All What Impacts Employee Performance & 5 Ways to Enhance It
All Performance Management

What Impacts Employee Performance & 5 Ways to Enhance It

Author: Ravijojla Novakovic Last updated: March 5, 2024 Reading time: 11 minutes

Employee performance is crucial to organizations. If employees do not perform well, they put their teams, departments, and companies in danger.

However, many employers still struggle with the right way to measure and improve their employee performance.

In this article, you will learn how HR professionals define employee performance, how they most commonly measure it, and the biggest influences on employee performance. Most importantly, you will discover how to increase employee performance in your organization!

Before you continue, check out our Recognition and Rewards Solution Buyer’s Guide to implement employee appreciation best practices in your entire company – and see your employee performance rise.

What Is the Definition of Employee Performance?

Employee performance is defined as how well employees execute their tasks and job responsibilities.

Employee performance has several dimensions – quality, quantity, efficiency, and consistency. It is closely related to employee productivity, although these two terms are not quite the same.

Naturally, enhancing their employees’ performance is in the company’s interest. In order to improve it, employee performance should first be measured. Here are the top four ways to grasp your employees’ performance.

What Are the Four Dimensions of Employee Performance?

1. Quality 

Is the work your employees complete of high quality? Are employees putting maximum levels of effort into their work? Are their goals and KPIs met?

These questions can help you determine the quality of your employees’ performance.

2. Quantity

It is good when employees focus on the quality of their work – but as long as that work is completed on time. This is why you need to track if goals are being met on time, and help your employees increase their output if not.

3. Efficiency

Efficiency could be perceived as an intersection of quality and quantity. If employees produce high-quality work in minimal time frames, it proves that they are very efficient in what they do. 

However, the optimal employee performance does not equal burdening your employees with too much work despite their efficiency – everybody needs some time to rest.

4. Consistency

Do employees consistently perform their work well, or do you see significant highs and lows throughout the week, month, and year? Pay attention to this aspect of performance, as it could help you conclude what impacts your individual employees’ performance the most.

4 dimensions of employee performance

6 Biggest Influences on Employee Performance

Grasping employee performance is complex. It is composed of various factors that have different weights for different employees.

However, if you do not know what influences your employees’ performance, it will be hard to optimize it.

Employee surveys are useful tools in finding out what drives your employees to do their best, as well as in detecting potential challenges.

Browse through the most revealing employee survey questions and find out what your employees really think.

Here are the biggest influences on employee performance.

1. Knowledge, experience, & skills

Naturally, one of the biggest influences on employees’ performance are their knowledge, experience, and skills they already possess. Employees without any of these three will most likely perform poorly. 

This is exactly why it is crucial to offer training to employees who are advancing to more demanding roles. Moreover, it shows the value of hiring the right candidate for the job.

2. Motivation

When employees are not motivated to do their jobs, their performance will naturally be lower. Luckily, there are many ways to motivate employees.

Some employees will be more extrinsically motivated – by salary, for example – while others are intrinsically motivated: they just love doing what they do.

However, employee motivation is a complex issue itself – so jump to our next chapter to find out how to motivate employees and thus enhance their performance.

Find out how to boost your employees’ motivation with ten tricks.

3. Health and wellness

Did you know that mental and physical health are “found guilty” for 84% of direct and 93% of indirect losses in productivity? Imagine the effect this has on employees’ performance!

However, there is a lot of talk about both mental and physical health in the workplace, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

how employee wellbeing impacts productivity

4. Psychological resilience

In order to maximize their performance potential, employees need to build psychological resilience. In 2021, 40% of US employees reported their jobs were extremely or very stressful. 

Although employees must learn to cope with stressful situations better, employers should ensure that those situations are reduced to a minimum.

5. Ability to work well in a team

In an interconnected world like ours, efficient collaboration and communication are crucial for businesses.

As employers see the benefits of collaboration, they look for employees who will cooperate successfully to achieve the best end results.

Therefore, if employees depend on teamwork to achieve their individual goals but do not have good collaboration skills, their performance will suffer.

6. Management style

Direct management is probably one of the biggest influences on employee performance. Ever heard of micromanagement or lack of feedback?

It is no wonder that one in two employees have left their jobs to get away from their managers.

management influence on employees

How To Measure Employee’s Performance

Evaluating how well employees are doing at work uses different methods and metrics. It helps see if they’re meeting job expectations and helping the company reach its goals.

Here are some common ways and measures used for this:

Examples of employee measuring methods

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used in employee performance reviews to help both the manager and employees see if employees have reached the goals and expectations and how well they are doing their jobs.

KIPs are often compared to goals which allow managers and supervisors to measure employee’s performance fairly and easily. When KPIs are not met, managers need to identify the problem, offer constructive feedback to employees, and set an improvement plan to help the employee perform better in the future.

Goal setting and monitoring

It is essential to establish clear and measurable goals before beginning work and evaluating employee performance. Goals act as a roadmap that guides employees in fulfilling their tasks. Clear goals also help avoid confusion and motivate employees to achieve their targets.

By setting goals, everyone knows what’s expected, and employees can get feedback regularly to make things better. It’s a fair and straightforward way to see how everyone is contributing to the company’s success.

