Your small business is doing just fine, but you know things could be better. If your meetings lack productivity and your employees struggle to meet deadlines, it is time to give your business operations a boost.
Here are six actionable tips on how to improve business productivity.
1. Outsource Parts of your Business
Outsourcing helps you cut the costs associated with bringing on new employees, such as hiring, onboarding, training, employee benefits, payroll taxes. You will also avoid leasing a bigger office and purchasing new equipment.
Another amazing benefit of outsourcing is increased productivity. By outsourcing time-consuming business operations, your in-house team will have more time to focus on the company’s core tasks and missions.
Some tasks you could outsource include phone answering service, accounting, digital marketing, photography, and audio/video editing.
2. Streamline Time-Consuming Business Processes
Irrespective of your industry and the number of employees, business automation is not a luxury anymore. It is obligatory for all businesses wanting to stay competitive in the fierce SMB landscape.
Automating manual and monotonous tasks saves your in-house team time and increases their productivity. They can finally focus on business operations that require creativity, human touch, or critical thinking.
You can aspect most of your tasks, including:
- Scheduling appointments
- Sorting emails
- Social media management
- Data backups
- Recruiting and hiring
- Content marketing
- Data analytics
- Invoicing and billing
- Lead nurturing
- Contact information centralization
Before investing in business automation tools, assess your current business performance. Identify the major productivity and ask yourself how you could address them.
3. Minimize Interruptions
Staff meetings, department meetings, Slack notifications, email alerts, Skype calls – continuous interruptions prevent your staff from completing tasks fast and efficiently.
Fortunately, you can reduce workplace interruptions in multiple ways.
For starters, do not overwhelm employees with time-consuming meetings. For example, consider scheduling staff, department, and 1-on-1 meetups on the same day rather than scattering them throughout the week.
Many tools can help you reduce interruptions in the workplace. For example, you could block gaming, entertainment, sports, and social media websites during work hours. Or, you can provide employees with tools that let them pause email inboxes. When their email alerts are switched on, they get distracted every time a new message arrives.
4. Use Cloud Task Management Tools
For startups working with several clients, email communications and Google Spreadsheets are enough to stay on top of projects. However, as your small business grows, you need to invest in advanced cloud tools to streamline project management and employee communications.
That is where investing in cloud-based task management software, such as Basecamp or Asana, helps. These tools allow you to create multiple projects, add the right people to them, set deadlines, and delegate tasks. Above all, you can track employee progress in real-time and create relevant performance reports.
With these cloud software solutions, employees can share files, access data, and collaborate fast, regardless of their location. Instead of receiving loads of irrelevant emails, they will focus on meaningful notifications.
5. Discourage Multitasking
We all believe that we are great multitaskers. However, just because you are currently chatting with coworkers, sending an email to a client, and have 15 tabs open on your laptop does not mean you are more productive.
Multitasking may affect employee performance in multiple ways. It negatively impacts their concentration and is more error-prone. When working on several projects at the same time, chances are none of them will be finished as expected.
That is why your company should discourage multitasking and motivate staff to focus on one project at a time. Single-taking helps employees stay focused on their primary and time-sensitive tasks. It encourages critical thinking and creativity, helping employees get more done faster.
6. Make the Office Employee-Friendly
Your employees spend at least 40 hours weekly in the office. Therefore, how you organize the office spaces impacts far more than the visual appeal. It affects employee satisfaction and performance.
When designing a productive office space, include your employees in the office design process.
Second, make sure your offices have lots of natural light and take steps to improve indoor air quality.
Third, get rid of uncomfortable furniture that may cause back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, migraines, and eye strain. By investing in ergonomic furniture, you will improve employee productivity and enhance their overall well-being.
Over to You
You can increase workplace productivity in multiple ways, from task automation and outsourcing to investing in ergonomic furniture. The goal is to keep your business employee-friendly by increasing staff satisfaction and wellbeing.