy things. Ideally, it s recommended that they have a daily list of their activities and prioritize them in order to facilitate their work.

3. Avoid the multitasking work!

Generally, it’s important that during an activity, the employees have to be focused on it and avoid to solve the other tasks at the same time because they will lose their power of focus. The employees have to manage their activities step by step.

The American Psychological Association published an article about multitasking, „Multitasking: Switching costs”, where they have mentioned that the cost of the multitasking is a decrease in the productivity at a rate of 40%.There is always a desire to have a distributive attention which impedes the quality of work. The attention can be distracted by e-mail, social media notifications, incoming calls. But no one is aware about it at the time.

4. To cope with these office activities, you should not neglect the sleep!

Another reason why the employees need to consider about the productivity at the work is the sleep quality. According to the studies based on this topic, it was found that the insufficient sleep could have a major impact on the activities at the office, lowering the productivity.

The productivity at workplace is a high discussed subject in companies, so Eurostat published a study in 2015 based on the evolution of the 28 UE Member states in terms of the efficiency at the office. In this study, Romania was on one of the last places in the top. According to these data, the productivity per working hour in our country is only 51.1%.

After publishing this study, Romanian companies seek to exceed this score of productivity by improving the management strategies, so that both managers and employees organize themselves in an easier way, establish the deadlines and streamline the communication with the customers.

Monitoring the activities is one of the most spread methods by the companies. This is based on the features which offer the possibility to increase the performances, provide a safe and well-organized office, help the managers to implement a healthy management.

Companies required this kind of system. Us, as a provider of such a monitoring software, we decided to involve and answer the market’s needs.The system offers benefits to our costumers. Based on our company’s data, is that the companies in Romania are eager to developing in an organized way, acting in an intelligent and quickly approach, but at the same time being efficient.