What is productive skills

Productivity Skills to Optimize Performance

May 9, 2020 By Hitesh Bhasin Tagged With: Skills

Are you not happy with your performance and looking for some skills that can optimize your work-rate and outputs? –Then being aware of the right productivity skills for you and incorporating those in your life/work style will resolve this issue for you.

When you comprise the productivity skills that we are going to discuss in this post, they will enable you to become less stressed and more effective to go ahead in the game. So, without any further ado, let us start delving deep into the world of productivity skills-

Table of Contents

What are Productivity Skills?

For enhancing efficiency and performance, productivity skills come in play.

To extract the best out of their employees, businesses need to build a positive work environment inside the workplace. A set of soft skills could help businesses to establish an engaging work environment in an office. This small effort can create a noticeable impact on the productivity of the organization.

Apart from technical skills, a wide range of soft skills is beneficial to motivate a whole team of workers inside an organization. Some of the vital soft skills can be communication, time management, emotional intelligence, planning, and so forth.

Few employees with a solid background of soft skills could motivate their co-workers that could enhance their efficiency. It will possess a significant impact on team performance as everyone will work as a team player.

These useful soft skills will remove the barrier between the hierarchy levels of the organization. As a result, professional individuals belong in different groups of an organization can work as the same team. This unity of individuals will work together to achieve a common goal for the improvement of the organization.

Let us now have a look upon some of the essential productivity skills that can play a significant role in optimizing the performance of an individual as well as an organization-

Most Important Productivity Skills to Optimize Performance

The following list of soft skills could potentially improve the performance of an organization.

1) Problem Solving Skills

This is a very impactful attribute of an employee and can create a positive impact on any organization to achieve specific goals. Employees with excellent problem-solving skills will be able to share their idea in difficult situations of organization. This will be beneficial for their personal growth inside the organization as well as the growth of the company.

Staff with proper research and analytical skills can solve specific problems by implementing certain ideas. The employee should have some risk management skills, which are also an essential part of problem-solving.

An individual should have a creative vision to forecast the implication of his or her idea to solve problems. Having good reasoning power will also help in increasing productivity skills.

2) Good Communication Skills

An excellent employee, having reliable communication would be a unique attribute for career growth. An employee should able to communicate effectively with the higher management as well as, the lower division staff.

It could develop a healthy environment that enhances the productivity, commitment, and morale of the organization.

To achieve good communication skills, an employee must work on developing self-confidence and try to become the center of attraction.

He or she should learn how to become a more engaging speaker to make an impact on the discussions. As an employee, one should remember that everybody would listen to a good speaker.

3) Prioritizing tasks

For enhancing your performance, you must know things that are more important to handle. That is why; prioritizing tasks is considered one of the essential productivity skills.

You should know which task is more important, and accordingly, you should make your schedule. It will also guide you in making the right decisions in your personal as well as in your professional life which will

ultimately optimize your performance.

4) Time Management Ability

Every organization working on different projects and consignments strictly follows a schedule and employees must know time management.

All the employees should be able to perform their assigned tasks within a particular deadline without any failure.

Therefore employees must know time management skills as well as maintain the quality of their performance.

For every organization, time is equivalent to money, and they follow strict deadlines to meet a particular milestone. If you can encourage your employees to learn time management skills, it will bring a significant impact on productivity.

If a team can complete a specific project before the deadline, then the organization can get a reward from it.

While addressing a gathering about the significance of time management and productivity skills, Charles Richards, the author of The Psychology of Wealth-

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

So, when you know the right time management skills, you will be able to do more tasks in the same time duration, and hence, your productivity will for sure be optimized.

5) Team Working Skill

You might know about this term at the time of interviews and in a different organization or some lecture. This is an essential attribute related to soft skills, and every employee should know how to work as a team.

There can be many professionals in a company performing different tasks, but they share a common goal.

Employees make an effort to make some profit for the company and help the organization to achieve specific goals.

