how-to-boost-productivity

Creative Ways to Boost Productivity

 

In today’s fast-paced world, we are constantly bombarded with distractions and interruptions. This can make it hard to focus on our work, reducing productivity in our daily tasks.

These distractions can affect every level of your organization. Combating these issues begins with

  • Planning
  • Reviewing progress
  • Organizing workflow
  • Motivating employees
  • Providing training and development opportunities
  • Getting employees involved in strategizing
  • Incorporating technology

Improving workflow across your organization starts with the top 7 ways to boost productivity.

1. Create Plans with Simple Goals and Tasks

Your Company’s success is dependent on workforce performance. For productivity to thrive, you need clear goals and clear plans for how to achieve these goals. You also need the best resources to make these plans and goals come together for optimal employee performance.

Productive and successful businesses, teams, and employees start with strategic plans. Each person needs clear, manageable tasks to complete the required work.

Employees need to understand what’s expected of them and how to achieve their individual, team, and company goals. Every person needs to understand the company objectives and initiatives necessary toward those objectives. They also need to understand how you expect them to determine which tasks are priorities.

SMART Goal Strategies

Implementing SMART Goal strategies can help employees better manage their work tasks. This includes breaking up larger goals and tasks into smaller steps. This helps reduce feeling overwhelmed by the work. Employees can see these smaller steps checked off, giving them a sense of accomplishment, and making the overall task easier to complete.

Prioritize Tasks

Employees need to understand how to prioritize tasks. They also need to know which tasks can be delegated if necessary. You never know when events like sickness, new projects, or even layoffs can disrupt daily tasks. All these events can add extra pressure. Understanding the priority level of regular tasks reduces this pressure and allows employees to make sense of workflows during uncertain times.

2. Regularly Review Employee Goals

 While setting goals is a great first step, you can’t ensure these goals meet your company’s needs unless you complete regular employee reviews. You want to set a schedule to complete these reviews and address any changing needs. At a minimum, we recommend employees complete a 90-day business plan every quarter to align their priorities, objectives, and actions with the overall business strategy.

3. Measure Productivity

It’s important to create productivity standards for employees. This should be reviewed regularly to determine the employee’s workload and any barriers to completing the workload. This review includes finding strategies to help remove any barriers or other issues that impede performance. It’s a good practice to set up a schedule for employee progress reports. This helps keep employees accountable for their tasks and gives you an idea of where you need to implement new strategies to boost activity before it becomes a bigger problem.

4. Provide Organizational Tools and Strategies

To boost performance for your staff, it’s important to help them manage their time well.  They need tools and strategies to help them organize their time and resources for maximum efficiency. On average, employees are productive for less than three hours of the workday. Boosting productivity and morale in the workplace can make a noticeable difference in business efficiency and growth. Implementing cost and time-saving measures in your business is the best way to ensure employees perform to the best of their abilities. These measures include strategies, resources, and communication best practices. Organization skills will help employees stay on task and reduce distractions from less essential tasks.

5. Avoid Time Wasters

There are many distractions in a workday but providing the right tools can help employees stay organized and reduce those time wasters. These tools can be as simple as

  • Calendars
  • Project Management Tools
  • File Management Tools

Or any other resource that helps them better manage their time and remove time-wasting activities from their schedule. Reducing time wasters also involves workplace communication. Avoid unnecessary meetings. Look for ways to streamline communication so people can share important information without disrupting workflows.

6. Set Task Reminders

Make sure employees stay on task with reminders that help them keep up with priorities. You can set up tasks and reminders for them. Or you can provide resources that allow them to keep up and mark off tasks they need to complete. The important thing is to give them a way to see their upcoming tasks and a way to show what they have completed.

7. Provide Motivation

For your company to boost productivity, you need to motivate employees. This can be as simple as showing appreciation for a completed task. Provide time to celebrate reaching goals. Take time to provide feedback, especially positive feedback, on the work employees accomplish.

You can incorporate incentive programs to help with this initiative. Rewards don’t mean lavish gifts or money. Your initiative program can remain simple as long as you make sure employees know they are valued.

8. Provide Training and Development Opportunities

74% of employees are willing to retrain or cross-train to keep up with the skills they need for their jobs. Providing a training and development program shows employees you are willing to invest in them, making them more willing to invest their time and resources into your company.

Having employees who can fill in when needed or complete new tasks help boost performance and boost employee morale. Development and training programs benefit you as much as your employee. You reduce downtime and give employees opportunities to rise to new roles.

9. Get Employees Involved 

Giving employees opportunities to weigh in on important decisions, strategies, and goals makes them feel more involved and important to the organization. Involvement makes them more invested in their job which increases productivity.

Get employees involved in new initiatives. You can even set up a committee that allows employees to get involved in everyday activities. Make sure everyone has a chance to share their input, and make sure they understand how their role affects these initiatives.

10. Introduce Time-Saving Technology

There is an abundance of time-saving technologies available to help organize and plan workloads. You have project and schedule management tools at the push of a button. There are many options for collecting and storing needed data for easy access. Find the tools you need to meet your company’s needs. Take time to understand where you need to improve workflows to determine which technologies will fit these needs. Investing in automation tools will not only boost productivity but will also improve your overall company ROI moving forward.

11. Make Time Work for You

Change is a constant in the world of business. The workforce is constantly fluctuating, and the tools and skills needed to complete your work can change rapidly. The thing that remains the same is, that you only have so many hours in a day to complete necessary tasks. Putting tools and strategies in place to make time work for you and help improve performance is essential to keep your business running smoothly. These tools help you manage your company’s productivity no matter what changes come your way.

Automation isn’t just for your employees though. Managing employees is a full-time job, and sometimes important busy work can get in the way even for your HR department. To learn how HR Service Inc. can help you free up some of that work to improve your productivity as well, check out our HR eSolutions platform.

Authors: Ken Spencer, President and CEO and Penny Clarke, Content Specialist

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