In any type of business, labor productivity rates are directly linked to profitability. Are your labor productivity rates good enough to generate high levels of profit? You should not be satisfied with your current work productivity because there is always some way to make things better and better. It’s that little extra that makes the difference between a struggling business and one that’s a resounding success.

It requires commitment as a business owner or manager to maximize labor productivity in such a way that no one works harder. Working smarter is the answer, but unfortunately there are many companies that fail to achieve even a reasonable level of labor productivity.

Decide how much profit you want to get. Calculate labor productivity levels to make it happen. Start looking at how you can lead your workforce to produce more by leveraging their knowledge and skills. To do this, you need the right working environment, and that’s a trusted one. If you were to ask your staff members about smarter and better ways to get the job done, what would their answer be?

You must do today what others will not, in order to achieve tomorrow what others cannot. It’s much better to think about how to create the right environment for you to harness the collective knowledge, innovation, and skill of the people you employ. One of the smartest ways to outshine your competition is to improve the labor productivity of your workplace.

While everyone is out on the golf course complaining about the economy and failing businesses, you could be planning to increase your work productivity, which in turn will increase your profits. There is no point wishing things were better or imagining what it would be like in a prosperous economy, you have to change what you are doing to win.

The more dissatisfied you are with the current situation, the more pain you feel, the more likely you are to do something different. Consider how you can introduce a way to measure productivity that can be used to give feedback to staff members. If you get stuck on this strategy, ask your staff how they could see it work, get ideas, set up a forum where these ideas can be discussed and installed.

The first stage in improving productivity in the workplace is to set up a feedback system so people know how they are doing. Chances are that at your workplace, your staff members don’t get positive reinforcement this way. One of my favorite questions to ask every person on the shop floor is, “Are you having a good day today and how do you know?”

In a productive environment, every staff member, every supervisor, every manager, and the business owner will be able to answer that question.