Keep Employee Productivity High During the Holidays (Without Being a Scrooge)

The last few months of the year often require us to buckle down and chase end-of-year goals aggressively. It’s an important time to stay productive, so every management team has a close eye on performance. But fussing over deadlines and deliverables isn’t a very merry way to spend the holidays.

With the right support, your employees can take the reigns themselves and let you off the hook, allowing you to focus your attention on other things—and avoid being the office Grinch. For that to work, you need to plan carefully and help your team help themselves. Provide the right combo of managerial support and mobile-optimized knowledge, and rest easy knowing that your employees have everything they need to crush their goals for December.

Here’s how.

Measure employee productivity

Rather than constantly hounding all of your employees about their productivity, use sales analytics to see who needs extra encouragement and who’s getting down to business without any interruptions. All employees work differently, and some are naturally more independent than others. Provide extra support to those who need it, and let those who don’t continue to do what works for them. This lets you focus your energy and resources effectively, rather than putting your entire team through the same interventions unnecessarily.

Offer some downtime

Employees who take breaks throughout the day are up to 9% more productive than employees who don’t. Encourage your team to take some time to themselves, preventing burnout and allowing them to focus more clearly on the task at hand.

While it may seem intuitive to keep pushing through the day and neglect breaks during the busy holiday season, it’s important to make sure that your team gets away from the computer screen regularly throughout the day. The holidays are also a prime time for vacation and travel, so be sure that your employees are taking the time that they need to rejuvenate, re-focus, and kick off 2016 refreshed.

Give your team the right tools

You can give your employees all the training in the world and it still won’t help them be productive without the right tools to complete the work. Intel upgraded their employees to new wireless laptops and saw productivity rise by 100 hours per year, per employee.

Avoid giving your team just the bare minimum—upgraded tech tools gets the work done faster and more consistently. Quality smartphones or tablets loaded with the right tools can help your employees work whenever they’ve got the downtime, whether that’s between holiday parties or stuck in traffic en route to Grandma’s.

Encourage work-life balance and flexibility

Give your employees the freedom to attend office holiday parties or take some family time when it matters most. Businesses that let their employees work autonomously with flexible schedules benefit immensely, with growth up to four times quicker than businesses that don’t.

When your employees have great work-life balance, they’re eager to give back by giving their all when it comes to crushing holiday deadlines and meeting end-of-year quotas. Recognize that your employees are individuals with unique needs for personal time, and give them the support that they need to meet those needs.

Utilize optimized L&D and sales enablement content

It’s easy for your team to waste time searching for reference materials, such as L&D and sales enablement content. Rather than providing valuable work information in the form of outdated binders and static files, try switching to a cloud-based delivery platform instead. This lets your employees quickly search for the answers to their questions without wasting time flipping through a lengthy table of contents. Your employees don’t have to struggle to remember everything when the information is right at their fingertips instead.  

This holiday season, don’t waste any time. Prepare your team to be productive by giving them the tools and the information that they need to get their work done quickly and efficiently, freeing up time for festivities.