How to Increase Employee Engagement and Motivation

In 1817, Robert Owen realized that people are not productive for 10 or 16 hours, which was the length of the working day at that time. Although his campaign did not bear fruit at the time, he is credited with raising awareness of this pressing issue. His idea only came to life in 1914 when Ford Motor Company reduced working hours to what we know today. Almost a century later, this topic has found its way back into public discourse. What is our actual productivity in this fast-paced age, the portal MojPosao (operating within the Alma Career group) tried to find out in a survey conducted on over 800 respondents.

Just under half of the respondents (47%) admitted that they are most often productive for less than six hours a day, a third stated (37%) that their productivity lasts from six to eight hours, and as many as 16% of respondents are productive for more than eight hours.

What do they do when they are not working?

When not working, employees spend time socializing with colleagues, on average 43 minutes, then surfing the internet for 29 minutes, and messaging friends and family, for which they spend 21 minutes. The least time employees spend is on private phone calls, 14 minutes (which they probably replaced with messaging) and doing private tasks outside the office, which takes 15 minutes. Interestingly and relatively unexpectedly, respondents spend only 17 minutes of their time on social media.

Although only half of the respondents (51%) perform private tasks outside the office, such situations are rare – a few times a month or less. They most often involve some urgent obligations such as going to the doctor or obtaining personal documents.

Respondents primarily use activities unrelated to work as a break from work tasks (65%). A third of respondents (34%) waste time on other activities because they feel they are not paid enough for the work they do, and a similar percentage (32%) believes they have no time for private tasks after working hours and must do them during work hours. One in four respondents (25%) simply does not have enough work at their job, so they fill their time with other things, and one in five (20%) states that the tasks they have are boring and unmotivating.

While we all need a break from work, two-thirds of respondents (63%) state that activities unrelated to work do not affect their productivity. One in four respondents (26%) stated that such activities increase their productivity, while 11% admitted that such ‘distractions’ reduce their productivity during the workday.

According to the respondents, employers could increase their productivity with higher salaries (69%) or more interesting work tasks (45%). Greater purposefulness of work tasks as well as recognition from a superior would increase productivity for one in three respondents (35% and 34% respectively). Overall, a better relationship with superiors would increase productivity for a quarter (26%) of respondents, who also cite better work organization, working from home, and a shortened workweek as ways to increase productivity.

Listen to Your Employees

While some employees are satisfied with their productivity, investing in their engagement is an item that every employer should pay attention to, as engaged and satisfied employees are the greatest asset of a company regardless of the number of hours worked in a day. To discover what motivates and engages your employees, it is necessary to listen to their wishes and needs, and your best ally in this can be Pulser – a tool for researching employee satisfaction that has been on the market for sixteen years. With the help of Pulser’s research, you can guarantee your employees professional data processing, impartiality, and anonymity. This approach will yield genuine and honest responses with which you can together build a successful, productive, and satisfying business story.