Five Tips To Increase Productivity In The Workplace

by Benjamin Rojas

When a company is productive, it increases profitability, lowers production costs and improves customer service and business relationships. The more productive a company is, the easier it is to establish organizational growth and create a healthy work environment.

Making minor changes to habits and equipment can drastically improve your business's productivity and work efficiency. For this reason, here are five tips to increase productivity in the workplace.

1. Limit unproductive meetings

Limit the number of meetings (if you can) since many meetings can become quite time-consuming and unproductive. Only scheduling meetings around topics that demand people to be present, such as business strategy and important announcements, will save you valuable time that can be spent on operational work.

However, meetings can strengthen bonds and improve communication between teammates, so don't remove conventional meetings altogether. For instance, if your company offers remote work only, regular town hall meetings on Zoom can make employees feel connected. The community of a group can strengthen work morale, and in that way, boost productivity.

2. Encourage regular breaks

A recipe for disaster is to look at your employees as faceless robots that clock in and out. This attitude will make your employees fatigued and cause burnout before you know it. They will soon feel miserable and lose the urge to do a good job.

But to be understanding of their humanity and instead encourage them to take regular breaks increases productivity. Frequent breaks will allow employees to recharge and approach work with more energy and "fresh eyes."

For instance, the best ideas often come when taking a short walk outside to clear your head. Let your team know it's OK to go out in the fresh air and get away from the work desk for a while. Allowing time to recuperate can significantly boost productivity.

3. Limit personal distractions

We all check our social media networks to see what's going on from time to time, but for some employees, this can easily consume too much of their time that should be spent on work tasks. Also, personal phone calls can be a distracting factor that reduces productivity for many workers.

However, it wouldn't be practical to ban cell phones and social media altogether. So, a better way is to encourage employees to check their social media and make personal phone calls on their breaks instead. This prevents the unpleasant factor of restricting the employee's freedom and privacy, which will do more harm than good in the long run.

4. Use time-tracking software

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Time-tracking software can help monitor the productivity of your employees. Time-tracking software makes it easy for your team members to plan their day and know how long each task takes to complete. As a result, they will have more control over their schedule, which could lead to a boost in productivity.

As an employer, you can use these time-tracking reports to see how your business is currently operating and if you need to change things to make it run more efficiently.

5. Recognize and reward your employees​

Recognizing employees when they do an excellent job can boost work morale and make them want to work even harder. Motivating and rewarding your team can cultivate a sense of fulfilment and inspire others to be more productive.

For example, you can use internal communications systems, like Slack's Cheers-for-Peers (where leaders and teammates can give praise to each other) to announce well-executed work.

Also, offering an individual pay rise or surprising your employee with a personal gift can motivate them to put in the extra effort.

Conclusion

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Happy and motivated employees are essential for any business that wants to increase productivity. Seeing and rewarding what your employees do on an individual level can boost personal fulfilment and productivity in the workplace.

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Priority Management is a worldwide training company with 55 offices in 15 countries. We have successfully trained more than two million graduates in Priority workshops. Our programs help companies and people be more effective and manage their workflow in and out of the office by providing tools, processes and discipline. Simply put - A Better Way To Work! Clients range from Fortune 500 companies, small-to-medium businesses and government/military employees.

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