5 Tips for Keeping Employee Productivity High Under Pressuring Deadlines

Productivity Under Pressure Tips



The success of your business depends on the productivity of your employees. You want motivated people in your team. You need them to maintain high levels of efficiency, especially when you’re pressured by deadlines. That’s an interesting situation. People usually perceive deadlines as too pressuring. Instead of getting more productive, some of them will even procrastinate. So how do you inspire your employees to be more productive when your projects are pressured by deadlines? This will be our focus in this article.


1. Let the Employees Participate

If you make the schedule of your workers too rigid and organized, their job will turn into technicalities. You don’t want that to happen. You want them to make decisions based on their qualifications, as well as on their professional instincts. Let them follow their intuition.  

  • Ask what they think about a specific project.
  • Tell them to be creative, but don’t let them forget that they should always inform you about the decisions and the progress of the work.
  • As a leader, you should set general guidelines and milestone, and leave some flexibility for the employees to handle the minor issues.

  • 2. Keep Them Relaxed

    No; we’re not saying you should make the employees relaxed to a point when they do nothing for the goal. We’re saying you should keep them relaxed enough for them to do the work without feeling an overwhelming pressure. Studies show that 40% of workers consider their jobs to be stressful; and 26% of workers said they were often too stressed or burned out by their work. Burned-out employees are not productive employees. The deadline is pressuring as it is, but you have to do something to make its negative impact milder.

  • Encourage your workers with motivational words.
  • Send them emails to keep them inspired. If you’re not a great motivational writer, hire a professional author from aussiewritings.com to craft the content for you.
  • Offer assistance whenever they need it. Just show that you’re trying to make this experience as stress-free as possible for them.

  • 3. Spark the Team Spirit

    When your employees support each other towards great achievements, they are more motivated. Naturally, better motivation and better teamwork lead to improved productivity. Become part of this team. Inspire them to see the deadline as a challenge that’s possible to achieve when you all work together. If one member of the team is going through difficulties, the others should help. This teamwork has to be organized. It’s important for the leader to divide the tasks in accordance with each member’s skills.

  • Give them precise instructions on each task and control the progress. You can use a tool like Project Insight to keep everyone on the same page.

  • 4. Set Progressive Goals

    If you expose a huge task, it’s only natural for your employees to be overwhelmed by it. They will see it as something they couldn’t possibly achieve within the given period of time. There’s a trick that helps you deal with this situation: set milestones!

  • Break up the big goal into smaller achievements, which don’t seem impossible to realize. It will be simpler for your employees to deal with a series of simpler tasks than to tackle a huge project without knowing where to start.
  • With this approach, your employees will notice the real-time progress they are making towards the goal. They will feel motivated to carry on, conquering one milestone after another.

  • 5. Give Them a Break

    It doesn’t matter how efficient or motivated your employees are; they will still need some time to recharge. Do not sacrifice their breaks for the sake of achieving professional goals on time. That would immediately lead them to a burn out.

  • Let them have their breaks. Moreover; tell them to take the short break even if they want to continue working.
  • Help them get the most out of these breaks. When they are working on an extremely important project with a tight deadline, hire a yoga teacher to guide them through short daily relaxation sessions in the office.
  • Bring coffee and energizing juices for everyone.


  • Stress is an inevitable part of each job. It’s the leader’s responsibility, however, to minimize the pressure on their employees. You have a goal to make their jobs more comfortable, especially when you expect them to be more productive towards important deadlines. The 5 methods we listed above will certainly help you do that.



    About the Author

    Olivia is a journalist who is always ready to experience new things and share this experience with others. She is passionate about art and writing. Therefore, she usually spends time writing new articles or travelling around the world.Follow Olivia on Facebook and Twitter.