How to Improve Employee Performance in 2022
Leadership is evolving.
In 2022, it’s no longer enough to simply demand your employees perform at a certain standard… you have to provide the tools they need to succeed.
Why?
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Employee Performance Management in 2022
The pandemic has reshaped our working environments.
A global threat to physical livelihoods has made millions of employees realize that they were doing too much for too little.
A movement that started in the United States has now spread to the U.K, Canada, France, and even Australia, aptly titled “The Great Resignation”. Today, workers in both Singapore and Germany are expected to soon join the ranks in fighting for their rights.
Across the world, there’s an outcry for leaders to prioritize employee wellbeing in the workplace or risk losing their workers for good.
- 44% of employees are already looking for a new job.
- 86% of employees said they would prefer to work for a company that prioritizes outcomes over output.
- 67% of employees would accept a lower wage if a company had positive reviews online.
These statistics have put a lot of business owners in a tricky position, asking themselves: how can we get the most out of our employees without losing them?
By focusing on the quality of work your employees submit rather than the quantity.
What is Employee Performance?
Employee performance reviews how an employee completes tasks. It can be measured by the speed of submission, their ability to work alone, their consistency, and the standard of work they produce.
Employee performance is often associated with employee productivity, but it’s also a lot more than that. For instance, helping your overworked staff members be more efficient with their time won’t necessarily mean they can complete more tasks. It could, instead, allow them to spend more time on each project and therefore improve the standard of their output.
Thankfully, from a business perspective, either result would be beneficial. Successfully enhancing employee performance leads to satisfied clients and happy employees.
How to Improve Employee Performance
Improving employee performance is a priority for many organizations. When you can adapt a workplace to create the best possible environment for your staff members, you can protect your bottom line.
Ready to learn how?
Step 1: Nurture Your Work Culture
Strong work culture has been proven to empower and motivate employees. It allows a team to work towards a shared common goal, build relationships with their leadership, and be more likely to request help when it’s needed.
Step 2: Invest in Employee Wellbeing & Engagement
Wellness and engagement programs are one of the best ways an employee can improve performance. Investing in their physical and mental health reduces stress loads, decreases sick days and reignites someone’s passion. You could try:
- Subsidizing therapy sessions.
- Hosting employee massages.
- Educating staff on mental health.
- Introducing 5-minute desk breaks.
Many companies worry that well-being programs would disrupt productivity rather than enhance it, but this is often not the case. In the case of 5-minute desk breaks, employee stress is lowered, which facilitates “deep focus” periods where they get more done.
Step 3: Regularly Provide Learning Content
Upgrading the skillset of your team members isn’t just another employee performance improvement suggestion. It’s one that actively benefits your employees.
When you provide exciting opportunities for your staff members to learn and develop, you give them the tools to take control of their own career progression. This is an incredible source of motivation.
Interactive training through gamification and varied performance support with a mentor would both allow employees to apply their newfound knowledge in different ways to better retain the information that’s been presented.
Step 4: Set SMART Goals and KPI Objectives
Change isn’t instant. It needs time.
If you want to succeed in improving employee performance, you need to:
- Set SMART goals.
- Measure KPIs.
- Outline the results you’d like to see, and how you intend to achieve them.
For example, if you want staff members to completely change their interaction with customers through a new CRM, you’d need to identify what issues would arise.
Have they been taught how to use the system? How digitally proficient are they?
When introducing software that drives company change, you may benefit from adding these top change management solutions to your approach.
Step 5: Communicate Effectively
Part of improving employee performance is your ability to communicate.
You can’t expect your employees to work towards a goal that they don’t know exists, so be sure to conduct regular progress reviews.
As a part of this, when issues arise, be prepared to hold yourself accountable. In 2022, employees will not respond well to criticism when they don’t feel they are being properly supported by their leaders.
If employees aren’t meeting targets, there’s usually a reason. Is it because they aren’t trying hard enough or is it because they don’t have the tools to succeed?
Step 6: Celebrate Achievements
Employee recognition is critically important to 37% of your workforce, and it can increase their retention, engagement, and satisfaction. When you don’t take time to celebrate achievements, you’re missing a key chance to engage your employees in the learning process and motivate them to continue on their development path.
Your Employee Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)
Companies that measure their team’s success by their total output (such as sales made) often create a toxic work environment. In such firms, staff members struggle to “switch off” and their mental health suffers as a result.
So, to combat the challenges faced when improving employee performance, you need to see things from their perspective. A concrete employee performance improvement plan would consider the goals you’ve set and the tools you need to provide your team.
Ask yourself:
- What’s stopping my employees from working efficiently?
- What is affecting their productivity?
- How can I support them to enhance employee performance?
- What tools and resources do I have at my disposal?
- What additional tools and resources can I provide?
When trying to increase employee performance, the last thing you want is to add to your team’s workload. Burnout is a key cause of a fall in productivity, and a badly planned approach would do more harm than good.
A successful employee performance improvement plan would answer:
What weaknesses need addressing?
Employee performance isn’t solely down to the efforts (or lack thereof) of an individual.
If someone is being disrupted from their work every few hours by a manager checking in, they are less likely to be able to concentrate on their project. This would lead to a drop in productivity.
Being conscious of such issues can help you eradicate disturbances and enable your employees to perform better.
What expectations do I have of my employees?
In order for employees to be on board with improving skills at work and increasing their output, you need to give them clear guidelines to follow.
For a copywriter, you could outline that you want 5 articles submitted each week. This gives them a rigid schedule to follow and motivates them to keep writing. Additionally, when the opportunity arises for them to learn how to type faster, they may be more likely to sign up.
What expectations do my employees have of me?
As mentioned previously, the relationship between a leader and their team has changed throughout 2022. Knowing what your employees expect of you can allow you to deliver on your promises and “lead by example”.
Being an active participant in change initiatives and taking on challenges yourself can boost their trust in you to continue to supply and provide what they need to grow.
How can I measure progress and success?
Your employee performance improvement plan isn’t just a start and a finish.
There is a whole process that your staff members will have to go through, and, making sure everyone is hitting KPIs at regular intervals can provide additional insight into where you can provide extra support.
How to Enhance Employee Performance – FAQs
Do you now know how to improve employee performance at work?
If you still need a little more guidance, don’t worry. Here are some FAQs.
In what ways can an employee improve their performance?
The main (and easiest) approach for an employee to improve their performance is to participate in blended learning training courses, and then apply this knowledge at work.
Does employee engagement improve business performance?
Absolutely! When employees are enjoying work, they are likely to feel more motivated to complete tasks. Their passion will be present in the work they complete, making it higher quality.
What is the main challenge of improving employee performance?
Improving employee performance places a lot of pressure on your staff members, who may already be feeling overworked and burnt out. To combat this, you’ll need to get people onboard with change and provide the support they need to progress.
How do you calculate employee performance?
Have your employees conduct a review that allows them to reflect on where they are now, and where they want to be. This would measure their current capabilities on a scale of 1-10 for a variety of tasks (1 being not confident, 10 being very confident), and give them a goal to work towards.
How to Enhance Your Employee Performance with Userlane
Improving employee performance in 2022 isn’t a simple process.
You have a responsibility as an employer to be mindful of team wellbeing and carefully manage change so as to not increase stress and trigger mass resignation.
Thankfully, that’s where Userlane comes in.
Our Digital Adoption Platforms allow staff members to easily pick up digital skills by providing real-time guidance and support.
Instead of having them attend lengthy training courses that draw attention away from the work they need to complete, staff members can quickly learn new software while they use it.
