10 Strategies for Improving Employees Performance
Hiring the best talent is just the tip of the iceberg; keeping them performing at their best plays an even larger role in your company’s long-term success. After all, these people are the backbone of your business. Here, we’ll explore some of the best strategies that can help bring your employees’ performance to a higher level and keep your company on top of the game.
1. Facilitate Interactive Training
When it comes to improving employee potential, facilitating a training program is always the first thing that will come to mind. But it’s not enough to bring them to a seminar or leave them with a thick pile of modules to read on. To make the most out of your training endeavor, you may want to explore an alternative way to make it more creative, engaging, and most of all, interactive.
There are so many platforms and software that can support interactive training – like EdApp, which is by far the best LMS on the market. Here, the learning materials are made available online and delivered via computers or smartphones. The catch? Learners are free to complete their lessons at their own pace and according to their learning style and preferences. They can focus on particularly challenging content and skip concepts that they are already familiar with.
Interactive training is also an excellent way to turn your dull and monotonous learning initiatives into something fun and enjoyable. For example, you can make your learning material more visually appealing, or even add surveys and enable discussion. You can also gamify a mundane task to excite the learners – feel free to use EdApp’s gamification tools to add interactivity features to your training software. It has a range of game templates that are ready to be populated with your learning content, like letter jumbles, find a word, true or false, image/word match, and so much more. You can also integrate a leaderboard feature plus include real employee rewards to make it even more engaging.
2. Release Regular Learning Content
Learning is a never-ending process, but you don’t necessarily have to organize weekly training. Enable continuous learning experience within your team and allow consistent employee growth by releasing new and refresher content now and then.
Don’t torture them with modules or bore them with an unattractive collection of PowerPoint slides. Embrace new and more effective employee strategies, like microlearning. In fact, according to the Journal of Applied Psychology paper, releasing bite-sized courses and small chunks of information make learning 17% more efficient.
Microlearning only takes a few minutes to complete, perfect for all busy bees out there. And since you won’t clutter your employee’s heads with too much content in just one sitting, you can release them daily or weekly, depending on your business needs. Here, you can deliver effective training programs for better team performance to give them that extra boost.
EdApp has powerful tools that can help deliver your microlessons effectively and without much fuss. They have their spaced repetition tool, allowing learners to retake the lessons at increasing intervals until the concepts are stored completely in their long-term memory. It is backed by another unique feature called Brain Boost, which can identify what lessons have already been completed and which ones haven’t.
Another tool to explore is their Rapid Refresh quiz-maker, which you can use to set up, create, and launch bite-sized quizzes at regular intervals. All you need to do is fill in a spreadsheet template, and you’re all good to go. A timely analysis will be available to help you track the performance of your learners and pinpoint the weaknesses of your team.
3. Identify and Solve with Poor Performance Issues
If you have employees who aren’t performing as great as you expect them to be, the first thing you need to do is investigate the issue. Perhaps you have the wrong person for the job? It is also possible that they need more focused training and specialized experience. Or maybe they feel demotivated with their current work environment?
From there, make sure to provide right away all the necessary support they need to help them confront their employee performance issues examples. Consider investing in additional resources to help them perform better. You can also try rearranging the tasks, change your employee training strategy, or even help them set their performance goals. Make sure to regularly check their progress by conducting surveys or an employee performance review.
4. Allow Collaborative Learning
Collaborative learning is also a great way to help boost employee performance. Bringing them together to work on a project or solve a particular conflict will lead to a higher level of thinking and higher work success. Sharing the information among them will also expand their knowledge and open their minds to different perspectives, allowing them to perform and think outside the box.
Online platforms like EdApp make collaborative learning feasible even with a remote work arrangement. With its Discussions and Assignments feature, learners can interact with one another and discuss their training topics in real-time. They also support a team video conferencing through Virtual Classroom, enabling everyone to stay in touch even at a distance.
5. Recognise and Reward Employees
Don’t be afraid to recognize your employees for a job well done! According to an expert study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, employees who are rewarded consistently for their tasks show a higher interest and engagement at work, resulting in increased productivity and better performance.
There are so many ways to reward your team. You can give them a bonus or raise, a help with their spouse visas, or even a paid time off, all up to you. If you want to make it more creative, you can also give them handwritten notes along with a coffee coupon.
