How do you mobilize and encourage a workforce to move and perform at their best? As a business owner or founder, it’s essential to proactively look for ways to improve your employees’ performance and productivity. A boost in productivity equates to streamlined operations, lower costs, and faster business growth. Here are five things you could be doing with your employees to enhance output and turnaround time:
Go on a Retreat
A social outing or retreat with your workforce is a great way to hone teamwork skills, solidify professional relationships and build a culture within your company. It’s also a great way to diffuse tension, stress and pressure that’s been building up from weeks of working on project deadlines and meetings. There are plenty of affordable, fun activities out there for the entire office, from scavenger hunts to cook-offs, tabletop game tournaments to professional development workshops. A relatively nascent but quickly rising group activity you can try out are room escape games, which aren’t only fun but can exercise your workforce’s teamwork and problem-solving skills.
Let Them Telecommute
Telecommuting is one of the most coveted work perks of the modern workforce. Allowing your employees to work from home at least once per week can reduce stress, boost motivation and increase productivity. When an employee is allowed some time from the confines of his/her cramped up cubicle, he/she tends to work better and faster. If they are working from home, they conserve one to two hours of their time from commute, which can be reinvested into doing actual work-related tasks. Not to mention, telecommuters save up to $2,000 from annual dry cleaning, lunch meals, tax breaks and transportation.
Be Smart With Meetings
How you handle meetings with employees and clients can have a direct impact towards overall productivity. Meetings are one of the biggest productivity zappers within the workplace, yet somehow employees still manage to get pulled into them at least once a week. Based on a report by Atlassian, the average employee spends more than 31 hours every month in unnecessary meetings. As the boss, ask yourself – do you really need to gather everyone for one or two hours for a presentation or update that you could’ve communicated through email, phone, or chatroom? If you do need to attend or set up a meeting, make sure it is scheduled for only the amount of time needed to disseminate the information.
Improve Your Health and Safety Standards
Keeping your business up to the minimum compliance standards isn’t enough. You want to maintain pristine workplace conditions for your employees. Work-related injuries not only delay project turnaround time and shave off productivity, but it also puts your business in the line of legal fire. If your business’ negligence is proven to be the cause of a worker’s injury, you could be slapped with some hefty settlement and legal fees. Increase security by installing security systems around the area, mandating checkpoints and ID inspections, and training your staff with regards to the proper safety procedures. Provide an ergonomic workspace with comfortable seats and a well-lit and ventilated space.
Set Goals
Establishing clear objectives is key to measuring the success of your new habits. Even just a gradual increase in productivity and performance can signal that you are doing something right or point you to the right direction. Set goals, like making your workers use task-tracking spreadsheet software or decreasing your customer’s wait time on the phone. Make sure to involve your team and staff when setting goals since this will also affect how they go about their day to day.
Final Thoughts
Productivity is difficult to quantify. You can’t really measure the speed in which your employee walks from their desk to the copier machine or count every form that gets filled out and submitted every day. Nonetheless, make the time to dig into productivity-boosting habits that can scale your business faster.
