You Are Costing Your Team Its Productivity

In the business world of offices, productivity is the measure of the efficiency of an employee, which is achieved by comparing their output with the costs incurred and resources consumed during a specific person. A productive member of your team is a person who can make the most cost-effective use of their time to generate the highest amount of output, aka tackle the tasks in their workload, meet deadlines, and deliver results.

From a business owner’s perspective, productive employees deliver more value, while less productive employees can bring additional costs in comparison. However, it’s fair to say that you can expect natural fluctuations in the productivity levels of your teams. After all, people are no machines. Many factors can affect the day-to-day, from external events such as employees leaving early to watch a sports event – several companies recording a drop in productivity during the FIFA World Cup, for instance – to problems with your Internet provider. However, most entrepreneurs tend to forget the influence they have on their staff. You could be an obstacle to your team productivity.

They don’t feel appreciated

Do you congratulate your employees for their work? If you assume that good work should be a standard that doesn’t deserve mentioning, your attitude might affect your staff motivation. Indeed, when people work hard to meet deadlines and finish a stressful project, they expect their efforts to be noticed. As the office environment can be filled with pressures, thanking positive results is a way for you to let your employees know that you respect their work. The reserve attitude, however, criticising mistakes and only focusing on issues can be demotivating. If you don’t tell your team you’re happy with their job; people might start to feel taken for granted and not appreciated. Aside from the impact on the moral, the overall productivity can also decrease as a result.

The office is poorly set up

Open-space offices are a thing of the past. Your team need spaces where they can brainstorm, hold meetings, and establish project-based collaborative work. Therefore, more and more offices are transforming their layout to follow the requirements of the activity-based design. Segmenting your premises with partition walls can help configure office space that promotes productivity within the team. Indeed, as you give your employees the ability to create new rooms that meet their requirements, they’ll find the workload easier to manage. Partitions can also reduce interruptions and distractions when working on urgent projects.

You plan meetings all the time

Are you the kind of boss who loves meetings? From a daily stand-up meeting to know where everyone stands with their workload to project launch meeting, you could be causing more harm than good. Indeed, you might want to take action before your employees leave you or complain about your meeting obsession. On average, employees can waste up to 70% of their working hours in conference rooms and other communication-based activities without enjoying any benefit. Meetings become stressful as they force people to work longer hours to finish standing projects.  

In conclusion, there’s only one question left to ask: What are you going to do to improve your team productivity? With most business owners carrying some responsibility for their productive drop, it’s essential to start with yourself to develop the cost-effective work routine of your company.

Productivity Perfection: Boost Workflow In The Office

You might have snagged yourself incredible workers for your business, but at the end of the day these people are only human. They’re going to get ill, have their off days or suffer with a decrease in motivation at times. Thankfully, there are things that you can do to boost morale in the workplace, make it a pleasant place to work and ensure that everything is being done to naturally improve productivity. Here are some ideas!

Have an Office Refit

It makes sense that a dull and dingy office is going to lead to decreased mood, and in turn, lower productivity. Simply by sprucing up the space you can make a huge difference to your workflow. Repaint the walls and replace carpets, change around the layout and add plants which have been shown by psychologists to boost productivity in the workplace. Invest in ergonomically designed desks and chairs for comfort, and good storage systems. If you don’t want to tackle your next office refit yourself, could always enlist a specialist workspace project resourcing firm such as Formation Group. They will have the skills and experience to do the best job so you can rest easy that your office will be up to scratch. It’s a simple yet effective change you can make to your business.

Book Team Building Events

As well as each of your staff members working well individually, they need to be able to work together as a team too. Business is all about teamwork, it’s lots of different components all coming together to work as one- much like a complex machine. For this reason, team building activities can be really useful. They’re a fun and lighthearted way for people to get to know each other, and in turn this can lead to better communication and workflow in the office. Lots of companies up and down the country offer this, so it’s something you could look into. Even things like offering the occasional free lunch or dinner is a great way to get staff members together and can help them to feel valued in the company.

Be an Attentive Boss

If you’re an approachable boss, the kind of person that your employees feel comfortable speaking to then this can be extremely helpful. As the boss you’re running things from the top, you don’t necessarily see the day to day workings of the business and can be unaware of any problems. If your staff feel happy opening up to you, they could let you know about any problems, workplace bullying or other issues that would have otherwise slipped under your radar but reduced productivity. Of course, you will want to maintain professional boundaries, but being understanding instead of overly harsh or strict is the best way to go. Take any comments your staff make to you on board, you could even implement an anonymous system. Complaints and problems shouldn’t be overlooked, these are things that would be massively slowing business in the long run.