Employees that are productive provide numerous benefits. But how do you go about making this happen? How can you motivate staff to work more without being unpleasant or unreasonable?
Let’s go over eight alternative ways for increasing team productivity.
Table of Contents
1. Get rid of all superfluous meetings and obligations.
67 percent of workers feel that spending too much time in meetings takes them away from their essential responsibilities.
Meetings are a crucial and, in some cases, even useful element of the workplace. Perhaps your Monday morning staff meeting gets a lot done, and you can’t imagine not having your quarterly goal discussion.
Nobody is advocating you should stop holding meetings with your team. Instead, this is about making sure that every hour you take up on your team’s schedule is a worthwhile use of their time and energy.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Make a concise agenda for each meeting (and make it a requirement for all team members!). You should go into every meeting knowing what will be discussed. You generally don’t need to host a meeting if you can’t give a clear notion about the issue.
Examine your attendees carefully. Most of the time, people do not need to be present at a meeting to be “in the loop.” After the fact, you can provide an email summary. People should only attend meetings if they are expected to participate actively.
Re-evaluate your regular gatherings. These have a habit of devolving into glorified “catch up” sessions. Check to see if every recurrent meeting on your team’s calendar is still fulfilling a purpose and adding value.
2. Institute time tracking
It’s tough for your team to boost their productivity and improve time management skills if they don’t know where their work hours are currently going. That’s why time tracking is so advantageous. It gives you and your team members a crystal clear idea of how they’re spending their work time so that they can identify areas for improvement.
Make time tracking a core part of how your team gets work done by introducing it to new employees during your onboarding process. Frame this as a way to empower your employees to own their work hours, rather than as a monitoring activity.
Don’t worry—one survey found that 79% of respondents agree that it’s perfectly okay for employers to monitor employees’ work-related tasks.
Time tracking should save time, not waste it. Hourly automatically tracks your employees’ time and location and helps your team get more done.
3. Celebrate your victories
Have you noticed any droopy shoulders around the office? It appears that a fun team outing is in order.When you’re so focused on getting more done, it’s easy to get caught up in the trap of demanding more, more, more. But don’t become so preoccupied with what you’re not doing that you lose sight of who you are.
Make it a habit to recognize your team’s efforts on a regular basis. A monthly pizza party, post-project retrospectives, or even an “employee of the month” program can demonstrate to staff that you value their contributions.
Furthermore, even minor attempts will improve their drive. According to the progress principle, of all the factors that can boost motivation and emotions at work, achieving progress in meaningful work is the most important.
4. Make regular chores automated.
Using technology, it is anticipated that 45 percent of work operations may be automated. So, if your staff are currently spending a significant amount of time on meaningless, repetitive chores on a daily basis, it’s time to optimize those procedures and lighten their loads.
Many business owners are intimidated by the prospect of automation. But don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be anything complicated, and there are plenty of technology options that make automation simple.
You could, for example, look for a specialized solution such as Hourly to automate tasks such as timesheets and payroll. Alternatively, a platform like Zapier can connect some of the apps you already use to automate common operations.
With automation, vital work is still completed—without requiring a lot of elbow grease from your crew.
5. Quit micromanaging
If you want your staff to be more productive, you must be involved in all aspects of their work. You should be watching over their shoulders and dictating how they complete their tasks, right? Wrong.
Micromanagement can really stifle productivity. In contrast, a certain level of autonomy is what will inspire your staff to buckle down and complete more items on their to-do lists. Indeed, study shows that autonomy is a powerful incentive, much more so than monetary rewards.
As the owner and leader of the company, you are responsible for providing leadership and direction as needed. Otherwise, take a step back and trust your people to do their duties. Keep in mind that you employed them for a reason.
6. Minimize distractions
Interruptions are frequent in any workplace, but if you want productive staff, you must establish a company culture that values focused work.
This can manifest itself in a variety of ways. Perhaps you’ll make it a habit to silence Slack notifications for short periods of time during the workday. Perhaps you might urge team members to inform their coworkers when they are too busy for a casual talk.
Perhaps you’ll restrict the usage of social media and smartphones in the office. Alternatively, you may teach staff about time management and avoiding multitasking.
When it takes little more than 23 minutes to refocus following a distraction, your team cannot afford to have their attention yanked away from the task at hand numerous times every day.
If you’re unclear how to approach this issue, have an open chat with your staff to find out what might assist them limit distractions.
7. Provide the necessary tools
According to one research, 56% of employees do not have the technology they require to conduct their jobs successfully. When you expect your team to perform more, you must provide the necessary resources to assist them in doing so.
Make sure your team is equipped with useful technology, such as project management software for organizing tasks and timeframes and time trackers that simplify the timesheet process.
Again, this is a time to talk with your staff and learn about the tools they’d want to have. While you may not be able to implement everything, simply having the conversation will demonstrate that you are listening and will increase their productivity.
8. Maintain a healthy work-life balance.
If you believe that working more means getting more done, you should reconsider. According to one study, organizations with moderate-to-severe burnout had a 22% decline in work output.
Instead, you should concentrate on establishing proper work-life balance for your staff, and the best way to do so is to set a good example. When your employees see you working insanely long hours (25 percent of small business owners work more than 60 hours per week), they’ll assume the same of them.
Make it a point to demonstrate that you make time for non-work responsibilities that are important to you, and be encouraging and understanding if employees need to attend to a personal or family responsibility.
Maintain appropriate workloads and expectations so that staff may complete their jobs during normal work hours (and do not feel pressured to work outside of those hours).
