For entrepreneurs and business managers, there’s a lot you have to keep in check when it comes to running a business. Sometimes the most impactful way to keep your company running smoothly day by day is to increase productivity at all levels. Of course, finding ways to improve your personal productivity will help, but you should also be encouraging and motivating your entire workplace to stay productive and focused.
Improving productivity from the ground up can be tricky, especially if you have a lot of people working for you. However, there are some effective and impactful ways to increase workplace productivity. These methods aren’t difficult to impose and you should instantly see a boost in just how much better your business runs. Here are 5 of the best ways to increase workplace productivity.
1. Set Goals Regularly
Goal setting is a crucial part of staying productive. If you know exactly what you’re aiming for, you’ll have much more motivation and drive to reach it. Plus, once you find yourself hitting your goals, you’ll feel a huge sense of achievement which just urges you to keep aiming higher.
Setting goals for yourself is a fantastic way to hold yourself accountable and keep yourself focused. You can set all kinds of goals, whether it’s aiming to hit a certain amount of sales for the month, opening a new location for your business, or marketing yourself to a new audience to attract a certain amount of new customers.
You can also set goals for your staff. By giving different departments or even individuals certain goals, they’ll also know what’s expected of them and have much more motivation to hit their targets. You may even want to give incentives for anyone who hits their goals. Many successful businesses do this to make for a more productive workforce overall.
2. Avoid Wasting Time on Meetings
Sometimes meetings feel necessary for sharing important information throughout your company, especially if you’re running a large organization. However, meetings are also one of the biggest productivity killers for businesses.
Not only do you have to take time planning each meeting, but you also have to bring people away from their work to execute it. Even afterward, many employees will lose their train of focus and end up being even less productive. All of this can cut your workplace productivity for a few hours or more. The impact becomes even worse the more meetings you have.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have meetings whatsoever- sometimes they can be productive. However, choose carefully when to have meetings and who exactly needs to be at those meetings. The more you can keep people in your business productive and focused, the better. You can also consider alternative options such as a regular email memo which goes out to your whole company or even digital meetings via Skype. These are less distracting and also take less time to set up and execute.
3. Upgrade Your Workplace Equipment
One simple change that can have a significant impact on your company’s productivity is ensuring you have the right tools and equipment for the job. After all, it’s much easier to work when you have the fastest and most efficient workplace equipment. You’ll need to spend some money, but it’s an improvement that can give you a great return on your investment.
The kind of equipment you should deck your office out with depends on what your company does. However, one of the best ways to improve workplace productivity is to improve your tech. Having up-to-date computers with fast processors and plenty of memory can help everyone work much faster.
Your software matters just as much as your hardware. There are now all kinds of apps and computer programs out there which can make every aspect of your working life easier. Whether you decide to move to G-Suite for workplace collaboration or start using apps like Slack to improve workplace communication, these changes can help everyone be a little more productive.
4. Keep Your Employees Happy
If your employees are happy and satisfied with their job, they’re much more likely to give back to your company. In other words, happy employees will be productive and focused employees. There are many things you can do to ensure that the people you work for work just as hard in return.
Make sure you treat your employees well and do what you can to reduce stress in the workplace. Overloading employees with tasks can stress them out and reduce their productivity. Giving them reasonable daily deadlines and goals will make them feel happy and focused and you’ll notice them working much more efficiently.
It can also help to give your employees incentives. Offering bonuses and rewards for hard-working employees is an effective way to keep them productive. Of course, offering competitive salaries and good workplace perks can also help ensure that you get the most dedicated workers.
5. Outsource Certain Tasks
It’s hard to manage everything in a business. Some small businesses make the mistake of trying to build and staff a new department for everything from finance to marketing. Some business managers try to take on all of these complex tasks themselves. However, there is another option which can help make everything more productive.
Outsourcing certain tasks is a fantastic method to improve productivity and make your business run smoother overall. You don’t have to do this with everything, but reaching out to external agencies for things like marketing, handling finances, and legal issues is a great way to get important jobs done.
The benefit of outsourcing is that you can find B2B services which are dedicated to making your workplace run better. Plus, you’ll free up plenty of time for yourself to focus on other tasks. It also saves you from having to spend a lot of time and money setting up new departments. All things considered, it can be a massive productivity booster.
Conclusion
Running a business day to day is tough, and there are always times you may have to deal with unexpected circumstances or lazy employees. However, these five methods can help increase your workplace productivity significantly. If implemented well, you’ll quickly notice more work being done and a smoother-running business overall.
If you have any questions, our team would be more than happy to help. Call us today at (215)-393-9787.
