Every business owner will of experienced times when the effectiveness and productivity of their team aren’t where it should be and will need to make changes. It’s never obvious what kills team productivity but it can be easier than you think to help improve it and get it back to where you want it to.
Ok so you’re never going to have a team of people who are constantly a hundred percent productive unfortunately that’s not how human being work but you can put steps into pace to make sure high levels are achieved.
Work is a process so it, therefore, can be and needs to be controlled This means to be successful you need to have the appropriate processes and controls in place to make a team the most productive they can be. Have a look below at some of the ways you can increase your team’s productivity:
Set Achievable Goals
One of the first things that you should consider is setting goals that are attainable for your team. What do you want your team to be working on and how do you want them spending their time on it? You should think about things such as their capabilities, their time scales ( due to workloads and working patterns) and then put processes in place to help them achieve tasks appropriately. Looking at areas like time and attendance will help you to keep all your goals realistic and monitored. A good way to motivate staff is to split a larger task into several smaller tasks this way both you and they can see how far they are away from the overall goal.
Clarity Of Roles And Tasks
It’s a good idea to have regular meetings with your team on a whole level and individual one-to-one levels. This will allow you to explain the overall target as a team and with role-specific tasks. Start by explaining what each individual role is expected to do and which tasks you want them to focus on then layout the whole picture so they can gather an understanding about what these tasks will contribute towards.
Often a team’s productivity can dip because they don’t know or understand the bigger picture. Make sure everyone understands the quality of work you are after and then leave them alone, give them the freedom to work in the best way, without constant supervision.
Feedback Is Key
You should aim to gain an element of trust, meaningful feedback, and constructive criticism with any team. Meaning that both you and they have an open line of communication and feel comfortable to give feedback on each other work. And, yes this means to feedback to you too not just them.
You will find that your employees feel freer to come to you if they are experiencing problems with any tasks earlier rather than when it can be too late which will result in productivity being increased as you can work together to come up with a solution.
If you lack the skills to have an open line of communication then it may be a good idea to complete some management courses. Another good thing for you to use would be tools such as performance management where you allocate time to feedback to employees on how they’re performing.
These are just three ways that you can increase your team’s productivity, there are many more. Do you have any that you can share in the comments section below?
