Happy employees are integral for a business success. Moira Dunne argues that while a wellbeing culture in the workplace is important, a productive culture is essential to maintaining the happiness of your staff.

Organisations that promote a wellbeing culture can benefit from increased output and better business outcomes. There is plenty of research to show that ‘happy’ employees are more productive. However, the reverse can also be true. A productive culture creates happy employees. People feel good when they are completing important tasks, feeling a sense of achievement, and taking control of their time and their output.

Encouraging mental fitness should be a key part of any wellbeing programme, and a lack of productivity can have a negative effect on the employee’s stress levels and general mental wellbeing. With a greater sense of achievement at work, employees can more easily switch off and refresh afterwards, improving work-life balance.

What is a productive culture?

A culture of productivity encourages everyone to perform at their best level. By removing barriers to productivity an organisation can enable people to achieve more. Employee wellbeing, happiness, engagement and output can all increase when everyone in the organisation is empowered to work productively.

To foster a productive culture, an organisation should examine its processes and the management styles.

• Do people have clarity about what is expected of them?
• Are there bottlenecks or inefficiencies?
• Do managers plan the work ahead of time?
• Are people collaborating?
• Have the employees got the right skills to be productive?
• Are the managers enabling productivity?

Managers and teams can work together to identify local barriers to productivity. This can strengthen relationships as they change how they communicate and work together.

Workplace stress

One of the main reasons for a lack of productivity is workplace stress. These are common reasons given by employees for workplace stress:

• changing demands and priorities;
• inefficient systems and processes;
• lack of clarity around role and expectations;
• poor communication with managers; and
• long hours and a poor work-life balance.

To ensure your employees are happy and healthy (and therefore productive), it’s important to ensure your employees aren’t falling victim to stress that the organisation can mitigate.

Improving productivity

Managers should be empowered and supported to make changes to processes or working practices. Some of these changes may take time to achieve. However, there are some practical adjustments an organisation can make quickly for very little cost:

• provide clarity around everyday roles and responsibilities;
• develop a productive approach to meetings to reduce time and improve follow up;
• use smart practices to reduce Email processing time;
• regularly review and set team priorities;
• reduce factors that interrupt solo work and productivity.

At the end of the day, not only does a productive culture cultivate happy employees and a healthy workplace, but it also improves business results as well.

Moira Dunne is the Founder of beproductive.ie. Moira is offering a workplace wellbeing day webinar on productivity and wellbeing on 30 April 2021. You can register here.