Employees Performing Below Average?

Employee performance is one of an employer’s top priorities; their job quality, efficiency, productivity, and levels of motivation affect how well the business will perform. Consider how your company will succeed if you have fifty employees who are inefficient, unproductive, and unmotivated.

Of course, your business will be doomed to fail no matter how good your market niche is. Training and motivation plans for employees are very important and deserve top-tier attention. Tracking the work progress of your employees will enable you to know their performance levels and determine if they are average, below average, or high performers. Read on to find out why some of your employees perform below average, and what you can do about it.

1. Lack of clear goals or expectations

When employees are not given precise information on what is expected of them, they’re more likely to lose focus or direction. This is why employers must set feasible goals together with their employees to ensure that they are always on the same page in terms of what needs to be done and the period it should take.

2. No tracking system

Many businesses have no system in place to check the progress of employees. Even now when working from home is a corporate trend, many businesses do not track the work their employees are doing, others depend on manual periodical reports which may not be comprehensive or reliable. 

3. Emphasis on quantity instead of quality 

It is usually not the number of tasks completed by an employee that determines how well they are performing. For instance, an employee might complete ten sale pitches but that does not mean they will secure ten sales or deliver convincing pitches that the customer will consider.

4.  Inadequate skills/ expertise

Employing only experts for a job may be unrealistic because acquiring expertise does not occur in a vacuum. Most of the time, employing a novice may be the best option for your business because of your financial capacity at the moment. In that case, training your employees must become one of your priorities. Even with experts, you’ll still have to provide training sessions specific to your company’s needs.  Employees must show the competency to do their job.

5. Lack of motivation

A lot of working-class adults struggle with depression and anxiety. As a result, they may generally be unmotivated to complete tasks – which may translate into poor levels of productivity at work. Unmotivated employees are some of the most difficult people to work with; their spirit of unconcern and disinterest can be demotivating.

These factors of poor performers are very common in many businesses and academic institutions. This case study on the causes of poor employee performance and this research on tackling poor performance, among others informed our findings.

If you are asking yourself what the solutions are, keep reading to find out. 

How to Make Your Employees High Performers

There is no single remedy for boosting performance among employees because some solutions may not be feasible in some work environments. However, as a growing web development company (with reliable experience in using technology to create solutions), we have put together a few suggestions on how to convert below-average workers into high performers. These suggestions are based on the causes we’ve identified in the section above.

1. Gamify work

This simply involves the implementation of game concepts and designs in the workplace. As mentioned earlier in our post on gamifying learning, gamification is one of the best ways to keep employees motivated and goal-oriented. This is because gamified platforms have leader boards and reward features that can serve as extrinsic motivation to workers. Using gamification software is the best option. Consider the following recommendations:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Gamification
• Agile CRM
• Evoq Engage
• Funifier Studio
• SuMo Motivate
• Mysalesgame
• Intelliverse Sales Acceleration
• Gametize
• Hurrah! Leaderboard
• GamEffective

2. Corporate Learning Management Systems

This is the solution to improving the quality of work, training employees, and creating a community of workers/learners who care about each other’s progress. There are many features that can be used to achieve this solution. Some of the most recommended LMS include:

• Lessonly by Seismic
• Paylocity
• Paycor
• 360Learning
• Cloud Academy
• Moodle
• Edmodo
• Blackboard
• Canvas
• Skillport

Check my previous post on The Best LMS Platforms for detailed information.

3. Tracking employee progress

This is very important in ensuring that the company achieves its set goals and delivers the best product or service. Employees who are not supervised may veer off course or lose focus of what they are expected to do or how they are expected to do it. These platforms can help you track your employees’ work progress. 

1. Email Analytics: This comprehensive email monitoring tool can tell you almost everything about how and what your employees send and receive, how much time they spend on messages, their busiest days and hours, and so on.

2. Timely : This software automatically logs all of the time employees spend on work and saves it to a private timeline. It effectively serves as a mirror to their productive performance, indicating how long various tasks take them and when they are most engaged.

3. ProofHub advertises itself as “the one place for remote teams to work productively,” and it accomplishes this by coordinating project plans, workflows, chats, calendars, documents, and other resources. It provides project planning tools, communicates with team members, customers, and distributors, and provides managers with a bird’s-eye view of ongoing projects so they can get a quick sense of what’s going on across their teams.

4. iDoneThis: is a team supervision and task management software with the unique feature of daily check-ins which allows employees to log in and describe what they’re doing on a daily basis. It’s a simple, high-level approach to assess what your staff is working on, what their roadblocks are (if any), and what aspects need to be improved.

5. TrackingTime is a straightforward time tracking application for freelancers and organizations. It enables you to track the status of projects and billable hours, organize and allocate tasks to your team, and manage their access with user rights. With time cards, you may also keep track of employee attendance, breaks, extra hours, and time off. Additionally, you may construct bespoke online timesheets for productivity, payroll, invoicing, budgeting, billing, and other purposes.

As a thriving web development company, our suggestions and recommendations are based on our experiences as well as the experiences of our clients. Study the analytics sections/ratings of the recommended platforms to see which one is the best fit for you.