Sometimes, in order to increase the productivity of its employees, it is necessary to return to the point of reference. If you tried all the traditional ways, maybe it's time to turn to non-traditional? Here are a few tricks that can improve working conditions for your subordinates, which, accordingly, will positively affect their productivity.
1. Decorate the office with live plants
This proposal should not be surprising. In the end, a lot of research has been done on the benefits of locating living plants in any work area, and some of them have established a connection between a decrease in the number of sick leaves and an increase in productivity after the appearance of pots with plants.
What should be considered when acquiring greens for the office is the ease of care, because dried and yellowed flowers will not inspire anyone. Good options might be:
- The aspidistra is high.
- Sansevieria is three-celled.
- Zamioculcas.
- Cactus.
- Bamboo.
- Aloe.
- Fragrant Dracaena.
- Monstera is delicious.
2. Set some unattainable goals
This sentence probably sounds like it runs counter to logic. If you set goals that you and your team cannot achieve, then do you not set everyone up for failure? Many will say that there is some truth to this possibility, but if you need to dramatically increase productivity, set yourself a crazy and unrealistic goal, for example, to achieve all sales this year over the next six months.
If it seems to you that it sounds intrusive or aggressive, just try it with your team and watch the spark of creativity and concentration, which will begin to flare up into violent activity. Ambitious goals will create a sense of urgency and encourage every person in your organization to take risks. Watch, and if the fire really lights up in their eyes, and the progress is significant, be sure to say that you are very satisfied, and then invite all the employees to dinner at the restaurant.
3. Give employees the opportunity to play something
And who invented that you can’t play games at work? Do you think that employees now and then open up solitaire or other mini-games on a working computer from laziness? No, they just feel that the brain needs to be discharged, so at certain hours this can and should be allowed.
If you arrange a game room with consoles or board games, you can also combine the work team, increasing the collective spirit and level of motivation. This will help relieve stress and develop friendships.
And if it is possible to let employees out into the yard for at least half an hour and combine them playing volleyball or basketball, this will be the best office discharge you can imagine.
4. Allow humor
If you joke and approve of employees' sense of humor, they will feel easy and at ease. Even a small disruption of the hierarchy encourages people to be themselves and not be afraid of innovation, and this, in turn, builds trust and improves productivity.
The most important thing is that humor is kind and understandable for everyone - if someone is offended, it will badly affect everyone. Start with yourself, communicate as easily as possible and smile a lot. You can even try to introduce humorous moments with the implementation of improvisational scenes or the development of humorous advertising.
5. Make sure employees get enough sleep
This may sound too perfect, but if you give your subordinates the opportunity to take a nap in the workplace for 20-30 minutes, you will not only increase productivity, but also strengthen your credibility.
If your office has the opportunity to equip a small quiet room for sleeping, this will be an ideal option, or you can invest in a couple of capsules for sleeping. If there is no opportunity to give your employees time and a place to sleep at work, take care that they get enough sleep at night, namely, do not call or write messages to them in the evening or even more at night, take an interest in the quality of sleep and, if necessary, give quality mattress as a bonus.
6. Implement Roger Saip's “two-hour solution”
In his book, Brain Development, Roger Siph outlined the idea of a so-called two-hour solution. These are the two hours a week that each person should spend mentally creating plans for the next week.
You can give your employees time for this while working, as they are unlikely to want to spend their free minutes on such things. Remind them of this at the end of the work week and set aside the promised two hours for planning right on the spot.
7. Get a corporate pet
Not every workplace can allow the presence of animals, but many studies have confirmed that the presence of corporate pets improves teamwork and increases job satisfaction. Benefits may include improved employee motivation and a general improvement in the positive atmosphere and stabilization of morale. Pets are also a great way for colleagues to get to know each other better.
You can take a stray dog or cat, have a hamster, a turtle or a parrot. Taking turns taking care of the pet, caressing and discussing it, subordinates will feel as if they have a common corporate child, and they will also have an additional desire to come to the workplace.
8. Give people the opportunity to change their working position.
Studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle directly affects heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Add to this posture at the desktop, which does not change for several hours, and get problems with muscles, vertebrae, joints and blood vessels.
An excellent solution today is adjustable tables, which are introduced everywhere in offices around the world. The employee can independently adjust his workplace by lowering the tabletop for a sitting pose and lifting to work while standing. And there are also modifications of “smart” tables, which automatically rise if the employee sits for too long, and then lower again.
If your employees have the opportunity to work on a laptop, you can design your office in an informal way - let there be sofas, large pillows, hammocks and bean bags in addition to tables, and each employee will choose the position, place and position in which his work will become the most productive. In the end, Agatha Christie wrote all of her detective stories on her knees, hunched over in an armchair or in an ordinary chair, Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up, periodically resting the paper on a wall or refrigerator, and Truman Capote could not work and think at all if he didn’t lie down.
9. Enhance brain activity with aromatherapy
The sense of smell is the strongest of our senses, and therefore aromatherapy is the best way to affect brain activity. In this regard, consider filling your workplace with flavors such as lemon, lavender, jasmine, rosemary, cinnamon and mint. These pleasant smells can help employees calm down, but at the same time increase energy and concentration, and also increase mood.
10. Relive the office with music
Neuroscientists have found that the process of playing a musical instrument is a unique and complete training for the brain, and all musicians can more creatively and effectively solve problems, having executive functions of a higher level for planning and developing strategies.
If your company cannot afford to acquire a wide variety of instruments and allow employees to play them from time to time, allow them to at least listen to their favorite music: in the columns, if the tastes of the team are the same, or in headphones so as not to interfere with each other.
11. Stop superficially evaluating work
Perhaps one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase employee productivity is to acknowledge their labors and praise for all the hard but well-done work. However, it is better that it be something more than a superficial assessment from the series of “good” or “excellent” work. Be specific when you want to praise your employee so that he knows exactly which of his affairs has received special recognition.
12. Maintain structured procrastination
One of the most common productivity tips you may have come across is to start your day with the most important task. This is something like "do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today," just reworded into "do not put off until the evening what you can do in the morning." In modern time management, this is called "swallow a frog," that is, to do all the most unpleasant at once.
But sometimes a person is not ready to eat a frog - neither in the morning nor in the evening. Or maybe it’s still easier for him to start the day with something simple and enjoyable, and he’ll do the most difficult thing somewhere in the middle of the day, when he’ll “swing” enough. In this case, the task of the leader is not to put pressure on his subordinates.
The fact is that all people are arranged differently and their biological clocks can be set for different periods of periods of brain activity and recession. Encourage respite by letting people spend time on the condition that they do something else. This strategy is called structured procrastination, and it only seems like a meaningless process - in fact, the result remains the same if the sum does not change from the rearrangement of the terms of the terms.