In a company, there are so many different groups performing different kinds of tasks. But there should be a professional connection between these groups of individuals. Otherwise, a company can lose synchronism, and it might create an adverse effect on the work environment.

6) Decision Making

You can improve the decision-making skills of an employee by allowing them to participate in high-level decision making. An employee could get a broad knowledge of the investment of the organization and to know their responsibility more clearly.

It will help them to improve their performance and create a substantial impact on the productivity of the organization.

Many recruiters are looking for this attribute while they hire new employees for their organization. After recruiting new employees in an organization, you can arrange training programs to grow up soft skills in those employees.

It will always help a company to give tough challenges to the competitors in the market. And hence, the total productivity of your organization will get optimized.

7) Having ABCD Skills

This is again one of the essential skills that will be quite crucial in optimizing your performance.

The ABCD formula is understood as “Above & Beyond the Call of Duty.”

When you incorporate the meaning of this formula, you make some extra efforts than your comfort zone to do something that even exceeds your expectations.

When you this skill in you, it will motivate you in going the extra mile that can even surprise you.

8) Manage your Distractions

You should always manage things that distract you from your essential tasks.

You need to understand what your external and internal distracters and time wasters.

You need to know the things that impede you in completing your tasks in the way you always wanted to achieve.

After going through these essential productivity skills, let us now have a look upon some tips to improve productivity skills of your organization or workplace-

How to Optimize Productivity Skills of your Organization?

1. Greet The Employees Well

To build a positive and productive work environment, you must make a good relationship with the employees. One can efficiently perform this by showing kind gestures to the employees can create a long-term impact on their performance. If you are a manager, you should greet your employees when you meet them in the morning.

These kinds of gestures will create a positive relationship that helps to grow the organization. You can ask them about their weekends; enquire about the problems they are facing at work. You can help them by giving solutions, and you can earn their trust that could enhance productivity.

2. Praise The Employees

When an employee performs a task very well then as a manager, you should appreciate the effort. Just give your employees a little praise and precise recognition occasionally which will keep them motivated for a long time. It will be a small but effective step to improve the productivity of your organization.

If you can give specific rewards or incentives to the employees for their excellent work, then it will be more effective. Other employees also get motivated through this process to achieve rewards or incentives. It will create a substantial long term impact in terms of productivity.

3. Engaging Employees In Fun Activities

You can arrange a dinner or lunch for your team to encourage them. This will build a better relationship that helps to enhance a team’s performance. Companies that follow this culture will improve productivity.

4. Conduct Training Programs

It is essential to conduct training programs often for the employees after certain intervals. That will help employees to brush up their skills and knowledge and retain their excellent performance. Employees take their responsibilities more seriously due to these training programs.

The main reason behind these training programs is to identify the problems that employees are facing in their work. They can able to know their weak parts and rectify their mistakes which enhances their performance. As a result, the overall performance of the organization will improve for a long term basis.

5. Provide Wide Space To Work | Productivity Skills

It is necessary to provide your workers with a pleasant and friendly environment to work by providing them with a full working space. Where they can relax or hanging around while they feel tired, go outside for a break, etc. This will allow them to meet co-employees and build a good relationship.

Hence it will be very beneficial to improve their performance by giving them certain freedom in their workplace. It will create a noticeable impact on their performance and help the company to achieve more profit.

Employees will accept their workplace as a healthy environment to work and never try to leave the company.

6. Arrange Short Trips Occasionally

Arranging some short tours for employees is an excellent plan to recharge their energy. After spending a lot of time in the workplace can affect the work-life balance of employees. Therefore gathering trips occasionally will keep the employees motivated toward their work.

It will bring them the opportunity to know their colleagues more closely that builds up a positive relationship in the organization. You, as a manager, also have the chance to know about employees more carefully. That can develop a friendly environment which helps in team performance to enhance the productivity of the organization.

7. Collect Feedback From Employees | Productivity Skills

In this feedback process, you will able to know what employees think about you and can rectify yourself. Always try to be a leader of the organization and not to be the boss of the employees. It will lead your organization to achieve bigger goals.

