Best Way to Improve Your Work Performance
Organizations and companies often carry out performance reviews to ascertain if their workers are improving or not. Depending on the organization, such reviews are carried out quarterly or annually as the case might be. However, as an employee, you shouldn’t wait for a performance review before you take steps and strive to improve your work performance. In fact, workers and employees should be interested in enhancing their work performance on a daily basis. When you improve your work performance, you not only enhance your career growth and productivity; but the overall growth of the organization as well.
Also, there is always room for improvement and a possibility to do a better job regardless of your skills, productivity, expertise, and experience. There are steps to take to become the best version of yourself. Top of the list is having a desire and will to enhance your skills, and exploring ways and opportunities to learn something new. The benefits of striving to become the better version of yourself at work aren’t restricted to improved work performance alone; it creates potential opportunities for your professional development as well. These opportunities might either be in the short or long term respectively.
In addition, employers often reward employees who perform top in their department or unit, with promotions or an increase in salary. Therefore, make certain informed actions to stand out among your peers, strive to improve your work performance, and make your manager or supervisor think of you as one of the best members of staff. Similarly, improving your work performance will come in handy, when you need a recommendation or reference letter from your employer, to submit to an academic institution where you intend to further your studies for example. Thus, this article will discuss the meaning of work performance and provide a guide on the best way employees can improve their work performance.
What is Work Performance?
Work performance can be defined as the history of employees or workers’ responsibilities, and their ability to complete their job well. Organizations, employers, or companies often measure their employee’s work performance based on a variety of factors; ranging from the ability to complete tasks on time and expected/specified standards. Employers use your work performance metrics when considering if you are qualified for promotion or a pay rise. Hence, you can achieve effective career advancement when you improve your productivity at work.
As an employee, you can rapidly set goals to improve your performance at work, regardless of where you are in your career. Even if you are a data clerk, focus on enhancing your work performance. This will expose you to mentorship, and more career options, give you more job security and possibly lead to higher compensation at work. In addition, you become valuable, indispensable, and a priceless asset and employee to any organization. Relatively, improved work performance has been shown to enhance job satisfaction.
Tips on the Best Way to Improve Your Work Performance
Considering the importance of constant and never-ending self-improvement, the following tips will go a long way in improving your performance at work;
- Set clear milestones
- Plan and prioritize and conquer difficult tasks first
- Communicate better with coworkers and employers
- Eliminate distractions and Interruptions
- Acknowledge your strengths and weakness
- Show up early
- Focus on one task at a time
- Use feedback
- Learn more about top performers
Set Clear Milestones: Setting milestones is essential for personal and professional growth. Humans are fond of shooting for the stars and the same reflects in the goals we set. Being ambitious when setting goals is good, but being realistic is arguably better, especially at work. Also, goal setting has been found to be tasking and overwhelming; thus, to improve your performance at work, break your big professional and personal projects into smaller goals and milestones. Work on achieving each milestone on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis respectively. This in turn will increase your motivation; keep your energy levels high and ultimately improve your performance at work. Relatively, setting goals and milestones enable you to track your progress. While setting milestones, make sure you keep your eye on the deadline and save important dates and landmarks.
Plan and Prioritize and Conquer Difficult Tasks First: An essential way of improving your work performance is by planning and prioritizing adequately. To constantly improve at work, make organizing, planning, and prioritizing tasks part of your daily routine. This will help you get quality work done on time and invariably, improve your overall work performance. At the start of your day, make and go through the tasks, activities, or projects you need to accomplish for the day or week. Then make a scale of preference based on the submission time and priority. After that, take the most urgent and essential tasks into consideration and get them completed as soon as possible.
Obviously, you can’t do every task or activity at the same time. That’s why it is important you figure out what tasks can be postponed to a later time or day. Also, rank each task on your to-do list according to its difficulty and specific importance. The idea behind this ranking is very easy; if a task seems somewhat torturous to you, ease off your mind by getting rid of it as soon as possible. This will enable you to finish off relatively easier tasks on time and improve your overall performance.
