In order to increase workplace efficiency, you have to be open to change. Happy employees are more productive employees, right? To boost their productivity – and therefore improve overall efficiency – you need to assess yourself as an employer, as well as your teams as individuals, taking stock to see what business decisions can affect them in a positive way. This usually starts with looking at your internal processes to see which areas can be improved upon for overall efficiency.
Follow our tips below to increase workplace efficiency and time management in the workplace.
- Assess Personal Time Management Skills
In an age of shopping online, social media and frequent personal messages coming through your devices, it’s easy to become distracted and lose a sense of time when you’re scrolling through your news feed. Of course, at the same time, employees are expected to manage their time efficiently and get their tasks done each day. Instead of enforcing a heavy-handed cell phone or social media policy, try to focus on encouraging effective time management in your business. This can be as simple as developing a tutorial for filtering priority emails or introducing efficiency software to increase in-house productivity, such as Booxkeeping.
- Match tasks and skills.
Different employees will have different skill sets and behaviors, meaning they’re suited to different office tasks. Understanding your workers’ talents and where best to place them is key to maximizing efficiency. If you’re running employment opportunities for interns and graduates, for example, think how their skills could be suited to your business environment. If a candidate has demonstrated great creative skills, ensure they get can get some work experience in a function where they can use that talent. Ultimately, before giving any worker an assignment, ask yourself: “is this the person best suited to perform this task?” If the answer is no, find someone else whose skills and talents meet the needs of the task.
- Get Proactive With Performance
The first step to improving workplace efficiency is assessing and understanding your team – the next is your own accountability as an employer through regular team performance. After all, it’s much more efficient to provide regular feedback to your team rather than just an annual assessment. The longer you delay feedback, the more inefficient team habits can grow. Additionally, if an employee realizes that his or her work is measured independently of others in her team, it will allow them to feel more accountable for their own actions – and there’s no reason to play ‘office politics’.
Increasing workplace efficiency ultimately means looking at your current processes and business environment to see what factors can be improved. These tips are a great way to increase time management skills and boost efficiency in the workplace – but try not to take one tip alone at face value. In most business environments, it’s a matter of utilizing lots of good practices, so try and find a way to make them work for you.
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