Maximizing your company’s potential is something similar businesses all over the globe try to tackle on a daily basis. One of the ways you can maximize your potential and drive more revenue is to identify how your company can improve productivity within the work environment.
Limited resources, time restrictions and financial barriers—these are just a handful of factors you deal with on a daily basis. If your company gets the most out of every employee and the best results from limited resources, you are more than likely going to succeed and surpass your competitors. Here are four ways your company can improve its productivity, while maintaining a high output of work:
Carry out effective meetings
One of the most time-consuming aspects of business is meetings. Yes, many businesses need to have meetings in order to define goals and strategies but in many instances, employees will tell you that the majority of meetings they have attended have been pointless.
According to an online survey from Meeting Magic, 46% employees found time spent in meetings as unproductive and just 10% found the decisions made in those meetings as productive. For example, a common mistake is to have a high number of “mini-meetings” or “catchups,” rather than having one fully prepared and detailed meeting, which then allows your employees to work on their own accord, with a clear goal/incentive to target.
If your business tends to venture down this route then it’s time to re-evaluate how you manage your company/employees time. If you prepare and carry out effective meetings it can significantly improve the productivity of your business.
The key to a successful meeting is to be informed in advance of the details of the meeting and to have a clear goal at the end of it. This allows you and your employees to prepare correctly for the meeting and will outline what needs to be achieved. This way, you are taking advantage of precious time and resources by utilizing every opportunity possible.
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A great way to do this is to have a “morning huddle” every day for around 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of your company) and go over each person’s main goals and tasks for the day ahead. This helps everyone get on the same page and informs your employees where their assistance may be needed.
Clearly Define Your Goals
This method of improvement is mentioned a lot, but there is a reason why it is constantly addressed—because businesses and employees are still not doing it correctly. Employees and management tend to think having a long to-do list with all of their tasks is a good method of identifying your goals. It’s not!
If you clearly define your goals then you will undeniably improve your productivity. Multi-tasking work and having your annual target in front of you will overwhelm you. This will lead to tasks being completed quicker than they should be and not up to the high standards which you have set for yourself and others. In order to improve productivity within your business, you need to set realistic targets within the allocated time frame you have available.
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Don’t schedule more than 75% of your time. Every day set yourself realistic and achievable goals and ensure you prioritize the most important tasks first. By creating this list it will enable you to produce a high level of work and you will be able to clearly identify the positive/negative outcomes from the task.
Encourage Employee Intrapreneurship and Flexibility
Allowing your employees to take ownership and more responsibility within your business can be good for productivity, but the key to making this work is making sure the employee is ready and prepared for the task. Training and informing an employee how to carry out a task can be time-consuming, but it can be immensely beneficial in the long run. By allowing your employees to have flexibility and leadership frees up time for management and allows them to carry out tasks to a higher standard, with more time available for them.
You can also improve productivity by allowing your employees to have some flexibility in their schedules and working hours. Allowing your employees to manage their time reduces stress and the time pressures of tasks usually delegated to them. This can enhance productivity, build loyalty and encourage employees to do more for the company as they have more responsibility within the company.
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If working from home is a viable option, then allowing your employees to work from their own home can, in fact, enhance productivity and boost morale. Workers who have the flexibility to work from home actually invest more time into work and tend to suffer from less stress compared to office workers.
Management Software & Technology
Investing in cloud-based & field service technology is a great way to boost the productivity of your company and can help each worker get more done in less time. It’s important that you re-evaluate your business in terms of technological involvement of day-to-day operations and it’s important to explore what platforms are available to improve productivity. If there is a time-consuming task which you would usually manually carry out, you need to discover if there is a piece of software which can help you. By freeing up your time with alternative software, then you, your company and your employees will be able to focus and carry out other priority tasks which need to be completed urgently.
As you can see from the points made, there are some great methods you and your business can improve productivity within the workplace. Feel free to try these methods and it would be great to hear if these methods improved productivity within your business.
Author: Matthew Kong is an aspiring business and trade journalist with an interest in IT innovation. Beginning his career with an Engineering Start Up, specialising in battery technology, he has worked for a number of large software companies such as LANDesk and OneServe.
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