10 Ways to Increase Productivity in Your Team
Increasing your teams or employee’s productivity is very important when it comes to successfully completing tasks. When employees are productive the company will be able to achieve their goals. Productivity will also help motivate the workplace, boost morale, and create a better work culture or environment.
In order to help increase productivity in your team, you need to become an effective leader. As a leader you need to give your team members space to grow, make mistakes, and learn. You need to encourage them to work in collaboration, towards a common goal. Making these small changes will most definitely improve the levels of productivity in your team and business in general.
10 Tips to Increase Productivity in Your Team
1. Communication
The most important way to increase productivity in your team is to establish communication. Your team members should be able to talk to you about problems that they are facing. To achieve this, you need to be available to your team and make sure that they feel comfortable talking with you as well as other team members. Practice open and clear communication with your team members and encourage them to share their thoughts and ideas. Good communication means going the extra mile and is essential to achieve productivity and maintaining strong relationships. Here is how can you improve your employee and company communication;
- Keep everyone in the loop – The line of communication must be kept open at all times. Employees feel more motivated when their leaders keep them up-to-date on the business. This is even more important when it comes to remote working employees.
- Practice listening and show empathy – Remember communication is a two-way process, it is important to really listen to what your employees say. When you listen and address their concerns by making changes, it displays respect and allows you to better the processes around work and productivity.
- Choose your medium cautiously – The right communication medium or tool will go a long way in ensuring cooperation and healthy work culture. There are a variety of apps you can use for communication; like – Slack, Trello, etc.
2. Lead by example
One of the primary ways to increase productivity in your team is to lead by example. This can lead to a higher level of productivity. If you want your team members to perform a certain task such as – showing up to work early; you need to make sure that you show up to work early. When led by example, your employees will most definitely follow because you set the benchmark for the productivity you want from them. As a leader, you need to inspire others to develop efficiencies.
3. Delegate
As a leader you cannot shoulder all the responsibilities. Delegation will help you empower your team, build trust, and help them develop professionally. Delegation will benefit your business and give your team a sense of direction. Delegation provides a sense of ownership and achievement; this is important for your employee’s morale and for increasing their productivity. Delegation will allow employees to explore new ways of working, gain new skills, and allow them to hone leadership skills.
4. Know your team’s strengths
Knowing your team’s strengths will help you assign tasks; for example – if a person in the team is known for thinking outside the box, you can make them the head of creative ideas. Understanding your team’s skills will help you make use of their strengths and make meaningful contributions to the business and the team’s productivity. Your team strengths play a vital role in determining future leaders as well. Identify their strengths to unlock the potential of every employee. As an employer or a leader one of the most important tasks is to understand these strengths and how they can be used to drive productivity. Once you have this insight into your employees’ strengths, the next step becomes how to leverage these strengths to help everyone stay engaged and productive.
5. Work environment
A good work environment is vital in improving team productivity. Other than the physical setting, incorporation of comfortable furniture layouts, plants, lighting, etc. make the environment within the office also impact the team productivity. Negative aspects such as a dominating boss and office politics can bring down productivity. So, you need to create an inspiring work environment that enables your team to thrive.
6. Provide the right tools
Providing your team with the right tools helps increase productivity. The right tools will help your team perform their duties effectively, save time and effort. When your employees don’t have the right tools that they need, they are forced to become creative. The right tools help save money, even if these tools/ equipment’s cost more, having the right tools will help you save money in the long run.
7. Reward efforts
When a team member achieves a goal or delivers results before the deadline, you should reward their efforts and make them appreciated. Celebrate even the small victories, it is important to celebrate your employee’s achievements at all levels. Congratulate employees when they complete work or illustrate good work in progress. Rewards can include – days off or bonuses. In today’s business-driven world people consider rewarding as an essential way of marking recognition. Reward and recognition are important motivators, everyone wants to be recognized for their accomplishments. Rewards need to be specific and relevant.
8. Encourage team activities
This is a great way to help your team connect and encourage collaboration to overcome challenges. The goal should be to connect with team-members. When team members or employees get along and work in collaboration, the workplace automatically becomes happier, healthier and more productive. When different people work together, there is always a possibility of disagreements, to beat animosity between the employees you need to encourage team activities. This will not add some element of fun but also helps build relationships and boost efficiency.
9. Ensure your teams happiness
Show your team appreciation and respect on a personal level. This is important when trying to increase efficiency and productivity. You must remember that happier employees equal high productivity, creating a work environment that promotes happiness will definitely boost employee productivity and efficiency. When employees are happier, they are more engaged in their work. Happy employees tend to be healthy employees, who possess more psychological stability and higher levels of energy and have better interpersonal skills. This is very important when dealing with clients and co-workers. These interpersonal skills make them team players who are capable of communicating well with others.
10. Encourage feedback
Giving feedback to your team is vital. It is also important to encourage your team to provide feedback to one-another. This will help them better understand what they’re working on, and helps motivate them to work even harder and be more productive. Asking for feedback encourages a culture of open communication. You can hold or host a feedback session. This will help both you and your employees to bring up concerns. The changing nature of the business world demands higher levels of productivity. Productivity levels in the workplace are extremely important. It is always difficult to know how to encourage employees to work more effectively or more productively. There is no “one way” to do it the right way, but if you can lay down a strong foundation for a productive environment you can achieve higher levels of productivity. Helping your employees by supporting them, giving them effective feedback and encouraging them, will make a difference in the productivity level of your employees and organization in general.