360-degree feedback

360-degree feedback is a valuable method used in employee performance reviews, as it helps managers and team leaders acquire feedback from multiple sources rather than relying solely on their own assessment.

This type of performance review includes feedback from colleagues and sometimes even managers themselves.

The 360-degree feedback can help managers see employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and how other employees perceive their colleagues.

This type of evaluation method is like getting feedback from multiple sources on whether someone is doing their job properly.

Performance evaluations

Performance evaluation is a process where managers and employees assess how employees are doing their work.

It’s a chance for managers to see what’s going well, if employees need to improve something, and what goals to aim for in the future. However, it’s not just about the job itself, managers can also use performance employees to evaluate how everyone is working together as a team.

By conducting regular employee reviews, each person in the organization can grow in their role and make sure everyone’s efforts are moving the whole company forward.

Examples of employee performance metrics

Sales performance

Sales performance is a great way to see how well someone is doing at work. It shows clear results, like how much money they bring in and if they meet goals.

When performance is linked to sales, it often motivates employees with rewards, creating a culture focused on goals. In simple terms, it’s an easy way to measure how someone helps the company succeed through their sales efforts.

Productivity metrics

Productivity metric helps managers measure how much and how well things are getting done.

If a task is completed quickly and the results are good, that’s high productivity. It’s like a way to check if everyone is doing their part efficiently and contributing to the team’s goals.

These metrics are useful for finding ways to improve and making sure everyone is working well to help the team succeed.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a good metric to measure employee performance because it shows how well employees are meeting customer’s needs and expectations.

This measure helps companies see how well employees make customers happy, find ways to do better, and appreciate those who do a great job in keeping customers satisfied.

Training and development participation

Training and Development Participation is a good way to see how much employees are into learning and getting better at their jobs.

This metric helps companies measure how interested employees are in improving their skills, spot those who actively want to learn, and encourage a culture where everyone values getting better at what they do.

How To Improve Employee Performance?

The secret to unlocking your employees’ potential lies in creating a positive employee experience.

Also, the groundwork for optimizing employee performance includes taking care of company culture, thus making your company a place where employees feel safe and productive.

Before you continue to learn how you can increase employee performance, get these five essential steps for creating a strong workplace culture.

1. Encourage training and development

Why learning and development matters in a workplace

Workers cannot improve their work without their employers’ assistance. If you want better employee performance, you must give your workers guidance and training.

Ensuring employee development will have a double effect on your employees’ performance. First, it will ensure your employees learn new skills so they can do their jobs better.

Second, since most employees want development opportunities, they will be more motivated, thus indirectly improving their performance.

2. Communicate often and clearly

According to McKinsey, employees’ productivity increases by 25% when they are connected. Moreover, ineffective communication causes stress for workers, which is counterproductive.

Therefore, you need to ensure that you are applying employee communication best practices in your company, which include:

  • Enabling access to information from multiple devices – laptops, mobile phones, etc.
  • Involving C-level leadership in your internal communication strategy
  • Preventing information overload
  • Audience segmentation
  • Encouraging more communication within teams.

3. Recognize your employees’ work

how recognition impacts employee productivity

One of the best ways to inspire better employee performance is by appreciating your employees’ work. Did you know that 69% of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were better appreciated?

Research suggests that the best ratio of positive to negative feedback is 5:1 if you want optimal levels of employee performance. Here are some ideas to recognize your employees’ work:

4. Redesign your benefits policy

If there is one thing that the pandemic has taught organizations around the world, it is that remote work is here to stay.

Not only did employees adapt to the work-from-home model, but many also want to keep working remotely or at least in a hybrid arrangement.

After all, many employees are more productive working from home, which, in the end, affects their performance.

So, try to see if your employee benefits package needs to be updated – and include hybrid work options into the benefits bundle.

5. Give constructive feedback continuously

If we had to single out one thing that has the most profound effect on employee performance, it would be employee feedback.

A whopping 92% of employees agree that when delivered correctly, negative feedback is an effective way to improve performance.

Continuous, informal feedback on their work is especially important to Millennials and Gen Z in the workplace. These generations rely on the approval of their efforts in order to enhance their performance.

There are multiple ways in which managers and leaders can deliver feedback. It is important to remember that positive feedback needs to outweigh negative one. Moreover, it is important to learn how to deliver constructive feedback for it to have a lasting, redirective effect.

Also, many employers still practice only the annual performance reviews, while in reality, performance should be reviewed much more often. In order to be effective, employee performance reviews need to be regular, fair, and consistent – that is why it is best to use employee evaluation forms every time.

Takeaway

You probably get it by now – improving employee performance takes a 360-degree approach. This could pose a significant challenge to many organizations – unless you have guidance and tools that work for you.

Semos Cloud has been serving enterprise clients with complex infrastructure for years. We are happy to be transforming the employee experience in many organizations that see their engagement and retention rates increasing after implementing our software.

If you want to enhance your employees’ performance, get in touch with our team and reap the benefits of the exceptional employee experience our solutions offer.

Streamline Employee Feedback

Manage Feedback Programs on a Local and Global Scale

Start today
dei initiatives