Hitting the "sweet spot" of employee productivity

Many companies are now looking for new productivity solutions that can help them to achieve highly across the board and allows their staff to operate more efficiently.

The importance of engaging staff has been underscored by recent research from the US organisation Gallup, which looked at the strategies companies might be able to pursue in order to boost their productivity.

According to the research, high performing staff are in a minority worldwide, with only 5 per cent of staff falling into this "sweet spot" where they are working at their best. While these highly productive workers are few and far between, they also experienced higher than average productivity, recording an increase of 18 per cent over their colleagues.

Staff members who fell into this highly engaged category possessed three unique qualities that set them apart from other workers. These three are: tenure, engagement and talent.

While it is clearly rare for staff to possess all of these traits, the study highlights just how important it is to look at how staff are performing and whether there is room to help them achieve more. If companies can take a critical approach to their efforts to boost engagement, for example, it is also going to help boost productivity.

In Australia, the importance of boosting staff performance has been on the radar for some time, with a report in The Australian last year highlighting just how fundamental staff productivity is for businesses looking to achieve highly.

This trend has also been underscored by recent research from Deloitte. The study reported that employee engagement is becoming increasingly important for organisations across the country as a tool to boost productivity.

In fact, the number of employers who rank engagement as being very important to their performance has grown to 50 per cent of those surveyed, compared to only 26 per cent the year before. This was enough to make engagement the single largest concern of companies who took part in the survey.

The Deloitte research also cited a number of other key developments that are helping them to realise new potential. Contingent workforce hiring is expected to increase 51 per cent over the next three to five years.

Many companies are also expected to invest in new recruitment software solutions that can assist with the hiring process. Only 8 per cent of respondents to the survey reported this was an area they excel in at present.

Clearly employee engagement and productivity are going to continue to be major issues for companies moving forward, with many more organisations likely to invest resources into this area.