You should be bothered about the negative feedbacks about you and try to rectify those errors. It will help you to become friendlier to your employees and manage them properly. Employees should get positive energy while working under you that helps to improve the productivity of your organization.

Summing up Productivity Skills!

From this content, we hope that you have got a guideline on how to improve your and your company’s productivity.

This will help you to build a positive and motivated work environment in your office. You can prepare your company to achieve bigger targets and can develop your organization.

The guide will help you to bring the best out of your employees and develop them to face more significant challenges.

What according to you, are the essential productivity skills for optimizing the performance? Share your views with us in the comments below.

Net Languages Blog

Online language learning

What are language “skills”?

Skills relate to different aspects of using language; such as listening, reading, writing or speaking. Skills are our ability to do these things. They are usually divided into two types: receptive and productive.

What are receptive and productive skills?

Receptive skills are those used in understanding; reading or listening. Productive skills involve producing language; speaking or writing.

It is important to consider skills when designing language learning materials. This helps to identify the aims of an activity or lesson.

It is generally accepted that receptive skills should come before productive skills; however, it is important to remember that communication is interactive and requires the use of all skills most of the time. Dividing language into skill areas for teaching and evaluation purposes does not necessarily reflect how language is really used.

Ideally, learning materials have a multi-layered skills approach, where all skills are covered and combined in a realistic way.

How do you create materials that practise all the skills?

Well, the way to do this is to think about day-to-day things we do and see how they naturally involve different skills.

For example, imagine you are organising a work trip or a social excursion with some friends. Perhaps you first read an email proposing the trip; next, you write a response. Then maybe you speak about the trip or listen to a phone message about a change of plan. You negotiate the details of the trip, either writing or speaking, and then tell someone about your planned trip. During that process you read, write, listen and speak.

We can use this model to develop learning materials, linking each activity in the sequence in a logical way.

In the following video, you will see a sample from the Net Languages English for International Tourism online course. It shows part of a sequence of exercises designed to practise both receptive and productive skills.

Note: Click on “cc” to select subtitles.

Each unit of a Net Languages course is designed to incorporate practice of all of the skills needed to communicate in another language, as you can see in this unit outline from the Pre-Elementary (A1) level of the General English online course.

Teaching Receptive and Productive Skills

In this course, I learned so many new and helpful things about teaching, grammar, teaching methods, students, groups, ESA methods, lesson planning, games, etc.

This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Teodora R. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.

Listen to this blog post:

General Overview

I also learned about teaching skills and which part of them we can say that they are important. We can say that there are many positions we can call teaching, professors, tutors, and teachers. But let’s talk about actual skills. I can say that there are two types of teaching skills, but they are both equally important.

What can I say about receptive skills is that they are a very important part of teaching. 2 basic types are: reading and listening. Students always have problems with reading and listening so the teacher should always try their best to keep students focus and encourage them to read. The teacher should always make a lesson plan and it has to content.

Lesson Stage

The teacher should always choose the material which students are interested in, the choice of topic is very important because in that way the teacher will have attention and students will listen. The teacher should motivate students to think in a foreign language and to use their mind. So we can say that this teaching skill is one of the indispensable parts of teaching.

Productive Skills

Productive skills we can divide into two groups: speaking and writing. Those two skills are made for communication. Therefore the teacher should motivate students to communicate with each other and with the teacher. The teacher should encourage them to speak, even if they are not the ready teacher should find what’s the problem and solve it. Most of the students are shy or have no confidence so therefore the teacher should always know how to react. Most of the students are scared of making mistakes so from the beginning teacher should not pay full attention to mistakes, the teacher should give students time. There are some techniques I learned about how to encourage students. One of them is group and pair work which I think is helpful and it’s a good option to make students beaver. Of course, the teacher should always go step by step. Speaking is a really important part of our lives.

