As a business owner or manager, it is important that you do everything you can to make your company run as efficiently as possible. Why? Quite simply because the more efficient your company is, the less money will be wasted and the bigger the returns you will make.
One of the most effective, not to mention important, ways to make any business more efficient is by inspiring and assisting employees in improving their own personal productivity. After all, your staff are the most important part of your business, and it is their efficiency (or lack of) which will make or break your business in the end.
Thankfully, there are plenty of things that company owners and managers can do to supercharge their staff's efficiency, and most of them are pretty easy to implement...
Don’t Worry About Delegating
It is obvious that if you want your company to be more productive and your employees to be as efficient as possible, you are going to have to delegate various tasks to various people. However, some managers have a real problem with letting go of the reins and allowing their staff to shine. The fact is, you can’t have a hand in absolutely everything your company does, so you need to suck it up and learn how to delegate if that’s something you currently struggle with. It will save everyone’s time, and actually, a little trust can go a long way to incentivizing employees to do their very best!
Match Staff Skills to Tasks
Again, this sounds so obvious that it shouldn’t be worth mentioning, but you’d be surprised how many managers simply don’t know how to match their staff’s skills to the tasks that need to be done. They assign work seemingly at random, and that means that they are not getting the best use out of their employees and their company certainly isn’t anywhere near as efficient as it could be.
If you want to avoid falling into this trap, take the time to look at your employee's’ qualifications and get to know they’re style of working, their behavior and their personalities. When you have this information, it’s pretty easy to work out which tasks they’ll be most suited to, and therefore, more efficient at completing.
Learn How to Communicate More Effectively
Effective communication is vital to overall staff efficiency. Luckily, technology has made communication between employees and management easier than ever. However, that only applies if you use the right tech and that’s why now might be the right time to give up on using so much email. Why? Because replying to email, according to research, can take up as much as 28 percent of an office employee’s time! It’s much quicker to use social media style communication tools like Slack or face to face apps like Skype, and even the good old phone call to sort out issues among employees.
Invest In Collaboration Tools
In a similar vein, a good team collaboration tool, which enables you to collect data, research, notices etc., together in one place, where everyone can see it and work on it collaboratively, is a great time saver. There is also research to suggest that collaboration between employees relates to greater innovation, so it is really worth investing in anything that can make collaboration easier.
Set Clear Goals
It’s hard for staff to stay focused and maintain their efficiency when they don’t have any clear goals to work to. Without goals, they will just drift along, and your business will not be nearly as productive as it could be. That’s a why, as an owner or manager, you should be setting regular goals that are finely balanced between challenging and achievable.
Offer Incentives
It’s another pretty obvious one, but worth mentioning because it works better than almost anything else; incentivizing your employees to pick up the pace and improve their own personal efficiency can work wonders.
Giving recognition to your staff for a job well done will not only make them feel like you care about them and that their role is important, but it will give them a good reason to keep striving to do better, too.
It can be tough trying to find a good way of incentivizing employees that will be effective, but I think the best way to go about it is by treating them all as individuals. If, for example, you know one of your employees loves the limelight, making a fuss of them by presenting them with a little something in front of an audience will probably go down well, whereas, if you have an employee who’s a bit more introverted, slipping a thank you note and a little treat inside their locker is more likely to work.
Of course, you can’t really go wrong by offering bonuses and even raises for employees who increase their efficiency, if you have the budget to do so.
Get Rid Of The Unnecessary
A very good way to improve staff efficiency is by getting rid of the small tasks that are almost redundant in the great scheme of things so that they can focus on doing the work that really matters, and which really adds value to the company as a whole. You can do this by simply trimming the excess and throwing out practices that don’t really matter, automating simple administrative tasks or even hiring an employee solely to deal with these matters - all three should see results.
Offer Training & Development Opportunities
A lot of business owners don’t invest in employee training and development at all, and for those that do, it’s often the first thing that goes when they’re looking to make savings. This is a big mistake, and one that you shouldn’t make, simply because the more training your staff has, the more informed about best practices they will be and the more efficiently they’ll be able to operate.
