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.