Writing skills: writing skills sometimes can be boring because the class is quiet. So the teacher should make it more fun for students. Here we also have engaged, study and activate. I don’t have to say much more about writing but no doubt is important and it’s an essential part of learning English.

Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course today!

In this course, like I said I learned a lot of useful things and I hope it will help me to be a good teacher

Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad!

Send us an email or call us toll-free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.

Why Teaching Productive Skills is Important

Teaching is the passing on of knowledge and ideas to a particular person or group, especially about politics, religion, science or society. The ability to use a language is called language skill. When we learn a language we usually learn four for skills to effectively communicate in that language. These usually are, listening being the first, speaking the language, reading and finally writing skills. Productive skills can be defined as the production of good or useful things in large quantities or to do something well or type of workability that you learn through training and continuous practice.

This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Sepo M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.

Speaking and Writing

In language, productive skills are speaking and writing. These skills are very important because learners need to articulate words and write to produce language. Learners receive language by listening to conversations, music, videos, podcasts, audiobooks and also by reading comprehension, newspapers, poems, books, etc. Speaking and writing skills are crucial as they allow students to practice real-life activities in the classrooms and can help with day to day communication especially in a foreign country, one has to at least have the basic knowledge of sentence construction in of the particular foreign language to have an easier time communicating. In a classroom, These two skills can be used as a barometer to check how much the learners have learned.

Speaking is vital unless someone is learning English purely for academic reasons and does not intend to communicate in English which is quite rare. Good command on speaking skills develops a sense of progress among learners and boosts their confidence inside and outside the classroom. Teaching writing skills is equally important because written communication is a basic life skill that can also come in handy for students or people in general with a speaking disability or speech impairment. Students may need to take notes, fill in forms, write letters, reports, stories, etc. Many need to fill in detailed questionnaires relating to health, education, and employment.

Reasons to learn productive skills

Another reason learners need to write is for assimilation. Writing is an effective way of reinforcing what they have already been studying and they benefit greatly from seeing new or unfamiliar language in written form. Writing is a good way to practice grammar and look up new vocabulary and learn English punctuation rules. It encourages learner’s autonomy when they are asked to keep Journals or turn in regular writing assignments that they carry out at home.Either way, students and new learners should give each skill of language equal importance and extensive practice opportunities to use English fluently for a variety of purposes especially for the overall improvement of their communicative skills. As Peregoy and Boyle State in the book ‘Reading, Writing and Learning in ESL’ (2011: P236), ‘listening, speaking, reading and writing occur naturally together in learning events at all levels in schools’.

Productive and Receptive skills complement each other in every way from a thought that needs to be written, a speech that needs to be read, instructions that need to be heard or conversations that need to be had. Students should be able to use the English language in an all-purpose way and not only rely on one particular skill and expect to use that skill in every situation. These four skills are what we need to complete communication. Productive language skills are paramount to learning because, without these skills, we cannot make sentences or communicate our understanding of a particular subject. Learners need to develop their language skills and specifically academic English to:

To develop a student’s condition of productive skills in the classroom, teachers should be given the knowledge and training of the philosophy of English teaching methods and approach properly. The teachers should adopt different teaching techniques and strategies to let learners write independently. Teachers should try to design some innovative writing activities for the class so that the students can be more involved in the learning process and speaking exercises that will enable them to improve with the target spoken language.

Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course!

In conclusion as a universal medium of communication, English has become the only language for the world citizen to have as a survival tool. English can be understood fully or to an acceptable extent in almost every country. It is the common language of communication and a necessary language to learn in the 21st century. In Zambia, English is being taught as a core subject from class 1- 12, yet it is painful to watch that students are still lagging to achieve the expected level of proficiency in respect of productive skills. For a long time, communicative methods at schools and colleges aim at developing the four skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking. However, proper planning, implementation, and monitoring can make it possible to achieve a student’s language proficiency in four skills simultaneously.

Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad.

Send us an email or call us toll-free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.

