Maximizing productivity is an essential goal for all businesses in every industry. Boosting how much you get done fuels sales and is the secret sauce for rocking it in business operations, setting you up for sustainable growth.
However, with the constantly evolving challenges that businesses face today—particularly with the prevalence of remote and hybrid work environments—maintaining productivity can sometimes be challenging. Managers must continuously find fresh ways to keep their teams pumped and involved. Engagement and productivity, after all, are intrinsically connected.
Engaged employees are more productive and tend to stay in their jobs longer, so any effort extended to fuel that motivation is like money in the bank.
Are you looking to kick productivity into high gear? Read on for a roundup of sharp tactics and fresh ideas that are surefire business productivity enhancers.
Strategies to kick your business productivity into gear
Leverage these ten golden strategies to cut through the clutter, sharpen your team’s focus, and crank up efficiency across all corners of your company.
Assess your current processes
Cumbersome workflows are often the biggest barrier to business productivity. When employees can easily sail through their tasks, they are likelier to engage and do their best work.
Give your workflows a health check to identify the trouble spots. Conduct periodic reviews, especially when new tech rolls out, or you switch up your KPIs.
Tap into the know-how of your teams. Since they do the work, they are likely to have viable ideas to bring to the table.
Set clear goals and priorities
Once you’ve analyzed and audited your workflows, it’s time to set goals. Establish KPIs and align processes to the expected outcome to stay on track. When employees understand the priorities, it’s easier to focus as they’ll know what’s expected of them.
Kick things off by setting clear, trackable targets that cover your short and long-term goals. When your teams can connect what they do to the big picture, they’ll take ownership of their work, and business productivity will improve.
Streamline communication and collaboration
Communication is essential to any meaningful relationship. When you consider the state of work these days and the strong focus on remote and distributed teams, one can imagine how challenging it can become when signals get crossed. If you want the business to thrive, smashing those barriers is a must.
Adequate communication tools, channels, and clear guidelines lay the foundations. Care must be taken to break down silos and enable access to relevant content, training, and information so cross-departmental teams can work together efficiently.
Platforms like Jostle link employees to their tasks, the broader goals of the workplace, and their coworkers. Jostle integrates seamlessly with your go-to productivity and project management tools, ensuring we’re all headed the same way and locked into the game plan.
Invest in employee training and development
Employee training and development help promote a culture of continuous learning. By offering training programs, employers equip their teams with the essentials to confidently tackle new heights in their careers. When a company invests in its people’s growth, you can bet there will be a boost in the team’s drive and commitment—they get that their future is being taken seriously.
For training to hit the mark, folks need a clear picture of the career doors it’ll open—think promotions and pay bumps. Boosting their skill set, employees crank up productivity and spark innovation—plus, they get more hooked on the company.
Embrace technology
Automation can be leveraged to streamline repetitive, tedious workflows so employees can focus on higher-value tasks. Artificial intelligence boosts our work game, letting us nail tasks faster and with fewer slip-ups.
Many modern productivity apps can be integrated quickly into current workflows and customized to internal preferences. However, great care must be taken to ensure your chosen tech stack is functional and user-friendly. Loads of businesses dive into fixes that end up being more hassle than they’re worth, bogging them down with extra bells and whistles they don’t actually need.
To ensure you get the most out of your tech investment, weigh the cost/benefit first. Then, commit to a trial period during which you’ll appoint a handful of “champions,” people you know are capable of using the tools and can give you an honest assessment of what they think. If your beta phase is successful, those champions can lead the way for their teams to ensure buy-in.
Tech also shines by offering in-depth insights into how we work, spotlighting where we excel and what could use a tweak. Intranets and employee success platforms integrate with many productivity apps, allowing you to visualize their usage and how that translates to value.
Cultivate a healthy work-life balance
Balancing work and personal life is vital. Without it, remote workers might burn out and head off for a less stressful gig.
To dodge the burnout bullet, remote employees must strike a solid work-life rhythm. When working from home, employees can be subject to burnout, which can lead to more sick days or leaving for greener pastures.
Promote flexible work arrangements if requested and encourage employees to take regular breaks while in the office. Zeroing in on our team’s well-being pays off big time; they get a morale boost and ramp up their game, lifting the entire company’s output.
Measure and track progress
Establish a few specific KPIs to track and quantify productivity. KPI examples might include time spent on tasks, project completion rate, overtime hours, revenue per employee, and time spent on a project vs. quoted/estimated time.
Remember that less is more: choose the productivity metrics that make the most sense to your organization. Track these numbers regularly to form a baseline. When you have a sense of what “normal” is, it’s easier to notice when things are misaligned, allowing you to respond quickly and make adjustments based on the data.
Quick employee check-ins and pulse surveys can shine a light on team morale, which is crucial for keeping productivity levels up at work.
Celebrate, recognize, and reward
Recognize your standout team members to show them they’re crucial. Their hard work doesn’t go unnoticed, and that recognition keeps everyone motivated and driven forward.
Shout-outs to your top players, lift their spirits, and show everyone that dedication and effort truly pay off. When team members see their hard work sparking real change, they’re more likely to stay sharp, involved, and on top of their game. Whether it’s an actual reward or a group celebration matters less than the act of recognition itself.
A little healthy competition doesn’t hurt either! Implementing a reward-based system aligned to specific goals encourages people to step up into their roles. You could also establish a peer voting system where employees can nominate others for employee of the month status.
Spotlighting standouts with an employee of the month nod does more than just give kudos. It rallies everyone, lifts spirits, and sparks a drive to do better because we’re all in on the action.
Make improving business productivity part of your culture
Every company knows the importance of business productivity. When your employees feel valued and are supported with the right leadership, encouragement, and technology, they will engage, collaborate, and stay productive throughout their employment lifecycle. With the strategies we’ve laid out, companies arm their team with everything essential for smashing goals.
