It’s important that you keep your employees and colleagues on track — this will help you hit your goals! That being said, increasing your productivity is often easier said than done.
Tips for Increasing Your Team's Productivity
In this article, we’re going to outline some steps that you can take to deal with an unproductive team and fix the problem quickly.
Let’s get started!
Invest in A Project Management Tool
It’s a good idea to use a project management program in order to track most areas of your business — this will help you stay on top of things.
All of your employees might have their own methods of staying productive and on task, but simplifying things down to a single program can help ensure that things don’t get mixed up or lost in translation.
Here are just a few of the benefits of using a project management tool:
- They can help you set deadlines for an entire project or team
- It makes it easier to collaborate with other team members
- All documents, tasks, and the like are in one place
- You can see what is overdue at a glance
Introduce your team to the program slowly — it could even help to have onboarding meetings where you show how the program works and what you’ll use it for.
Additionally, using employee onboarding tools can further streamline this process and ensure everyone gets up to speed efficiently.
Help Your Staff to Create Productive Working Environments
COVID-19 turned most people’s working lives upside-down — for example, many people who have only ever worked in an office had to work from home.
Many business owners and employees have found themselves in a whole new working environment.
And, now that new remote possibilities have opened up, you should make an effort to work out where and when your staff are most productive.
For instance, employees using two monitors setup often find it easier to keep track of multiple tasks, manage emails, and access necessary files without switching between screens, leading to improved focus and efficiency.
As we transition into a post-pandemic world, it’s important that you identify the most productive strategies for your business.
Consider a few different approaches.
Many businesses have been running strict work-from-home programs, and these business owners probably have a good idea as to how productive their teams are at home.
You could also have your employees come in a few days a week, or just for important meetings.
Consider surveying your employees in order to see what they want, and monitor their productivity.
It could also help your employees if you host a seminar outlining how they can remain productive, wherever they might be working from.
Some strategies may seem obvious, but there are a lot of tips and tricks to staying productive at home, including having a separate space for work, taking regular breaks, and the like.
Help Your Staff Streamline Their Tasks to Achieve More
Streamlining tasks that your workers do a lot can significantly speed things up and help everyone be more efficient.
Even the smallest things can add up in order to save everyone a lot of time!
Here are just a few different ways that you can streamline your business’s tasks:
- Provide templates for common jobs (like content creation and invoicing) so your team doesn’t always have to start from scratch
- Use a unified communication tool, like Slack or Microsoft Teams, to keep all messages in one place
- Delegate certain types of tasks to specific employees — giving a certain person ownership of a task category can cut down on confusion
- Invest in a Single Sign-on solution so your staff can access all of their tools quickly and easily
- Use an employee scheduling app to streamline shift management, enhance team coordination, and improve overall efficiency.
Before you make any major changes, be sure to discuss things with your employees first.
Consider sending them a survey in order to determine what changes they think need to be made.
Then, identify common pain points and work from there to see what could be streamlined or changed.
Put Plenty of Thought Into Hiring the Right People to Fill Your Roles
One big reason why some people might not perform well in a particular job is that they aren’t fully equipped for it.
If you want to ensure that your staff are as productive as possible, you need to ensure that you’re hiring the right people.
Furthermore, you need to be sure that you’re providing your staff with the right professional development training so they can fully flourish and make the most of their roles but keep in mind that there are some changes with training and learning styles, as more people are working remotely during this post-Covid time. TrainingByteSize has a whitepaper that looks into exactly that – Have Learning Styles In Training And Development Adapted In The COVID Age?
Here are a few different things to consider when looking for the right employee for a particular job:
- Do they have the skills the position requires, or would they need more training?
- Are they compatible with the culture of your company? Do you think they would fit in?
- Is their education or skill set on par with the other employees at your company?
- What is their personality like? Do they seem like they would be easy to work with?
Hiring the right people can help make your team a lot more productive! Looking for someone who communicates well and would fit in with your team can help make your work easier and more enjoyable, thus improving everyone’s overall productivity.
Ask Your Staff for Feedback, and Act on It
Sometimes, your staff might not be doing their best work because they need more support or better tools.
So, you should regularly encourage your staff to give you feedback to find out if there are any roadblocks in your processes that you could remove in order to increase your workers’ productivity.
Consider sending out regular anonymous feedback surveys to help your employees feel more comfortable making suggestions.
Some people just prefer to provide their thoughts when they know that there is anonymity protecting their answers.
You could also schedule regular one-on-one meetings with your employees to ask them where they think improvements could be made.
This might be more comfortable for them than a group setting would be and get you more honest suggestions.
Summary
Great worker productivity is one of the most important aspects of having a successful business.
You should always be looking for ways to improve your productivity! In this article, we outlined how you can do so, including by asking employees for feedback, hiring the right people, and streamlining various parts of your processes.
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