Productive Skills: What are They? | Definition and Importance

As a public speaker and a writer, productive skills have been a big part of my life. Productive skills were introduced to me when I was still a student, the reason being it is just part of the English curriculum. As I was young back then, I didn’t care for the topic that my teacher teaches. I just didn’t like learning a language that I already know and can speak well at home. But I was wrong. Productive skills are important. But before that, let’s answer what are productive skills?

The meaning of productive skills is the skills that we use to produce a language. These are skills that we use to show what we want others to know. Productive skills are a means of measuring a person’s proficiency in a language. They include speaking and writing.

As someone who is both a lecturer and blog writer, I had a lot of experience in using productive skills. They are extremely important. Thus, to help students and teachers, I made this article that would define productive skills and give real reasons based on experience on their importance.

What are productive skills?

Productive skills are skills that we use to produce a language. It is what we use to put together the language into something that other people would understand. In short, they are our means of communicating properly with others. Productive skills include writing and speaking skills.

Produce skills are basically one of the things we use to communicate with others.

Productive skills are constructing something in a form of language to tell people.

The goal of productive skills is to let people understand what we want to tell them. To let them understand what we want to tell them.

Thus, productive skills are part of a bigger skill which is communication skills.

Explaining communication skills is important for you to have a deeper understanding of what productive skills are.

Communication skills are usually composed of two types of skills: Productive skills and Receptive skills.

Basically, Productive skills are what we use to produce or to give information to others. Receptive skills are what we use to accept or to understand what others are telling us.

To help you understand further, let me give an example.

The best example I can give right now is right now where you are reading this blog post.

Since you are reading this blog post, you are accepting information from me. The way you understand what I’m talking about is called receptive skills.

The way I am writing this article in hopes that it could be as easily understood as possible is called productive skills. The reason is that I am trying to tell you what I mean.

Thus, to correlate, productive skills are the skills to give information, receptive skills are skills to accept information.

Since productive skills are what we use to tell people, it is a big part of communication.

When we talk about productive skills, there are multiple ways of letting people know the information you want to give them.

But the truth is, productive skills can be divided into only 2 core parts which we will discuss in the next section.

I have made an article about the similarities and differences between productive and receptive skills, I think it is a good addition to reading this article if you’re interested in learning their relationship with each other. Here is the link: What is the difference between productive and receptive skills?

What are the two core productive skills?

The two core productive skills are writing and speaking. Writing and speaking are the main things people use to give information. Thus, they are the main or core productive skills. Productive skills are what we use to provide information to others

Without writing and speaking, a person would have no other ways to provide information to others.

As we’ve seen, productive skills together with receptive skills are the skills that we use to communicate.

The core productive skills are writing and speaking. We use both of these to communicate properly with people.

As you can see, they are the main ones because they are our only means to communicate.

Writing is an activity where a person composes texts in order to communicate with others.

Like what is happening right now, I am writing this article in order to communicate with you. What I am communicating is explaining the two core productive skills.

Another productive skill is speaking.

Speaking is an activity where we articulate words and sentences in order to communicate with others.

Thus, we give information to others in two ways which are the 2 core productive skills. That is writing and speaking. There are only 2 main productive skills simply because they are our only means of giving information to others.

I have made another article discussing receptive skills which is another part of the communication process. If you are interested in the topic, feel free to check it out after for you to have a clear picture of the communication process. Here’s the link: What are receptive skills?

Why are productive skills important?

Productive skills are important because it is what we use to communicate properly with others. The reason is humans are social creatures and communication is part of our daily lives. Furthermore, excellent productive skills allow us to have more career opportunities in the future.

As a student, you might be wondering why do we need to learn productive skills. I understand how it feels like we are just studying things just because our teachers tell them so.

But I promise that you will thank yourself in the future if you take learning these productive skills seriously.

For the teachers who are looking at this post, the reason I’ve included the importance of productive skills here is to give your students a sense of direction.

