Employees are arguably the best asset of any organization, but the truth is that many employees do not perform at their optimum because of various reasons like low motivation, poor working conditions, unclear goals, laziness etc.

Understanding the reason for poor performance is a critical first step towards improving employee performance. If you do not know the cause of a thing, you cannot effectively treat the symptoms. You have to diagnose the problem. This can be done through examining trends (of the employees work). Ask yourself, what causes these trends?

Please find below some tips that will help you improve the performance of your employees at the workplace:

• Identify their talents: Make sure to identify the core strengths and talents of your employees so that you can assign tasks appropriately. Please ensure that no team member is mismatched and you can achieve this by doing a constant review. The review helps you ensure that round pegs are placed in round holes and this might mean that you will have to reshuffle jobs or out rightly let go of some of your employees.
• Focus on Essential things: Focus on the bottom line; ensure that critical tasks are prioritized. Ensure that the team understands the vision, mission and core values of the organization. So that they make important decisions in line with the objectives of the organization.
• Invest in Personal and Professional Development: Live evolves and so should your business activities. Please ensure that you actively develop the skills your employees this will keep them motivated and excited. It will also ensure that the do their jobs effectively.
• Work smarter: Make sure your team works smart, what this means is that you have to provide the necessary tools they need to deliver their assignments on time. Please ensure that unnecessary overtime is avoided so that your team comes in each day refreshed and ready for the day’s work however, do not tolerate laziness. Encourage the hard workers on your team, mentor them or find a suitable mentor for them if need be. This is important and it will help them improve their performance. To work smartly is to be innovative.
• Enlist the power of your environment by collaborating with others to grow: Seek out less stressful and low cost ways to achieve your goals. Pull resources together, brainstorm of better strategies for better outcome.
• Have a robust rewarding system: Ensure that hard work is rewarded accordingly. Reward your team for every time they complete an important project.