One of the most important things that we need to think about at the minute are the innovations that are occurring across the world to increase workplace productivity. For years, people thought that pressuring their employees was the best way to drive up profit margins, but in recent years, studies have proven that the exact opposite is true.

Current Activities and Innovations that are Affecting Workplace Productivity 

Over recent years, more and more businesses have started paying attention to the ways that they can directly improve workplace productivity. This can be done by improving the overall happiness of employees, a factor that direct affects profit margins across the world.

For quite some time now, companies have been working out how they can use team building activities to affect the happiness of their employees. Taking the focus away from profit margin and focusing them on creating a perfect team that works together in harmony actually increases profit margins, even though the attention was taken away from the profit margin.

This does mean that some money needs to be spent initially, but the increase of productivity means larger profit margins, so the money would have been well spent. You could take your team on an excursion together, be it a hunting trip or a trip around a specific location. Putting your team slightly out of their comfort zone helps, as it makes them work together and rely on each other more.

Another factor that businesses are starting to focus on is the workplace environment itself. Most importantly, the noise levels that are present in the workplace. This is because most people cannot be productive when they are surrounded by a large amount of noise, simply finding it to be distracting.  There are things that you can do to conquer this, such as investing in acoustic plaster or sound-proofing the rooms that your employees work in. Anything that can reduce soundwaves and minimise noise is a fantastic idea.

Lastly, you need to consider the role of real technology within your business and how you as someone in charge can keep up to date with new innovations and technology. No employee wants to be sat in an office with a computer that resembles a box, although a lot of employees around the world still are.

Technology has advanced past that point and this new technology can be utilised to increase workplace productivity on a large scale, if we allow it to that is. Modern devices can now be used to generate and distribute information at just the touch of a button, so why would we not want to benefit from that?

Why is all of this so important? 

For decades now, businesses have strongly believed in providing all of their employees with an incredibly high-pressure environment. They thought that this would push their employees to their limit, believing that this would increase employee productivity and thus affect the financial success and profit margins of the entire company.

A lot of research has been done into this idea over the past few years and it has in fact demonstrated and proven that the opposite is true. It turns out that a high-pressure environment such as this would only produce a high level of stress among employees, slowly harming the overall productivity and profit margins as time passes.

On the other hand, the same research has successfully proven that a positive environment does the opposite. It can be utilised to drive benefits, opposed to ruining the financial success of the company. The happier your employee is, the more likely your employee is going to want your company to succeed, meaning that if you look after your employees they will in turn look after you.

Due to this, you should always speak to your employees, or have someone else in place to do so if you cannot. This will enable you to see how you employees are actually feeling and whether or not they have any issues with the workplace environment that you could quickly resolve.

Essentially, all of this means that the best way to drive your profit margins is to create a harmonious workplace environment.