5 Tips on Empowering An Underperforming Team to Become More Productive

A company is only ever as good as its employees. When those employees are engaged and supported, they are allowed to reach their full potential. So, it stands to reason that if a team is underperforming, a good business leader will be on the lookout for ways to improve its levels and increase its output.

Here we look at ways that you can empower any underperforming team and help them become more productive and in turn, become an asset to the company.

Tip 1 – Optimise Engagement:

Perhaps one of the main reasons behind an underperforming team is the absence of engagement. An employee being happy in their work doesn’t necessarily equal an involvement with the company’s objectives and direction, which is what we’re talking about here.

The more time you invest in making your employees feel part of the bigger picture and involved with the company’s welfare, the more that investment will be rewarding to the company.

Tip 2 – Constructive Feedback:

A common problem with keeping a team motivated is how to communicate feedback on their performance. Falling under the banner of coaching, managers need to know how to provide constructive feedback, so that they realise that everyone has a task to perform. So, rather than merely listing areas for improvement, it should be interspersed with positives, i.e. areas of their performance you’re happy with.

Depending on the company, this feedback should be given weekly, and those doing particularly well should be singled out for recognition for that little extra bit of motivation.

Tip 3 – Break Down Tasks into Smaller Chunks:

When providing complete tasks, they can sometimes be quite overwhelming, so to make them more manageable, you should look to break each task down into achievable chunks. S.M.A.R.T. targets are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound and ensure that employees don’t lose focus on the job in hand by concentrating too much on the whole task. The right perspective is a crucial element for a team to possess.

Tip 4 – Support Employees with Home Issues:

What we shouldn’t forget is that employees are also people and people have lives outside of work. Employees spend around ⅓ of their lives at work, so from time to time, the two worlds are going to overlap. It’s usually when something wrong happens. If you show genuine support during these times, you’ll have a much more engaged employee who feels cared about, so long as your willingness to help doesn’t come across as an invasion of privacy.

Tip 5 – Encourage Remote Working:

While some may think that allowing underperforming employees to work from home would just make the problem worse, the evidence would suggest that the opposite is true. Being spared the daily commute most often engenders trust within employees and ends up with said employees getting more work done. The lack of distraction is just one of the reasons cited by those extolling the virtues of remote working.

Employees Feeling Valued = Better Productivity

When you implement measures that make employees feel trusted, engaged and empowered, the net result is most often a better functioning team. Those working within teams would generally prefer to be managed by an enabler as opposed to a taskmaster.

The tips we’ve provided today are relatively general, but they have far-reaching implications that will ultimately lead to employees that care about what they do and value their position. And that can only be a positive thing for any company.

If you’d like to learn more about how to enable  your company more efficiency or productivity, why not call us on +442034416513 or visit our website on www.cxportal.com and we’ll help you in any way we can.