In my other article discussing why studying is boring, I discussed the importance of knowing why it is important to know the importance of what you’re studying. When we give students a clear reason and real-world applications on why they are studying, the likelihood of forcing them to study would be significantly lower.

If you need more insights on why studying gets boring, you can check that article out to help your students. Here is the link: Why is studying so boring?

Of course, the article is also good for students for you to understand why studying gets boring. But I recommend this article rather than that to help you become a better student: How to Be a Hardworking Student

Here, I have 3 reasons for you to take your studies seriously. It can also be used by teachers to give a student concrete reasons to why they should study productive skills.

1. Productive skills help a person communicate properly

Productive skills are a big part of the communication process.

When we talk to others, we make sure that they would understand what we are saying.

Thus, it is important to learn productive skills in order for us to communicate properly.

Remember that in life, proper communication is always key. The reason being we communicate with others every day either by writing or speaking.

That’s why you should study productivity skills. It is not something that should be taken lightly. If you think that you’re being forced to study just because it is in the curriculum, then you should change your reason to study.

2. Productive skills is a way to measure a person’s proficiency in a language

Even if you’re a native speaker, there are just some words that we don’t know. There are also some things that we find hard to explain.

That is completely normal and studying productive skills helps us explain ourselves better.

One of the importance of productive skills is that they are a good measurement of language proficiency. If you are good at your language, then you can easily explain the things you want others to understand.

This does not only mean knowing as many words as possible, it is also forming sentences that are grammatically correct.

The moment you can properly explain yourself either in speech or text, it is a sign that your productive skills are getting better and better.

Thus, it is a good means of knowing your proficiency in a language.

This can be used by teachers when they give essays or assignments.

And if you are a language teacher, you can use productive skills to properly assess your students if they’re improving or not.

3. Productive skills opens a lot of career opportunities

Productive skills can open a lot of career opportunities for us.

This is especially true in most professions. Let’s say you want to be a doctor, then you need to properly communicate to your patients.

If you want to be an engineer, you need to properly communicate the importance of the foundation of the building you’re planning to others.

For me, I’ve used my productive skills to teach students. Furthermore, I learned productive or writing skills to write blog posts that allow people to understand even the complicated ones.

The reason is one of the main skills you need to develop with productive skill is your ability to explain complicated concepts to others. I’ve learned that especially well when I was teaching.

But what I want you to understand is that most career opportunities require us to speak.

Even being a YouTuber or Streamer requires us to have productive skills. I am saying this because I know most students nowadays have that as their goal.

How would you explain to your viewers what you’re doing or teaching if you don’t have productive skills?

Anyway, feel free to check my channel here for more self-improvement videos: YouTube Channel

As you can see, your dream job as a student would most likely require productive skills. Making them important. Thus, you need to build this skill as early as possible.

“Only the things I love.“

ongjason.com is reader-supported. When you buy through links on the site, I earn an affiliate commission.

If you’re following me, you’ll know that I believe it is essential to have some tools, whether it’s for personal development or lifestyle in general.

So, here are the things I love.

YouTube

If you want to learn things for free, I recommend watching my YouTube Channel. Click the Button Below to go straight into my Channel. 🙂

Okay, let me first explain my Channel.

I believe that I really can’t explain everything too well on my blog. That’s why I created a YouTube Channel so I can easily explain a lot of things. Plus, I believe that Video Sharing is the future.

Recommended Books

The next thing is books. Books are, for me, one of the cheapest ways to get invaluable information. We can learn personal development, finance, career, relationships, and many more from books.

Here, I will be listing my favorite books in different categories.

Audiobooks

Take this advice as a grain of salt.

I don’t recommend buying Audiobooks one by one. I mean, audiobooks can be quickly finished by listening while working out or doing some mindless tasks.

So here is to save you some money. Just go for a monthly subscription to Audible. I believe that you will save a lot of money with that plus, they usually give freebies to anyone starting.

My Audiobook Recommendation will always be the same as my book recommendations, but I personally like The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins. I like how she is so casual while reading her book.