4 Ways to improve employee productivity

4 Ways to improve employee productivity

Behind every successful company is a team of productive employees. They improve the workplace environment, create happier customers, and ultimately drive the company’s revenue.

That’s why as a business owner, you need to find ways to boost employee productivity. These four tips will help you achieve this:

#1 Equip employees with the right IT solutions

When your business computers freeze, do the employees who use them become frozen as well? Do they wait long for your office printer to finish printing? And do they find it difficult to upload and download work files, no thanks to your spotty internet connection?

In today’s competitive business environment, the tools and equipment your employees use greatly affect their productivity — and having working computers, fast printers, and reliable internet is just the beginning. To illustrate, the right software can streamline workflows and help your staff get their work done faster. So a great first step to increasing their productivity is ensuring that your IT solutions are aligned with your business requirements.

#2 Adopt a more hands-off management style

“The best way to encourage productivity is to encourage individuals to take ownership over how they manage their own time and resources,” says productivity expert Robby Slaughter. This means that once business leaders have properly delegated tasks to their staff, they need to grant the latter freedom over how to accomplish the said tasks.

To ensure proper task delegation and avoid the temptation to micromanage, leverage project management tools such as Trello or Asana. This lets you clearly assign projects to employees, set deadlines, and track their progress until completion.

#3 Encourage collaborative work

A Stanford University study shows that the employees were more productive when they thought they were part of a collaborative process. Another study confirms this by showing that companies that promoted collaboration among employees were five times as likely to be high-performing.

Given these findings, you should leverage collaboration apps to simplify teamwork. For example, Office 365’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint allow multiple people to work on the same file simultaneously. Your employees can then store that file and quickly access its latest version using cloud-based storage services such as Microsoft OneDrive. Read our previous blog for more tips on creating a collaborative working environment.

#4 Enable remote work arrangements

A two-year Stanford study shows that working from home can boost an employee’s productivity for the following reasons:

  • Work from home (WFH) employees found it easier to concentrate and were less likely to get distracted at home.
  • WFH employees work a full shift versus their office-based counterparts who sometimes show up late in the office.
  • WFH employees had less sick and vacation leaves and took shorter breaks.

This study doesn’t mean you should abandon your office altogether. On the contrary, it recommends allowing flexible working arrangements for just a few days a week to achieve enhanced productivity without sacrificing team cohesion.

To ensure that your employees can work effectively even outside the office, read our blog on the six essential tools every remote team needs.

These four tips show the key role that technology plays in boosting your employees’ productivity levels. That’s why you need a dedicated partner like Founders Technology Group who will make sure that your IT stays reliable, up to date, and secure. Book your FREE IT consultation today to get started!

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