Engage your workers and streamline your processes for greater results

The productivity of your organisation has a direct impact on its long-term success. To maximise the potential of your business, you need to optimise your productivity, and this means having a clear plan for what and how processes and procedures need to happen.

From managing time wasting to reviewing your goals, there are plenty of things you can do to improve the productivity of your business. It takes time, flexibility and patience, but our top tips will help you make the most of your organisation’s time and resources.

Simplicity

A business plan is key for productivity, as it provides you with a goal (or series of goals) to aim for, and steps for how to get there. However, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Creating a clear and focused plan with simple steps and outcomes will help you and the rest of your team stay on task and set them up for success.

Intelligent document automation

Many of the most monotonous business tasks are also the most time consuming, including data extraction and reading through documents. Intelligent document automation – otherwise known as intelligent document processing or IDP – uses AI to extract unstructured data from a variety of resources and turn it into structured data that can actually be analysed and used. Not only does this save you time, but it can also save you money and provide more accurate and secure data handling across your organisation.

Minimise time wasting

Whether your team works in the office or remotely, it’s all too easy for little things to steal attention. Common productivity killers include unnecessary meetings and email chains. Can your meeting be an email, and can your email chain be a phone call? If your meeting is necessary, it should have a clear agenda and a strict time limit.

Procrastination, social media and lack of organisation can all eat into your time, so make sure you have policies in place about when to take breaks and when to crack on with work.

Goal reviews

While setting goals is vital for productivity, they don’t mean anything if you don’t regularly review and revise them. Everyone should have a way to check in with how they are progressing. Set realistic expectations and create weekly progress summaries to ensure that everyone remains up to date with where things stand.

Productivity apps

Use technology to your advantage. There are numerous apps out there designed to make your team members more productive, with some of the most popular including Slack, Todoist, Dropbox, Evernote and Asana. Apps like Toggl make it easy to keep track of what your team members have been working on, while apps like Flora are designed to prevent distractions by encouraging people not to use their smartphones for designated periods of time.

Motivation

Motivation and productivity go hand in hand, but finding the best way to motivate your team will depend on your specific staff members. Find a balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, with the former promoting self-reflective benefits that encourage individual success, and the former providing external rewards for achieving goals.

Avoid multitasking

While some people may claim to be great multi-taskers, in reality it is almost always better to focus your attention on one task at a time. Slack reports that multi-tasking can negatively impact individual productivity by as much as 40%. Ensuring team members have relatively equal workloads, delegating tasks by who’s best suited for them, and setting realistic expectations can all help to reduce staff temptation to multi-task. Let your team members know that they can always come to you if they’re feeling overwhelmed by their workload.