5 reasons employee productivity’s about to hit a low point
Today’s forecast: The perfect storm of employee distractions.
Let’s run down the list of what’s got employees’ attention at this very moment (in no particular order):
- March Madness (perhaps you’ve heard from this week’s Special Report that it’s a $4 billion productivity drain)
- The 2016 Presidential Election (and the 24/7 media coverage of Trumpisms)
- Social media (i.e., Facebook and Twitter, mostly)
- NFL free agency (perhaps you’ve heard that Brock Osweiler spurned the Super Bowl champs for $72M and the Houston Texans), and
- The rise of Spring (and the need to wrangle up a foursome and hit the links).
Add it all up, and it’s amazing that anything’s getting done at work these days.
What’s an employer to do to refocus the workforce?
Katherine G. Erdel, an employment law attorney for the firm Bingham Greenebaum Doll LLP (who, truth be told, inspired this article) suggested things employers can — and probably should — do to get employees back on track this time of year.
Two of them were:
1. Set clear goals
Most companies have set clear goals already. But now’s a good time to remind employees what those goals are, as well as what their role is in achieving those goals.
Taking Erdel’s idea one step further: If it appears your company’s falling short of its goals, just letting employees know that’s the case should cause an uptick in motivation and productivity — assuming the goals aren’t impossible, and therefore somewhat demoralizing, to reach in the first place.
2. Identify when employees are likely to waste time
Try to pinpoint when employees waste the most time, then, as Erdel recommends, find ways to curb the habit. For example, she suggests rather than trying to keep March Madness out of your workplace, give employees a healthy outlet to feed their basketball addictions.
An idea she offered up was putting a TV in the break room and inviting employees to take a short mid-afternoon break to catch up on the scores and get their hoops fix. This could even lead to some comradery/communication-boosting socialization between employees.
Taking Erdel’s idea one step further: Invite the boss to take part in the festivities, but only if he or she will be enthusiastic about the basketball-in-the-break-room-concept (or at least fake it).
This accomplishes three things:
- It shows employees that management is OK with them “getting their b-ball fix”
- It promotes socialization with management, and
- Best of all, it’ll keep employees from abusing the privilege (employees won’t want to be caught by the boss watching an hour of hoops on-the-clock).
