Productivity is one of the central facets of a strong business. Get it to an optimal level, and you will help to boost your output, as well as offering your customers the best product or service possible. While you can streamline your processes as much as you like, your workforce needs to be right with you in increasing productivity. As there is not a single technique that you can use to create a more productive workforce, we are going to talk about a few of the main techniques that you can use to achieve this feat.
Create a Culture of Productivity
Your business culture is something that can occur quite organically, but it can also be shaped very much from the top. You should ask yourself how does it feel to be an employee at your business? While you can’t see things exactly as your staff do, you can still get a sense of whether your office feels like a hive of activity or if there are some processes or even people who are getting in the way. Encourage your team to communicate with you honestly to get a better idea of whether they are happy with everything that is going on or if they feel that there are some improvements to be made. This kind of open communication can be helpful in many ways. Ask whether there are any tools they need that could help them do their job better and consider investing in them.
Set Clear Goals
Following on from the previous point, setting goals can be enormously helpful in boosting motivation and encouraging a more productive workforce. Everyone needs something to work towards, after all. Your team also needs to be sufficiently motivated to work towards their goals, so consider what sort of reward system you are going to put in place. You also need a regular review system and meetings where you can analyze how they have done in their task, whether the goals have been easy or hard to achieve etc. Once a goal has been hit, you need to be proactive in setting the next one to ensure that they continually have something new to work towards. Goal setting is particularly important if you are working from home as a company, which is an activity that more and more people are doing in the modern world.
Encourage Organization
In a disorganized company environment, it is very easy for time to be lost in trying to keep on top of tasks that otherwise would have been managed. So, you need a system in which everyone is keeping on top of their calendars and knowing their deadlines. A central feature of running an organized business is ensuring that your team are communicating well with one another. A breakdown of communication is one of the main issues that can harm a company, so you need to be on top of not allowing this to happen. You should enable your team to decorate their desks as they like as having personal pictures can help to keep mood up. However, you should encourage them to maintain tidiness as this is important for other staff members. Also, you should hire a cleaner to ensure that everything else stays in spotless order.
Create a More Productive Office Space
The environment around you can also have a big impact on the productivity of your staff members, so look into workplace optimisation where possible. Everyone should have enough room on their desks, and you should consider the ‘flow’ of the office to ensure that people can move around freely. Let as much natural light in as possible. Studies have shown that this can be a major boon to productivity. This about your office color scheme. Yellow has been shown to help creativity. Keep the temperature pleasant without becoming too warm. Place some indoor plants throughout the office as these have been shown to help foster a sense of calmness.
Reduce Distractions Where Possible
While you cannot expect your staff to be working to 100 percent capacity all day, every day, you can take note of major distractions, so you can attempt to reduce these where possible. Often, the main distraction comes in the form of a person, so you may have to have a conversation about staying on task and being less distracting with other team members. This is why it is vital that you keep overall control of your working culture. Each new addition to the team can change that culture ever-so-slightly, which is why you need a high-quality interview process and training program.
Focus on Health
There has been much more of a focus on workplace health in recent years, which is a positive trend. While the management of their personal health is down to your employees, you can still take steps to help. For example, you could organize fresh fruit to be offered daily as a healthy snack or even hire a fitness professional to conduct a class at the end of the working day. If you are truly committed to the cause, you could even launch an employee wellness program. Not only does a healthy body translate to a healthier mind and increased productivity, but you also show your employees that you value their health, which can, in turn, encourage them to work harder for you.
Avoid Micromanaging
Everything that we have discussed so far may make you feel like you should be managing your employees extremely closely, but this can have the opposite effect to the one that you were intending. If your staff feel micromanaged, they may feel like you think that they are not up to the job. So, you should aim to take a more zoomed out view of workplace productivity rather than trying to manage every single thing that happens in the office.
Creating a more productive workforce isn’t going to happen overnight, but it is a goal that is worth striving towards. Remember, each small step adds up.