10 Common Workplace Challenges and Solutions

There are many challenges that come with working in an office. From the sometimes overwhelming feeling of being overworked to the hidden stressors such as having to be “on” all day, it’s not always easy for employees. However, there are ways to overcome these obstacles and get more out of your workday.

In this article, we’ll explore some common workplace challenges and share ideas for how you can turn them into solutions.

10 Workplace Challenges and Solutions

If you look at most challenges in the workplace, they’re not unique to any one business. This is good news because it means there’s plenty of advice out there to help you find a solution!

1. Insufficient Training

A lack of training leads to a number of workplace issues. The most obvious one is that employees aren’t able to do their jobs as well as they would like, but it goes deeper than this.

Poor training is a leadership challenge in the workplace that can also lead to increased frustration because employees don’t know what it takes to improve their performance or excel in their roles. If left unchecked, this can lead to employee burnout, which can be very damaging for the employee and the business. Eventually, this may turn into the biggest challenge at work.

Solution:

It’s important to see training as an investment. When you make training a big part of your culture, it will come back to you in improved efficiency and productivity.

Make sure it’s an open process by involving your employees in the conversation. Ask them what skills they think they need to work on.

2. Schedule Inflexibility

People lead complicated lives that don’t always fit with the Monday to Friday, 9-5 work schedule. While some businesses need their employees to work a fixed schedule, there are many that don’t.

Scheduling inflexibility can lead to higher stress levels, and affect your workers’ ability to do their best work.

Solution:

Flexible schedules might seem complicated, but with the right scheduling software, they’re actually easy to manage. You can still keep track of your employees’ time (if you feel it’s necessary), and you can give your staff greater responsibility for their schedules.

The easiest way to do this is with employee scheduling software from ZoomShift. This will allow you to effortlessly create schedules (including rotating shifts and split shifts) and track your employees’ time, but most importantly, it provides flexibility.

Employees can easily request time off, trade shifts, and track their PTO, all of which gives them a great sense of flexibility.

3. Poor Work-Life Balance

If you have a work-life balance problem, it is the biggest challenge at work. We all know balancing work-life balance is tricky. From the CEO down to the new entry-level employee, we can all find it tricky to get this right.

As a business owner and manager, important thing to remember is that more time spent at work doesn’t necessarily mean you get more work done, and it certainly doesn’t guarantee quality. If you’re expecting your employees to spend all their hours at work and rarely grant time off, then it’s going to start to affect their health and their performance.

Solution:

Work-life balance starts with culture. If you’re conveying a message that the way to success is to spend as much time as possible in the office, then it’s not surprising that people are going to lack a proper work-life balance (even if your scheduling is flexible).

Celebrate time off and the idea that rest and relaxation are essential to peak performance. Invest in employee wellbeing, and encourage people to switch off when they leave the office (don’t expect people to constantly reply to emails and messages outside of office hours).

4. Lack of Motivation

Motivation isn’t something you can just magic up. There will always be some days where your employees feel motivated and others where they don’t.

What is a problem when there’s a persistent lack of motivation across your entire workforce?

Motivation is a common workplace challenge, and thankfully there are lots of solutions to it.

Solution:

Communicate with your staff! A great place to start is by asking what factors they find most motivating. Create a list of factors such as pay, time off, goals, and bonuses, and ask them to rank them in order of importance.

This will help you understand what gets the most out of your employees, allowing you to implement new motivation techniques.

5. Lack of Communication

A lack of communication is a common problem in the workplace. But without communication, it’s difficult for employees to know what’s expected of them. It also means that other problems go unreported, rather than getting fixed, they begin to stack up.

Poor communication will hurt productivity and lead to more errors, so it’s important that businesses find ways to improve in this area.

Solution:

Encouraging open communication should be one of the main roles of a manager. It’s about putting systems in place that allows messages to travel freely from top-to-bottom, and bottom to top.

