Essay: How employees should work

This is How You Let Your Employees Work
Companies spend a lot of time and resources to ensure business runs smoothly. Seemingly the one area that gets overlooked is use of their employees’ time.
Companies will pull their employees away from their desks while they’re in the midst of tasks. The reasons for distracting them are often less essential to the overall productivity. It’s important to respect the workers’ time because it isn’t infinite. They won’t achieve the goals you expect them to or that they expect from themselves.
Productivity may see long term loss because when a company doesn’t value an employees’ time, they tend to lose motivation. It doesn’t help a business grow, but hinders it greatly. If the company doesn’t care, why should they?
So how can a company maximize their employees’ time?
1 Giving Employees Uninterrupted Time
Companies should understand that it’s challenging to keep employees motivated. They have to shut out their own personal distractions. Then there’s distracting office chat to contend with.
Pulling everyone from their desks for a meeting about business growth an hour after the work day begins is counterproductive. They have just settled into their workspace and have a small window to get things done. The mind gets stuck on being at a 10 am meeting so essentially, the first hour of work time is wasted.
In lieu of a meeting about business growth, it would be far more essential to allow employees uninterrupted time in the morning. Dan Ariely, a behavioral scientist has this to say about the morning hours and productivity,
“One of the saddest mistakes in time management is the propensity of people to spend the two most productive hours of their day on things that don’t require high cognitive capacity (like social media). If we could salvage those precious hours, most of us would be much more successful in accomplishing what we truly want. “
2 Having a Work Environment that Promotes Productivity
When an employee walks into work, their environment should help set the stage for them. When a company offers their employees a spacious environment, it can help employees think more clearly. Sometimes, it’s the small things. Having a kitchen stocked with free snacks or a space for yoga is always a show of appreciation.
There’s a reason people work so hard to get an office with a window. Having access to natural light helps business and business environment flourish. A study conducted by a Neuroscience program at Northwest University in Chicago found this to be true. There is a strong relationship with daylight exposure in the workplace and how office workers’ function.
Those who had exposure to natural light at the workplace would sleep an average of 46 more minutes per night. For those without windows in their work environment, they received lower scores in their quality of life. They had more physical problems, less sleep and more daytime dysfunction.
3 Collaborating Efficiently Without Interrupting
It’s important for colleagues to communicate with one another for a variety of reasons. Collaboration is an integral part of any successful task or project. So how can collaboration occur in the most efficient way so as not to become interruptions?
A lot of it has to do with behaviors and outlooks of all team members. If a company can instill a strong team environment, each colleague respects the other. They learn to accept and tolerate varying perspectives and working styles. It helps businesses grow exponentially when colleagues understand they are working towards a common goal.
Companies that want to create cohesiveness between their colleagues will offer training and support. This allows them to develop the skills they need to collaborate. Effective collaboration is achieved when the effort of a team creates success that an individual member wouldn’t be able to achieve on their own. It comes with challenges that require skills such as:
·         Communication
·         Transparency
·         Compromise
·         Tolerance
·         Reliability
·         Becoming a Team Player.
With all this said, to not interrupt one another, meetings should be set in place that don’t disturb the ‘non disturbance’ work time. Respecting each other’s’ time and being resourceful in finding answers helps offset weight from other team members. Each member has a task that is their own responsibility.
4 Employees Need to Feel Valued
If an employee doesn’t feel like they add value to the company, their motivation will rapidly deteriorate. There are many ways companies can let employees know they’re valued. It usually doesn’t cost a cent either. There’s nothing more tragic than hiring a talented employee only to micromanage them.
Companies need to remember that their employees were hired as business growth help and give them creative space to do their job. If a manager is 30% more effective than a colleague, through the process of micromanagement, it takes far more away than the 30% of productivity earned. It has also destroyed morale and passion employees felt.
Letting go of micromanaging, along with accolades for work well done will keep employees keen and loyal. Verbal recognition for their hard work and for being at their company is simple and takes very little time. What a company gets in return is a happy colleague that is likely to work from the heart.
5 Being Clear on The Company Vision
When a company knows where they stand, their employees will have a more defined sense of how they can help. Having a goal, mission, or a vision creates motivation all throughout.
One example of why a clear vision matters is can be found in training and development. When a company defines what they’re about, they can create training and development in a more focused way. Training accordingly helps everyone to keep up with business growth. Having a roadmap for training employee’s needs to have a foundation of clarity.
6 Backing Up Employees
Whether it’s the CEO, the founder, or a manager, it’s important that people at the top set an example. One of the most meaningful ways to do this is to have their employees’ back.
This proves that they see their employees and are willing to stand up for them if necessary. Psychology tells us that as social beings, we look for support from our mentors as well as our peers. When times are tough, coming together gives a sense of unity. This brings a feeling of community within the work place.
When the mentor of the company is a part of this tribe through active engagement and backing employees up, every word they speak will be listened to. Gaining respect in this way is true motivation for staff, as opposed to be ruled with an iron fist. It’s a leadership style that employees won’t resist because they feel safe, protected, and a part of something bigger than just working for a living.
Disengagement costs companies a great deal of money and kills productivity so they don’t have an opportunity to see true growth. A study in the Harvard Business Review by Queens School of Business found that disengaged workers had 37% higher absent days. They made 60% more errors. Polls within a workplace with low employee engagement scores had 18% less productivity, 16% less profitability, and a 65% lower share price over time.
If a company can find the middle ground of allowing their employees the time to work while effectively collaborating, there won’t be crazy hours for employees. Even when an employee is motivated to work overtime hours, eventually, they will burn out. The real solution is allowing employees to do the deep, focused work instead of pulling them in all directions.