Once you start a business, it is your dream to see it flourish and outdo itself every year. In order to for that to happen, your employees should be more productive each year. However, they are people, and they are bound to get distracted and sometimes even slack on work which can affect your business. To make sure that you are ahead of all the possible scenarios you should read different research about ways to increase productivity. If you don’t have the time to do so, don’t worry, just read ahead, and you’ll find an abridged version of many useful tips by many successful entrepreneurs. If you need any further assistance, check this out.
Unnecessary meetings
Holding meetings with your employees and knowing what they’re up to is good, but you need to make sure that you’re not interfering with their work. You should know that your employees are capable of doing what you assigned them which is why you hired them in the first place. Don’t bother your employees unnecessarily. According to recent research, more than 40% of a working person’s time is spent in meetings.
While face to face meetings are always going to be an integral part of the business community, unnecessary checks can limit a person’s productivity. You should use online project management tools that can help you be in touch with the whole team and any specific person in particular. Tools such as slack help you cut down on unnecessary meetings and can increase productivity. Most meetings are held in the morning, and research shows that is the time the human brain functions at its best potential. Cutting down on meetings means more time and therefore more productivity.
Apart from that, you should only invite people relevant to the meeting at hand. Holding collective meetings is a waste of time for a lot of people. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon suggests that we should follow the two pizza rule, which means only call the number of people you’d invite to eat two pizzas in your office.
Dustin Moskowitz another great CEO suggests making sure that there is one day in the whole week that is a no meeting day. Not only will your employees look forward to it, but it will also increase their productivity by making sure there is one day a week they don’t have to worry about what the boss has to say.
Gamification
While the terminology may seem new and fancy, it has been around for a long time. In lay man’s language, it is the use of a reward to make people work harder. It can help your business improve its productivity a great deal. Different research in various fields shows that incentives have been used for ages to conjure the required response by animals and human beings.
There are many incentives that are used by different companies all over the world – for example, paid vacations, various exclusive perks, promotions, etc. Even small businesses use this technique while offering incentives like dental benefits, or an iPhone, etc.
Systemize and automate
You should systemize and automate anything that you can. The times where you had to do everything yourself are gone. You should search for tools that can make your tasks easier. For example, Goco.io can help manage records and reports from all your employees from one cloud, Telzio can help you be connected with work through your mobile which means you can work from wherever you want, Trend Kite can help map out your progress and compare them to other competing companies and Trello can help you map out all the tasks that you have to do and prioritize them for you so that you don’t miss out on something necessary.
Limit use of social media
A large percentage of our population lives online. That means that they are conditioned to check their Facebook or Instagram accounts more than once an hour. You should limit social media use to break hours so that people don’t waste their time on social media. While some may think of this as a harsh measure, it has been implemented by many multinational companies and has worked well.
Time management
The average working American spends a significant amount of time at work. However, just because someone sits at a desk from 9 to 5 doesn’t mean that they are being productive. As a business owner, you should be concerned with how your employees are spending their time. You should assign time lines according to given tasks and assign stress breaks too. You should arrange seminars for your workers for them to learn different time management techniques and apply them to their work scenarios.
For example, Tesla founder, Elon Musk suggests that one should attend to emails first thing in the morning which means you should take the first hour of your morning to read and reply to your emails which will help you sort out your priorities for the whole day. You should filter the unnecessary emails and focus on the critical emails.
Richard Branson suggests that while technology has helped us a great deal, there are certain things that technology can’t beat. He suggests having a notepad for jotting down everything and then prioritizing and making a list that you can follow. The psychological pleasure of cutting out something that you have done is a stress reliever like none other.
Remote teams
While some may think of it as a trend, more than 50 percent of people in the US are a part of a remote team, which means that this concept has developed over the years and gained a reasonable reputation in the business arena. While it was considered to be a trend that would die out, this unconventional way of working has gained recognition among traditional working philosophies. It saves the company a lot of money and gives the employee control over his working situation, therefore increasing productivity.
