Six employee benefit initiatives to inject productivity boost in team
Research conducted in Indonesia demonstrated that a humungous corporation recorded the highest performance in its 30 years of operations. The company achieved the milestone due to the high morale of the employees. The research also states that the company’s efforts to increase productivity became a reality when they incorporated employee benefit programs in the company to improve the wellbeing and morale of the employees (you can check the complete research here).
The research sheds light on the fact that improving the employees’ productivity is an uphill task with quite a steep slope. Paul J. Meyer (a self-improvement and leadership coach) said,
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
The words cannot be truer; without focused effort to improve the life of workers, companies cannot ensure consistent performance. That is where employee benefit programs kick in. So let’s find out what an employee benefit program or initiative is?
Employee Benefit Programs and Initiatives
Companies typically develop employee benefits programs to improve their employees’ capacity to live a sustainable lifestyle and make them feel more comfortable on the job. Employee benefits initiatives have the primary objective of making employees’ lives easier and happier. Employee benefits initiatives may be thought of as “smart investments” that pay off in increased productivity.
If you want and aim to improve your team’s productivity, you can start by measuring the productivity of your employees. Also, learning the difference between productivity and efficiency is important for employers and team leads. Michael Mankins, an author at Harvard Business Review, elaborates on the difference between productivity and efficiency. He says, “Efficiency is about doing the same with less while productivity is about doing more with the same.” So, increasing productivity is important to increase the company’s productive output.
In this piece, we will discuss some of the best employee benefit programs that can help you align your team or workforce with the company’s goals and be more productive. Here is a free resume review service for those who want to start career, switch their jobs and more.
Apply Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
According to Maslow’s 1943 research paper “A theory of human motivation,” there are five basic human needs that need to be fulfilled. Fulfilling an employee’s “needs” takes on a new meaning when you apply Maslow’s theory to your HR strategy. Here are some suggestions for meeting staff productivity requirements:
⦁ Physiological: keeping office facilities in good condition and paying staff a reasonable wage on a consistent schedule.
⦁ Safety: Creating a safe working environment, giving high-quality health benefits, and providing a pension plan are all examples of safety measures.
⦁ Acceptance and love: accepting and celebrating diversity, encouraging cross-team collaboration, and providing equitable access to programs and employee initiatives are all examples of belonging and love.
⦁ Recognizing team efforts, offering employee feedback, and rewarding excellent employee performance are all ways to build employee pride.
⦁ Personalized training plans, unique management tracks, and regular high-level coaching from executives fall into fast-tracking the self-actualization journey.
Incentivize the Productive Outputs
A lot of companies exploit their employees by paying the same amount of salary but squeeze more and more work every passing day. This leads to a motivation loss and causes the workers to slack off of their duties. It is also evident that in such environments, employees are prone to make more mistakes. These mistakes lead to losses, and while you try to make a leap in productivity, you end up denting your performance and productivity.
What top HR strategists suggest is to incentivize the work. Give your team a target and announce the reward or incentive once they achieve that target. This will not only improve the productivity and efficiency of employees but also enhance the company’s profitability, as indicated in many studies. The sales incentives are one of the prime examples of improving employee productivity.
Give Your Team a Break From Routine
Routines have an inherent flaw of boring the teams and individuals, even those who are highly productive. To keep your teams motivated and fresh, plan a break from the routines every now and then. You can either plan one or two days of employee engagement tours or activities. Ideally, you can create an engaging workplace by adding fun activities in the day to day tasks.
Food Allowances and Ample Breaks
Be mindful of your teams’ needs. Every human being has a particular capacity to work continuously. It may vary from person to person, but it is essential to provide breaks to the employees during work hours so that they can refresh their minds and return to their workstations re-energized.
Talking about re-energizing, food, tea, coffee are the energizers that work best at the workplace to freshen up the employees and get them caffeinated to produce their best work. Ideally, a workplace should provide food to the workers; if not, then daily food allowance is the next best thing to keep your team motivated and productive.
Health and Wellness Programs a Workplace
Health and wellness programs ensure employees that their employer cares about them, and hence it is always a positive boost injection in employees and makes them more loyal and productive at the same time. One can implement multiple health and wellness programs at their workplace, including health insurance, gym memberships, childcare programs, etc.
Other than that, it instils a sense of importance in the employees, and companies are improvising on the wellness trends lately to enhance the productivity and wellness of their teams. An awesome example of such initiatives is a program that effectively assists employees in quitting smoking, and it can certainly result in a healthier workforce overall. However, employers must tailor programs to the requirements of individual employees in order to make these initiatives successful and result in a boost in employee productivity.
Also, ask your employees after regular intervals about what they would like to be included in the health coverage. Many people want additional complementary and alternative health care alternatives, such as professional massage therapy and acupuncture, to be covered. Workers demand and deserve paid mental wellbeing holidays, and they want high-quality coverage without exorbitant deductibles. It’s a win-win situation for everyone if employees are healthy, happy and require fewer sick days.
Create a Healthy Work and Life Balance in Your Organization
Defining work and life balance is different for different countries, and it might be quite a task to determine the balance between work and life for your company. But it is essential to define work and life balance as soon as possible because 53% of employees feel that a job that gives them work-life balance is more important to their wellbeing.
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Do you want to build and maintain new habits? Get your free PDF version of the Don't Break The Chain calendar and start today!
Author's Bio
Grace Griffin is a member of the writer’s Team on Research prospect. She has bachelor’s in Law, Masters in Literature, and a PhD in Economics. she wanted to explore all the possible subjects in the world.