Not only that, but trying to train new employees on the job, although it might seem like a cost-effective and efficient way to do things, can be anything but. Why? Because an employee who doesn’t know what they’re doing can hold everyone up as they try to be helpful and explain various tasks. Investing in training really is what smart employers do.
Think About Allowing Them To Work From Home
You might think that, if you allow your employees to work from home, they will slack off and you’ll notice a decrease in inefficiency instead of the increase you are looking for. However, it has been shown that employees who telecommute are, on average, 13 percent more efficient that employees in the office.
It is obvious really - employees who work from home want to get their work done quickly, so that they can kick back and relax, maybe spend more time with their families, so they will work harder, smarter and faster most of the time, and as long as the work gets done, what does it really matter to you if they’re not in the office from 9-5 every day?
Not only that, but being flexible about allowing employees to work from home means that staff who are well enough to work, but don’t want to risk infecting people with bugs, for example, can still get things done.
Conduct Regular Performance Reviews
You can’t totally blame employees for being inefficient if they aren't aware of the fact. That is why, if your aim is to increase employee efficiency, you should carry out regular performance reviews that really get into how efficient employees are and what they are doing that could be improved, or even adopted by everyone else to make the whole efficient. When you are doing this, remember that you are looking for the good - what your employees are doing right - as much as you are the inefficiencies and letting your employees know about both is critical if you want to actually make a difference and avoid alienating your staff completely.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
If you want to improve efficiency, then keeping your eyes on the big picture - what your overall business aim is - is pretty important. When you do this, it ensures that you evaluate all of your business practices and the practices of your employees carefully and with more fairness. This is important because what at first glance might appear to be an inefficient way of doing things, might actually be good for your business in some way, and if you take your eyes on the prize, you might get rid of it without any thought whatsoever. This is a mistake you really don’t want to make, so try to always have at least one eye on your true aim.
By utilizing as many of these tips to boost your employee efficiency, there is no doubt that you will see an improvement in your company’s productivity, but make sure that you keep evaluating and reevaluating your efficiency so that you don’t fall behind by resting on your laurels. After all, new advances are made all the time, and if you aren’t aware of them, you can’t benefit from them.
I hope you enjoyed this article about how to supercharge your staff's efficiency and improve overall employee productivity
Interested in more articles about increasing business productivity?
Read My Blog Posts:
- 4 Steps To Improve Your Company's Logistics
- Top Small Business Tools For Modern Marketers
More Bootstrap Business Blog Below
Not only that, but being flexible about allowing employees to work from home means that staff who are well enough to work, but don’t want to risk infecting people with bugs, for example, can still get things done.
Conduct Regular Performance Reviews
You can’t totally blame employees for being inefficient if they aren't aware of the fact. That is why, if your aim is to increase employee efficiency, you should carry out regular performance reviews that really get into how efficient employees are and what they are doing that could be improved, or even adopted by everyone else to make the whole efficient. When you are doing this, remember that you are looking for the good - what your employees are doing right - as much as you are the inefficiencies and letting your employees know about both is critical if you want to actually make a difference and avoid alienating your staff completely.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
If you want to improve efficiency, then keeping your eyes on the big picture - what your overall business aim is - is pretty important. When you do this, it ensures that you evaluate all of your business practices and the practices of your employees carefully and with more fairness. This is important because what at first glance might appear to be an inefficient way of doing things, might actually be good for your business in some way, and if you take your eyes on the prize, you might get rid of it without any thought whatsoever. This is a mistake you really don’t want to make, so try to always have at least one eye on your true aim.
By utilizing as many of these tips to boost your employee efficiency, there is no doubt that you will see an improvement in your company’s productivity, but make sure that you keep evaluating and reevaluating your efficiency so that you don’t fall behind by resting on your laurels. After all, new advances are made all the time, and if you aren’t aware of them, you can’t benefit from them.
I hope you enjoyed this article about how to supercharge your staff's efficiency and improve overall employee productivity
Interested in more articles about increasing business productivity?
Read My Blog Posts:
- 4 Steps To Improve Your Company's Logistics
- Top Small Business Tools For Modern Marketers
More Bootstrap Business Blog Below