Sometimes this can be as simple as finding the right platform to communicate on. For example, you might be doing everything through email, when instead, what you need is something more instant like Slack, that integrates well with your project management tools.

6. Trust Issues

When it comes to workplace challenges and solutions, trust issues can be one of the most difficult to solve. This is because trust is generally eroded over a period of time, and it takes time to win it back.

If employees feel like their employers can’t be trusted, or that they’re not trusted to do their job, then it’s a recipe for unhappiness.

Solution:

One of the easiest ways for trust to break down is through a lack of communication. People can’t read minds, so when they’re not getting the information they need, they start to fill in the blanks themselves, and often not in a good way.

Sometimes businesses have to deliver bad news, but if you’re open and honest about it, it’s going to help build trust.

One way to get people to communicate and trust each other again is to encourage team-building activities.

7. Little Recognition

It’s natural that people want to be recognized for the hard work they do. It’s easy to get into the mindset that an employee’s pay is their recognition, but often it’s the small details that really matter.

When someone does great work, it’s an excellent opportunity to boost morale and build trust, so don’t miss out on it.

Solution:

Create employee rewards like employee of the month, and keep track of milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries. Demonstrate that your employees are valuable to your company, and recognition shouldn’t be a problem at work.

8. Staff Conflict/ Bullying

Staff conflicts happen, it’s a part of life, and it’s a part of the business. People have different opinions, and that’s a great thing, but it’s how communication is handled that matters.

When differences of opinion spill over into outright conflict, and even bullying, it can be terrible for employee morale, performance, productivity, mood, and everything else.

Solution:

You can overcome this common workplace challenge by creating an open environment where employees can express themselves in a structured way. By promoting teamwork, encouraging feedback, addressing negative attitudes, and asking about the biggest challenges at work, you can create a more harmonious environment.

9. No Potential Growth

Everybody has goals. As much as your employees might enjoy their jobs, they also want to progress their careers and take on new challenges in the workplace. If your business doesn’t appear to offer these opportunities, then it’s going to be a top issues in the workplace.

Solution:

Set a career progression map that shows your employees the opportunities that are available. Discuss what criteria need to be met for raises, and help your staff plan their career trajectory.

The other important aspect is to follow through with what you talk about. Show that you promote from within and offer raises to high-performing employees.

10. Lack of Technology

It can be endlessly frustrating when you don’t have the right tools to do your job.

Choosing the right technology can be difficult, particularly for small business owners who have limited resources. However, there’s some technology that pays for itself in the long run, and without it, you just can’t keep up with the competition.

Solution:

One of the best things you can do is create a technology plan. This looks at your current and future needs to decide which technology is a priority and which can wait.

Make sure to get feedback from your employees, as they’re the ones that will be working with the technology on a daily basis. Ask them what problems have you faced during the work and what technology can help resolve that.

You’ll find that technology like ZoomShift can save employees precious time, freeing them up to spend more time on the most important tasks.

ZoomShift can help you streamline your employee scheduling and keep a track of who is working when and where. Track your employee’s time and attendance with ease, eliminate costly time tracking errors, calculate work hours, and run payroll in minutes, not hours. On top of all, your team can effectively communicate with one another from a single platform. 

Start your 14 days free trial with no credit card required. You get full access to employee scheduling, time tracking, timesheet, team communication, and everything else required to manage a team.

Final Thoughts

Leadership challenges in the workplace are a part of the business. There are always going to be new workplace issues, but the important thing is that you can work through them in a logical, timely way.

These are some of the most common workplace challenges and solutions. As you can see, they’re very solvable. Often, the key is communication, and with the right technology, you can normally find a simple solution.

If you have any unique challenges at work examples, please comment below. We shall try to address them with the best possible solution to resolve your workplace issues.

JD Spinoza

JD enjoys teaching people how to use ZoomShift to save time spent on scheduling. He’s curious, likes learning new things everyday and playing the guitar (although it’s a work in progress).