How productive is your organization? Your answer to this question directly impacts your ability to scale and grow your business.
If business growth is one of your priorities, focusing on increasing the productivity of your workforce is essential.
In today’s post, we’ll be discussing six proven strategies that can help you do this:
1. Hold smarter meetings
How your employees interact with each other — and your clients — has a huge impact on productivity.
This is especially true if you operate across multiple locations. How much time do your employees spend in meetings? How much time do they spend traveling to meetings?
Technology makes it easy to reduce the amount of time spent on meetings. There are now several online meeting platforms that reduce the need to leave the office.
Of course, your staff may still wish to attend some meetings in person, especially if it’s for a new client. But holding subsequent, smaller meetings via video conferencing can free up a significant amount of time.
You should also ensure employees are properly educated on how to hold effective meetings.
We’ve all attended hour-long meets that could have been over in 10 minutes. Encourage your staff to use their time appropriately.
2. Outsource tasks to free up resources
There are so many benefits to outsourcing the background tasks required to run your business. Increased productivity is one of them.
How much time does your IT staff spend reacting to issues and fixing problems? This takes them away from focusing on IT tasks that can help your business grow.
Consider outsourcing any ongoing, necessary IT tasks to free up your own staff to work on activities that will help your business grow.
3. Prioritize the health and wellbeing of your staff
Corporate wellbeing is a huge trend when it comes to increasing productivity. And, when you look at the statistics, it’s not hard to see why.
According to a 2018 report by Wricke, 94% of Americans experience stress at their place of work.
As stress is known to directly influence productivity, employers should make this a priority.
4. Consider remote and/or flexible working
Data suggests remote and flexible working can both improve productivity.
And it turns out your employees probably think so too. A report by HubSpot suggests 65% of people working full-time believe remote working can increase their productivity.
Technology makes it easier for your employees to work from home or another remote location. For example, VoIP telephone systems and cloud computing both make it possible for staff to work efficiently and effectively when not in the office.
5. Keep employees engaged
Employee engagement is another factor that influences productivity.
Research demonstrates this, with disengaged employees reported to cost companies up to $550 billion each year.
Encouraging collaboration in your business is one way to improve engagement. This ensures employees remain involved in the activities that interest them, strengthening relationships across teams to provide an engaged workforce.
Again, technology can help with this — prioritize finding the right tools to enhance collaboration across your business.
6. Minimize business disruptions
Finally, it goes without saying that business disruptions can have a huge impact on productivity.
Thankfully, many of them are easy to avoid — with the right level of care and planning.
Ensure you have an effective disaster management plan and update it regularly.
Conclusion
There are hundreds of ways to improve productivity within your organization. From educating staff to ensuring you have the right technology in place, it’s a continual process of development. These six strategies are an excellent starting point to help you scale your business. If you’d like to have a conversation about this or other IT related issues, feel free to contact us today.