Communicate Better with Coworkers and Employers: Effective communication is a proponent for improvement and success in every facet of life. However, communication is a two-way street; involving passing and receiving information. Ensuring better communication with your bosses and coworkers will help you improve your performance at work. When you communicate effectively at work, you become certain about things to do. In addition, you are able to learn improved and new techniques for achieving better results. Subsequently, you will have an improved work performance, when you share and listen to ideas from others. Don’t feel shy to ask questions or relay your concerns to colleagues; opening up will make you a better worker.
Eliminate Distractions and Interruptions: Some workers are the architect of their own failure at times. You have chunk loads of work or tasks to complete in a limited time, yet, you’re on social media replying to messages, or listening to the news on the television for instance. Also, coworkers can interrupt you with chit-chats while working. All these and more constitute distractions that inhibit your performance at work. They cause delays in your delivery and disrupt your work management by making you waste time, as well as lose focus.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’re distracted or interrupted at work; your ability to handle, curb and eliminate such distractions is all that counts. To avoid interruptions and distractions at work, stay off social media, learn to say no to unnecessary chit-chats and conversations, and turn off notifications on emails. You can always read your emails before you start work, during your break time, or after work respectively. This will enable you to keep your eye on completing your work successfully, and hence, improve your work performance.
Acknowledge Your Strengths and Weakness: The word “perfect” is too good to be true. There’s no way for you to be perfect in everything. We all have weak spots and acknowledging them is equally important, especially when it comes to identifying improvement opportunities. Additionally, every individual has his/her own strengths i.e. something they are exceptionally good at. Thus, in order to bring improvement to your everyday work performance, you need to cherish your strengths and overcome your weaknesses at the same time. You shouldn’t settle for “quite okay” when you can employ your strengths to achieve “awesome”. Be your own critic and keep evaluating your performance for potential improvements. If you’re pretty good at something, do whatever you can to be the best at it. If something is holding you back from being the best version of yourself, work on combating it; your work performance will surely improve.
Show up Early: Showing up late to work has the tendency to disorganize you. You may end up trying to explain your reasons for coming late while figuring out how to arrange your desk and the day as a whole. Therefore, try and be an early bird; make a conscious effort to always be at work on time. The benefits are enormous; ranging from getting your supervisors impressed to enhancing your work performance as a whole. Also, you should try and develop the habit of arriving at work 30 to 40 minutes early. The extra time will afford you ample time to relax, get coffee, avoid or escape traffic stress and subsequently prepare to work effectively for the day.
Focus on One Task at a Time and Avoid Procrastination: The concept of multitasking has reportedly inhibited improvement in the performance of some workers. There is a belief in some work cultures, that the most productive people multitask and complete several things at once to get things done. The truth is that when you multitask, you keep redirecting your attention from one thing to the next. It isn’t really possible to give your full attention to two things at once. Instead, it is better to give your full attention to one task before moving on to the next. You will likely finish both tasks faster and with fewer errors than if you try to multitask.
Relatively, procrastination is another inhibitor to improved work performance. Make sure you get your work done in due time; don’t procrastinate or leave it for another day when you can actually do it now. You will find yourself improving at work daily.
Use Feedback: If you have received any constructive criticism during weekly, quarterly and annual performance reviews or other settings, implementing this advice should be at the back of your mind, when thinking about improving your work performance. Feedback based on your performance is very useful; not only to identify what you need to work on, but also to understand what the employer values and how you can become an indispensable employee. Criticism is a measurement of your performance and can give you a platform to focus your efforts to improve your performance at work.
Learn More About Top Performers: Finally, there should be a plethora of individuals in your department or unit who have previously excelled or are progressing in the role. These people have been and are getting promoted and praised, for standing out and reaching top metrics. You should take time to observe their strategies, learn from them and come up with new techniques to improve your own performance. In addition, you should discuss challenges you face in the role and ask for advice when possible. This will give you some insights on how to become a top performer as well.