Ways to help you create a healthy and productive work environment

All too often, business leaders struggle with ensuring their employees are productive. This is difficult to measure! There are many apps that are designed to help and measure productivity, some of which are detailed below.

However, in the absence of a gadget that can measure productivity, employers turn to monitoring the obvious things, such as time spent in the office, late arrival to work, leaving work early, or if their staff are having too many conversations by the water cooler. However, these are by no means a measure of productivity.

Employees spend an average of about five hours a day at their desks. Does that mean they are spending those 300 minutes being productive at their desk? Simply sitting at a desk does not make an employee productive. Having the culture of long working hours where employees ‘eat, sleep and breathe’ work is not productive either, contrary to what many may believe.

On the contrary, this culture would lead to staff burnout and an upsurge in sick leave. A study of 600,000 individuals in Australia, the US and Europe, published in the Lancet found that people who work more than 55 hours a week have a 33 per cent greater risk of having a stroke and a 13 per cent greater risk of suffering from coronary heart disease. The study concludes that employers need to pay more attention to the health risk factors of long working hours.

Research suggests that more people are stressed than ever before, and this is translating into huge costs for businesses. A US study found that 40 per cent of employees feel their jobs are very stressful, 73 per cent regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress, and to top these statistics, workplace stress is costing employers $300 billion annually.

So the big question for employers is: how do you create a healthy and productive work environment?

Get a snapshot

A logical first place to start is to understand the current situation in the workplace, by getting feedback from your staff. Understand what is helping or hindering their performance.

An annual staff survey is a great way of understanding what your employees are experiencing. It provides data that enables you to focus on the right areas, and provides a benchmark to measure your improvements each year.

Encourage exercise and movement

Encouraging staff to be active is also another way to help maintain your employees’ physical and mental health.

Exercise has many benefits: it helps relieve stress, improves your mood, boosts energy, and combats health conditions and diseases. In his book Eat, Move, Sleep Tom Rath advocates small spurts of daily movement.

He suggests that it’s not about exercise, but being active in little spouts throughout the day can help overall health. Use the 2 in 20 rule: for every 20 minutes of sit-down work, get up and move for two minutes.

Promote healthy relationships

The Health and Safety Executive in the UK states that one of the biggest sources of stress can be relationships, especially where there are problems, like bullying and harassment at work. Encourage open and honest conversations and role model this.

Aim to create an environment where conflict is dealt with in a healthy way, and problems are addressed when they arise.

Have clear roles

A lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities can also be a factor that triggers stress, and impacts negatively on productivity. Ensuring employees are clear about their roles and what is expected of them will enable them to focus on what needs to be achieved as opposed to constantly questioning if they are doing the right thing.

Tamara Erikson carried out a study on team dynamics at BBC and Reuters, and found that successful collaboration was better in teams when each employee’s role was clearly defined. Role clarity can help reduce stress and boost productivity.

Meaningful goals

Meaningful and clear goals provide an employee with a sense of purpose and direction. Employees need a sense of purpose and clear direction to be productive. This drives engagement and motivation, where individuals feel that they are making a difference by doing what they do.

It’s not just about understanding what needs to be done, but why it needs to be done. Linking goals to the bigger picture provides a meaningful context to the employee.

Having a productive workforce entails putting your employees’ well-being at the top of your agenda. Leading employers are shifting their focus to employee well-being. A study by Virgin Group found that 59 per cent of organisations are maintaining ‘wellness and engagement budgets’ and 31 per cent of organisations are increasing these budgets.

As shown in the pcmag.com, there are some productivity apps you may want to check out as outlined below:

Any.do

Any.do is a collaborative (or personal) task-management app for iOS, Android, and Chrome. It’s a beautifully designed to-do app, but one unique feature, called the Any.do Moment, sets it apart from others. The Any.do Moment nudges you to make a habit of reviewing your daily tasks first thing in the morning so you’re never caught off guard by surprise tasks and meetings later in the day.

Asana

Collaborative workplace management tools are transforming how teams get work done together, and Asana was among the first to make a real splash. Asana helps teams keep track of what needs to get done and have both visibility into work and accountability, too. Businesses, large and small, are using it to manage projects, get employees off email, and inspire a new way of working. It’s said to be one of the best productivity apps available today.

Evernote

Evernote is a wonderful productivity app with a variety of uses. What started as a note-taking app for text, voice memos, photos, and more has grown into a full-fledged business tool with collaborative features. Excellent search capabilities, Evernote indispensable for finding important information quickly.

RescueTime

RescueTime does for your productivity what calorie-counting does for weight loss: It brings incredible attention and insight into your actual habits. RescueTime is a free time-tracking tool that reports the apps you use, websites you visit, and breaks you take over time. And RescueTime does more than just create self-awareness.

It also helps you stay on track while you work, blocking distracting sites and apps when you need to focus, and quantifying your productivity goals, such as spend less than one hour per day in email.

The writer is the founder and owner of Redstone Consulting, a Nairobi-based performance consulting firm that focuses on leadership development, change management, performance management, team development and executive coaching; Email: [email protected]