Hot tips for increasing productivity
With Barbican Training Centre
Increasing productivity is what keeps you
ahead of the pack. It’s what keeps you afloat when the others are sinking. But staying productive can be a real challenge. At the end of the day, there’s a good chance that you are not satisfied with what’s been accomplished. If that’s the case, then here are some pointers that could help you and your business:
- Take stock—identify obstacles
This is the first thing you need to do—if you don’t know what’s wrong, how can you fix it? Look around your business and see what’s stopping the work being quick and efficient. Is your equipment outdated? Or is it simply not being used properly? Assess where your team is at the moment—do they have the right equipment, the right authority, the right training? Look at all parts of your business; figure out what works, find out what doesn’t need to be done, what can be done more cheaply and what can be done better.
- Seek help and delegate tasks accordingly
Nobody is an expert at everything; make sure that the right members of your team are in the right positions, doing the right jobs—you wouldn’t have a rugby first five-eighth (fly half) as the main line out receiver if you wanted to win. If you haven’t got the right talent, then hire it when it’s needed.
- Avoid unnecessary meetings
Most meetings are quite simply unnecessary for many of the participants—only people who are directly involved need attend. Parties interested in what happened receive notes of the most important details, leaving them to get on with their work, instead of abandoning this for a meeting.
- Keep administration to a minimum
Administration, whilst absolutely necessary, is a cost centre, not a profit centre—it doesn’t bring in the money, it spends. Examine what your administration department does and
figure out how to do it better. Be prepared for howls of protest from your administration department, as they won’t appreciate your “help”, and will see you as the enemy.
- Use technology
Automate tasks wherever possible to get the job done more quickly and more accurately—taking the human element out of a task usually results in greater accuracy. Accuracy means that jobs only need to be done once; it’s that old chestnut—do it once, do it right.
- Ask the team
Team members often know better than management how things can be done more quickly, more cheaply, or improving quality—so ask. You can also offer monetary rewards— a
percentage of money saved to encourage participation.
- Train the team
Conduct training sessions to upgrade employee performance. Training helps employees to handle new equipment and perform jobs more efficiently. Make sure new employees have a proper induction process, so that they know what needs to be done and how.
- Weed out distractions
Staff may have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Hootsuite, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google Chat, accounts plus many others you’ve never heard of. If they are not using these, they may be checking their email on their smartphones or reading random facts on Wikipedia every 5 minutes. Disconnect! In the U.S., this is estimated to cost companies roughly $6,000 per year per worker. Ouch!!!
