Feeling like your lazy employees are holding back your business?

It’s not unlikely. An abysmal 13% of employees say they feel engaged at work. Yet the reasons behind an employee’s lack of productivity go far beyond laziness. To get the most out of your workforce, you need to understand what these issues are and how to tackle them.

That’s why we’re taking a look below at the secret to improving an employee’s performance.

Take a Look at their Salary

Time for some hard truths: it’s true what they say about peanuts and monkeys.

If you aren’t paying your people what they’re worth, then you aren’t getting what they’re worth. When you think about it, that’s reasonable. They’re putting in as much effort as you’re compensating them for.

It’s not always as simple as that, of course. But many a company could increase its productivity by paying an employee for the service they offer.

Be honest with yourself. Are you really putting into your employees what you expect to get out of them? Take a hard look at your industry and consider how long it’s been since you last raised your wages.

Start a Conversation

As with many things in life, the best way to deal with a disconnect is to talk.

Getting feedback from your employees should be one of the biggest focuses of your employee management. Employees aren’t robots. They all have opinions, needs, and ambitions.

Taking feedback, anonymous or otherwise, from your employees can give you a huge amount of information. You’ll find out if your facilities are lacking, if the company’s direction is causing problems, if remuneration is under par, and so on.

It may sound overwhelming, but sorting through this feedback can help you pick out common refrains. When enough people are saying the same thing, it might be time to listen and act.

You can’t expect the truth to come to you if you don’t make it clear your door is open. Running employee feedback schemes creates a culture of communication.

Provide Training

It may surprise you to know how much employee disengagement traces back to a lack of training.

And yet it’s unsurprising that untrained staff aren’t productive. If they don’t know how to make an efficient job of their work, then you aren’t getting the most out of them. Not knowing how to do a job also increases stress, in turn dragging down performance.

A lack of training can also leave employees feeling stagnant and disengaged. Taken together, these factors add up to a perfect storm of demotivation.

Take the time to thoroughly induct employees into your company with a full training scheme. Top up their training often as their roles change or new technology becomes available.

If chances open up for them to branch out, support them. Even exposure to something new can revive the energy of a jaded employee.

Offer Incentives and Benefits

We all like to get something for free. But more than that, we all like to feel valued.

Offering employee bonuses and incentives show you consider them more than a warm body. It establishes a bond of care, in which you acknowledge the major role you play in an employee’s life.

It’s almost fair to say that no amount of pay can make up for the amount of life employees sacrifice for their employers. After all, we only get the one life. Incentives can make life easier for your employees, creating an intangible reward that goes some way to filling that gap.

Even a simple end-of-year bonus can make a dramatic difference. But deeper benefits like retirement contributions, health insurance, and generous vacation allowance can give a huge amount back to your employees.

Offering benefits and incentives might seem like too large an overhead for you. In truth, offering these can save you money in the long run. They drive up productivity, reduce sick days, and aid employee retention.

Even better, offering incentives can help you attract a higher caliber of talent, improving the overall productivity of your workforce.

Strike a Work-Life Balance

Let’s be honest here. The employment situation in the US is a mess.

Employees are frequently expected to work unpaid overtime, discouraged from exercising their rights, and have to deal with at-will termination. This leaves employees burned out not only from their jobs but from dealing with their jobs.

This problem has only become more severe thanks to “always-on” culture. Some employees are lucky to sleep through a night without waking to emails or phone calls.

Employers can combat this by helping employees strike a genuine work-life balance. Throw out unpaid overtime. It’s not productive anyway. Give employees their lives back.

Some companies have begun to bring in policies to protect employees from always-on culture. They’ve acknowledged that poor work-life balance hurts all involved.

Refreshed, energetic, and happy employees are more productive ones. Instead of burnout and high turnover, you can build a company of loyalty and dedication.

Monitor and Improve

Rolling out some of these changes only does a limited amount of good if you can’t tell how you’re doing.

This is where it’s important to track employee progress. This can help you identify issues early and follow them through to resolution. Tracking progress also empowers your employees to develop, giving them something to aim for.

Frequent reviews are a great way to sit down with employees and discuss these issues.

Tools like PerformYard can help you manage goals, hold reviews, and aggregate results. Improving employee performance isn’t an overnight process, so having the tools around to do the job can make all the difference.

Improving an Employee’s Performance the Smart Way

These tips should be enough to begin improving an employee’s performance. Coming down hard on lazy employees might seem like a good temporary solution, but addressing underpinning factors will yield more permanent results. It’ll also help you keep the talent you do have.

Looking for more business tips? Be sure to take a look at our blog.