Employee Performance Guidance & Making People Feel Value

In business, no matter how much of a visionary you are, you can only get as far as your employees will take you. Enhancing employee job performance and engagement has long been a pain point in business, but with much research on the topic, it doesn’t have to be guesswork. If you want to improve employee performance, you have to practice effective communication throughout the organization.

Communication is elemental for success. Your business can’t run at its full potential if you don’t have any communication strategies in place. Or even worse, if you aren’t using an effective method for regular communication with your employees.

Whether we’re talking employee engagement, job productivity, or customer satisfaction — communication impacts all aspects of the business and drives real results.

And It’s not just these metrics that are impacted. A Harris Poll found that employees who feel their company effectively communicates valuable information are more than twice as likely as those who don’t to rate their company’s reputation as good. Similarly, employees are more likely to believe the best years are ahead for their employer.

Strategies to Improve Employee Performance

Communication is an ongoing process and should be treated just like any other business strategy that requires planning, coordination, technology, and execution. Establishing a formal communication plan and utilizing management to communicate valuable company information to employees is key.

Follow these three strategies to improve the performance of employees and ensure employees feel valued.

1. Company Goals

Research shows that companies who are the best at communication recognize the importance of communicating the “big picture” to employees. This means sharing the company’s vision and goals with every employee, especially the ones on the front lines.

When employees are aware of company goals, they feel more connected to the business and more dedicated to meeting their goals, leading to higher productivity. If everyone at your company isn’t aware of business objectives and the long term vision, you have a great opportunity for improvement through transparent, top-down communication.

2. How Employees Contribute to The Company’s Success

Making the connection between what employees do each day and how that directly affects the bottom-line is critical for driving engagement and productivity.

While some employees may be able to see their actions materialize as real results, not every employee has that insight. For deskless employees who are out working with customers each day, there’s nothing tangible that shows them just how instrumental their work is in meeting company goals.

Researchers have found that communicating employees’ contributions is one of the factors that separates high performing companies from low performing ones. As you can imagine, hearing how your hard work impacts the company’s success is very validating and inspires you to do even better.

3. Company Performance

Keeping employees updated on the company’s performance is important for creating a climate of openness and transparency. This type of environment makes employees feel valued and informed, further connecting them to business and motivating them to achieve company goals.

Transparency is important because it promotes trust, and trust creates an environment in which people are more likely to be honest, share ideas and knowledge, and collaborate towards common goals. Furthermore, transparent leadership is a key contributor to employee engagement.

In a recent poll by Quantum Workplace, the top employee engagement drivers included:

  • I trust our senior leaders to lead the company to future success.
  • The senior leaders of the organization value people as their most important resource.
  • If I contribute to the organization’s success, I know I will be recognized.
  • I believe this organization will be successful in the future.

Getting Started

If your company hasn’t tried any of these employee performance improvement suggestions, it’s a great time to start. Communication is essential for effective employee performance management. 

At many companies, top-down communication only happens at quarterly or annual “all hands” meetings. But to truly engage your workforce and improve employee performance, it needs to be more often than once or twice a year.

Technology is a great way to facilitate regular top-down communication. Leveraging a communication platform that allows management and leadership to broadcast company updates to teams or the entire company can make a huge difference.

Forward-thinking companies like Vivint Smart Home have begun to incorporate Zinc Real-Time Communication into their business strategy to make effective communication seamless.

No matter where an employee stands in the company, they are always connected to the people, teams, and resources they need. With open lines of communication between employees, management, and leadership, Vivint has raised employee engagement by 50% and reduced time to service, a huge metric for customer satisfaction, by 37%.

You can learn how to make employees feel valued by using Zinc for your company communications here, but in the meantime, make sure your employees know:

  • What the company’s goals and objectives are
  • How employees’ actions impact success
  • How the company is performing

ABOUT Kristen Wells

Kristen is the senior manager of corporate communications at PTC and editor of Field Service Digital. She is passionate about elevating the stories of women in field service and improving communication between the field and the office. Prior to ServiceMax, Kristen held content marketing roles at startups such as Zinc and cielo24. Kristen holds a B.A. in Communication with an emphasis on Professional Writing from the University of California, Santa Barbara.