5 Ways to Increase the Efficiency & Productivity of Your Team
This insightful article offers practical tactics that you can use to build and sustain a productive work culture in your company. Check it out to learn more.
You may be the best at what you do as a team leader but it becomes easy to fall behind your competition without a strong and productive team.
On the other hand, having a productive and effective team means that each member contributes to the bottom line, leading to successful results.
Your employees form the backbone of your business's growth. If they work to their optimum levels, your business is more likely to succeed.
Boosting employee efficiency and productivity also ensures a continuous cyclical process that can lead to a booming business. It can lead to higher outputs, greater profits, increased revenue, brand building, and continuous business growth.
But how can you achieve this kind of efficiency and productivity with your team?
Find out below:
1. Integrate the Right Tools and Apps
Technology has become an enabler in business, especially in terms of boosting efficiency. Adopting it can enable you to enjoy better collaboration, make work easier for employees, and streamline your workflow.
But what kind of tools should you leverage?
This will depend on the type of business you run but, most importantly, you should choose tools that:
- Make it easy for employees to work smart, collaborate, and communicate with ease
- Make it easy for you to track employee performance and project progress
Some of the tools every company needs include collaboration tools, time tracking apps, productivity apps, remote working tools, and employee engagement tools.
A word of caution, though:
Do not over-rely on technology.
While it can improve your team's productivity and efficiency, it’s not the only answer.
2. Improve Employee Skills
Most companies expect their employees to update their skills and keep up with the latest technologies in their work areas.
The problem is - most employees grow comfortable with their specific skills over time. Others do not have the money or time to invest in further learning.
Image via LinkedIn
But there's good news:
As you can see in the screenshot above, 94% of people understand the career benefits of making time to learn and upgrade themselves.
Now imagine helping these employees find the time and money to learn and enhance their knowledge and skills.
Helping them learn more can help you improve employee productivity, boost results, and, most importantly, build loyalty.
But how can you train your employees?
Look at your organization's needs, ask customers what they want, identify skill gaps, and understand industry demands. Then, set up and promote a learning culture in your company.
There are many ways to train your employees:
1. Opt for traditional training methods like classroom-based training programs, interactive training, or job training. In this case, the learners can either attend classes, attend simulations, or learn while on the job.
2. Opt for modern methods of learning like social learning or online training. With social learning, learners observe, imitate, or model others’ behavior to gain new problem-solving skills and perspectives.
On the other hand, online training programs require that you upload learning materials to online teaching platforms and give access to your employees.
3. Offer Incentives
Give your employees a reason to become more efficient by recognizing them for their good work. This is an effective way to encourage productivity and foster feelings of appreciation.
How can you incentivize employees for good performance? You can:
- Give them financial bonuses
- Increase their salary
- Give them additional vacation or sick days
- Hold a company dinner in their honor
- Send personalized appreciation notes
- Announce their accomplishments publicly
- Upgrade their gadgets
4. Communicate Effectively
Communication must be two-way if you want to build a productive and efficient team. You should be willing to listen to your employees as much as you want them to hear your expectations.
Employees have ideas, needs, and recommendations, and they need to know that their input matters.
Technology has made it easy for teams to communicate efficiently. You just need to decide which method or tool to use for communication.
But there's a catch:
Even though online tools make it easy to communicate, your team needs to know how to use them. They also need protection from tool overload - where they shuffle between five or more communication apps per day.
Not only will this tire them, but they may end up losing track of essential communication when they need it.
What should you do?
First of all, be selective while choosing communication tools. Start by clearly defining the purpose of each channel you choose.
For example:
The team can use email or phone calls when communicating with clients and vendors.
For team collaborations and immediate messaging, you can opt for Slack or one of its alternatives, including Microsoft Teams, Fleep, and Bitrix24.
For work communication and task assignment and tracking, you can choose to use tools like Teamline and Trello.
5. Measure Productivity and Offer Feedback
Before you measure the productivity of your employees, you need to:
- Provide clear direction on priorities and expectations.
- Help each employee understand how their contribution impacts the overall company goals.
- Understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of your team members and leverage it when assigning tasks.
- Map out your projects and provide the team with an action plan they need to follow.
- Prioritize work based on your company goals and let your employees know about it.
Once this is taken care of, use performance management software to track employee goal achievement and offer feedback.
Why is feedback important?
Employees will not work on improving their efficiency if they don't know they are inefficient. You need to clearly tell employees what they are good at and what they need to improve upon.
But that's not enough:
You should also ask your employees what they would like you to improve in the company. It could be processes, tools, training, or other factors. This will help you get an idea about how you can enhance their working environment and encourage efficiency.
Ready to Increase Employee Productivity and Efficiency?
It may seem like a difficult task, especially since employees have different personalities, and it can be hard to get them on the same page.
But it is possible.
If you take time to appreciate their work, improve internal communication, and provide them with tools to make their jobs easier, you can achieve this goal.
What will be your first step as you try to improve employee efficiency and productivity?
We would also love to know if you've started already and what changes you've noticed in your team’s productivity. Let us know in the comments section below.