6 Ways to be Make Your Employees More Productive

Cut Down on Meetings

Having too many meetings can waste precious time. In one survey conducted by Atlassian, 47% of employees labelled meetings as being their number one time-waster at work .

The problem with a lot of these meetings is that they feel like they don’t add very much value. Most often involve a lot of talking, but not much is actually solved.

Consider cutting down on obligatory meetings, and instead, compound these into monthly check-ups designed to give your staff a chance to communicate any problems they might have. During these meetings, prioritise the subjects that need addressing, stick to a meeting plan, and provide time for others to give their input.

Use Apps and Devices to Save Time

We’ve already covered productivity boosting apps in detail on this blog, so go have a look if you’re interested in finding some more examples.

Many productivity apps, such as planning app: Asana, could not only help your employees to better manage their time and tasks, but are also available to download on a variety of different operating systems.

Furthermore, with the right apps, mobiles and tablets can be used to help improve employee productivity offsite as well. For example, Redsquid’s Mobile Geotag solution can enable your employees to easily fill and send pre-made reports. Therefore, saving time that might’ve otherwise been spent manually creating reports from scratch.

Stop Trying to Micro-Manage Your Employees, and Trust Your Managers

Delegating the right tasks to the right people can drastically improve your company’s productivity. As a business owner, you should be spending less time micro-managing, and more time doing the work only you can get done.

It’s important that you trust your managers to assign tasks to the right people. Managing the employees in their department is their job, and as company owner, you must have faith in them to do this well.

If the tasks you give aren’t getting done, then question your managers. Until then, establish your chain of command and hold it.

Don’t Rely on Emails for Internal Communications

The average employee reportedly checks their inbox around 36 times an hour; which roughly translates to an annual loss of approx £1300 per employee.

Email may be the most popular form of professional communication, but it’s sometimes used unnecessarily in internal communications.

The amount of time spent checking and replying to emails could be cut down by implementing a much simpler form of communication; such as Skype for Business. When employees communicate with each other, there’s little need for the formalities and complexities of email. Instead, instant messaging provides a much quicker and easier way for staff to interact.

Acknowledge Achievement

Celebrating success is important to maintaining good productivity and a happy workforce.

Having your employees know that they’ve done good work not only makes them feel good, but can also spur them into completing more work with the same level of quality. So be sure to reward achievement when it is deserved, and regularly. Encourage your managers to praise their employees, and even slip in a word yourself from time to time.

For greater achievements, provide physical rewards. For example, here at Redsquid, we give out a prize each quarter to the employees that have exceeded expectations.

Create Templates

Having to complete menial tasks day-in and day-out can be a serious drain on your employees’ mental outlook. Repetitive work such as re-creating reports and re-sending the same emails, can not only negatively affect employee morale, but it’s also very inefficient.

Try encouraging employees to use templates for repeated actions; such as acknowledgment emails, common social media posts or documents.

Assign someone in your employ, or even hire a freelancer or company to create templates for any essential but repetitive tasks your employees must do. By automating such practices, you can save on wasted time and make your employees work more efficiently.

Taking these 6 steps could not only boost your employees’ productivity levels, but it could also improve your business’s general efficiency as well.

For more advice on how to improve your business’s productivity, have a read of some of our other articles.