Barasha Medhi September 3, 2020 Be it corporates or small businesses, everyone wants to know how to increase work efficiency and double the productivity.
The good thing about efficiency is that its not arbitrary like engagement. To increase efficiency, there are a series of steps that you can implement—the better the implementation, the better the efficiency.
Let’s look at the nine useful tips on increasing work efficiency among your employees.
How To Increase Work Efficiency? 9 Useful Tips For HRs and Leaders
1. Recognition Is The Key To Everything Good
Everyone strives for proper appreciation and recognition. Your employees are no different.
A top performer might do all the right things at the right time. But unless they get the proper recognition, it will most likely cause a dip in productivity. In short, your further measures to increase efficiency will fall short without due thankfulness.
To increase productivity and improve efficiency, here are a few employee appreciation tips:
- Public recognition is a strong motivator. The employee gets awarded in front of their team members. It is an excellent form of peer recognition. Meanwhile, their peers get motivated to be more productive at work.
- Frequent and timely. That’s how recognition should work. Delaying will only lessen its value.
- Verbal recognition is good. Teaming it up with a reward, such as gift cards, is even better.
- Taking the help of a recognition platform makes it easier to run and manage.
When an employee feels seen by you, he will go above and beyond to get a job done. Recognition doesn’t only increase employee productivity but also fosters a feeling of duty and loyalty.
2. Proper Goal setting
Goal setting is an effective way to prioritize critical tasks from others. To see the desired organizational results, it’s essential to invest your resources, time, and money into single functions that’ll be useful in the long run.
Goal setting helps to increase efficiency in various ways. When employees are expected to handle a few but essential tasks, they can focus more. Thus, setting employee goals will yield better results as compared to spending unnecessary time on unimportant work. All in all, people work smarter instead of harder.
3. Better Project Management
Just because a project gets completed on time doesn’t mean it was an efficient process. When done right, project management can remarkably increase efficiency to complete the tasks.
The right project management plan requires a lot of planning and the right leader to execute those plans. For strong project management, these aspects should get looked into:
- Excellent communication practices that encourage transparency.
- Operational planning, execution, and monitoring.
- The practical management of resources, time, and money.
4. Improve Your Working Environment
Your employees spend most of their time in the office. Thus, the working environment should not get overlooked. It dramatically impacts employee productivity, mood, and morale.
A working environment is a sum total of many things. It might be the “design and look” of the workplace. Or it might be the “nature” of the working environment. It even might be the “spirit” of it. Let’s have a look at what these entail:
Design and Look
The design of a working environment can hugely influence employee productivity. Workplaces that are bright, minimalistic, colorful, or full of plants impart a feeling of positivity among its residents.
The workplace’s design can be tweaked in various ways—furniture, color, windows, lightings. The options are endless.
Nature
While a classic 9-5 job demands in-office presence. But that has mostly changed. Remote work from home options is on the rise. Now, leaders need to understand how to increase work efficiency for regular employees and the work from home employees.
For that to happen, the contrast between the working environments has to be understood.
- Management of work from home employees versus regular employees.
- Work from home employees needs to be engaged too. These employees are more prone to stress and feel disconnected from the team. Virtual team building activities help a lot. Our favorites are icebreaker questions and virtual team lunches.
- Work from home employees is outside of a manager’s control. The ways to increase efficiency differ too. Goal setting is one way to streamline performance. Other methods are to use some good remote work tools to increase productivity.
Spirit
The “spirit” of the working environment is the vibe that it imparts. Positive, negative, toxic, inclusive. The spirit of a workplace influences not only the work efficiency but also the morale and engagement levels.
5. Leverage Teamwork
Teamwork is essential in filling in the efficiency gaps of your company. A good team uses the power of collaboration to deliver results that are far superior as compared to individuals. If you want to increase efficiency in multiple or single tasks, here is how good teamwork helps:
- Brings fresh ideas to the table. Different viewpoints enable new solutions to emerge.
- Combined skillsets.
- Stronger peer bonds. Thus, employees can hone their creativity because there is someone else to fall back on.
- Team members are subjected to lesser stress.
- The execution of tasks becomes faster and effective.
6. Offer Flexible Work Options
Let’s address the myth that the best work one can do is between 9-5. Many people tend to work better at night. Others prefer to work in “bursts.”
Flexible work hours or options- such as remote work, work from home, telecommuting– are great ways to present employees to work as they want and where they want. It gives them the luxury of balancing work and life.
The ability to choose one’s working hours is a great morale booster. However, a significant difference is seen in the employees’ work efficiency. When working at hours when they are at their most productive, employees will improve efficiency and perform better.
7. Proper time management
Proper time management is the ultimate key to how to increase work efficiency. To see faster results, time management is a necessity. A manager should be able to leverage time and maintain it to produce a smooth workflow.
For your staff to work efficiently, it’s your responsibility as a manager to schedule their time. That means:
- Set priorities. Focus on what needs immediate attention. A to-do list is useful.
- Useful tools are your best friend. Be it an online calendar, document sharing, or HRMS software. Anything that reduces the time you and your team spend on menial tasks is helping you increase efficiency.
- Goal setting through an OKR methodology helps. Lesser and focused goals outcomes, more outstanding results.
- Take inspiration from others who have nailed it before. Apply the 70-20-10 rule from Google.
8. Remove Distractions
In a regular working environment, the distractions are many. From social media to frequent phone calls, it is the era of distractions. As a result, performance, productivity, and efficiency takes a big hit.
Companies need to face this issue head-on and deliver necessary solutions so their employees can focus on their work.
9. Suitable Breaks
In an article about how to increase work efficiency, breaks are the last thing one would expect to read. However, it’s as significant to increase productivity as the other points above.
Even a well-oiled machine will break down if not given a chance to cool off. As humans, your employees are more susceptible to it. Burnout, stress, workload, overtime- these are just the tip of why breaks are necessary. It’s enough to turn an efficient employee into a disengaged one.
When people take some time to rejuvenate, they come back to work with zeal and motivation. It positively impacts their entire wellbeing. Breaks can be time off, vacation time, or even 90 minutes off during the workday. No matter how small, these are incredibly effective in helping employees to work efficiently.
Finally
In this article about how to increase workplace efficiency, which tip was the most informative? Is there any additional way to increase efficiency? Do let us know in the comments section below.
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