As with EdApp, you can make use of their gamification-based reward system and reward your top-performing employees for earning enough points after taking their gamified training content. You can give them large prizes like gadgets or free international trips. Or if you’re tight on budget, small rewards such as discount cards and coupons should be enough to acknowledge their performance. You can go further and think about something more unique rather than an ordinary international trip. The world of digitalization gives us endless varieties for living a truly unique experience and many companies benefit from it by sending their staff members to wild nature hiking trails supported by the Book a Trekking experience guide and routes.
6. Bring Technology into Service
Investing in the right technologies can dramatically improve workplace productivity. They can help simplify tasks and speed up processes without compromising the quality of work.
For instance, rather than going through all the hassles of printing all the documents, you can explore some of the leading cloud-based storage technologies that can store the files online, like Dropbox and Google Docs. Perhaps your team is feeling a little all over the place? Why not utilize project management software like JIRA, Asana, or Trello, designed to help team leaders plan and delegate tasks more efficiently.
It’s also a good idea to use an advanced learning management system (LMS) to give your team a continuous but quality learning experience. EdApp currently ranks as the top LMS software on the market, which supports independent learning using smartphones or desktop computers. Other LMS tools to check out include Auzmor, Prosperity, Edvance360, and so much more.
7. Promote a Positive Work Environment
Creating a positive workplace setting can also help to maximize your team’s potential.
First thing first, inspire your employees to observe a work-life balance. Open your mind to the possibilities of flexible-remote working, even in the post-pandemic future. Encourage them to take regular breaks to avoid burnout. If you feel like they are somewhat stressed and distant, it is also necessary that you reach out to them – invite them to a quick coffee outside the office or join them for a relaxing walk at the park. Healthy employee relations, after all, is a strong foundation of a positive workplace environment.
Apart from the internal factors, it is also highly vital to check their physical workspace. Do they have the right resources to work on their task? If they seem a little unmotivated, perhaps they don’t have enough space to focus and perform their job? Have you ever considered creating a separate area where they can de-stress, socialize, or collaborate with their peers?
Keep in mind that if your talents are satisfied with their work environment, you will most likely succeed in keeping them around for as long as possible.
8. Aim High but Set Clear Goals
While fear of failure may be inevitable in businesses, aiming high still generates better results than settling for mediocrity. Just as famous director James Cameron once said, “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”
Just one thing to remember – make sure that these goals are clearly outlined to your employees. This way, they know their focus and where they should position themselves. If they know exactly what has to be achieved for the next quarter, it can help motivate them to perform at their peak.
9. Build a Healthy Feedback Culture
Although giving and getting feedback can be quite intimidating for some companies, the results can be very surprising. Allowing your employees to engage and share their perspectives about your business and management gives them a sense of belonging, inspiring them to work at their best. Vice versa, consistently sending them some feedback also fuels employee growth, gives them a chance to manage poor performances, and understand how to perform better at work.
If your company is only starting to adapt to a healthy feedback culture, you may want to start from something careful. You can send email surveys to your team, allowing them to provide feedback anonymously. In case of poor performance issues, practice giving your employees some constructive feedback. Instead of pointing out the problems, you can show them the implications of their performance, and provide them expert tips on how they can improve as they move forward.
10. Celebrate Achievements!
And last but not least – celebrate success! Behind every milestone and achievement is your hardworking team, so let there be a celebration. Show gratitude and appreciation by taking them out for a luxurious meal, arranging a small party, or organizing an out-of-town trip. Showing your employees how valuable they are to your company will motivate them to step up their game, surpass their previous achievement, and yet again hit another goal in the future.
Conclusion
Improving employee performance has always been crucial in helping businesses grow in the corporate world, yet a lot of organizations tend to overlook the benefits that they can gain from providing employees with proper training. Boosting employee performance is even more vital in these trying times, when they are forced to adapt to remote working and skeletal operations as a result of the pandemic. And while it may seem difficult to come up with good strategies at first, there are so many ways out there to consider.
To stay on top of the game, you must invest in your team and turn them into your most valuable asset. It takes time and effort, but it’ll be worth it. In this article, we’ve presented the most effective strategies that can help improve your employee performance and ensure that they remain satisfied, happy, and motivated while giving their best all the time. You have also seen some of the key features of EdApp that can support and complement your employee training and development initiatives. So which strategy do you think is the best?
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Author
Jeanellie Avelino
Jen is a learning expert at EdApp, a mobile-based training platform that helps corporates and businesses bring their training solutions to the next level. She carries an extensive writing experience in a variety of fields, including architecture, the gig economy, and computer software. Outside of work, she enjoys her free time watching her favorite series and documentaries, reading motivational books, and cross-stitching.