A common goal for any business is to improve the efficiency of its workforce. After all, if you can make your team more efficient, you’ll reduce costs and generate more profits, which is very desirable. It’s especially important to get more from your team when you consider the average employee is only productive for just under three hours per day.
The question then becomes, how can you go about making your company more efficient? Luckily, there are some simple strategies that you can implement. Below, we’ll highlight some of the strategies that practically any company can use to improve work efficiency in a short amount of time.
In addition, you can also streamline your time-off management system by replacing outdated spreadsheets, emails, and a shared vacation calendar with a leave management tool.
Outsource Time Consuming Tasks
One of the simplest things you can do is outsource some of your more time-consuming tasks. There are many services out there that specialize in handling the types of tasks that are repetitive or time-consuming. By outsourcing some of these tasks, you can free up your employees to focus on more important matters.
For example, outsourcing HR activities is a common practice among many organizations. Outsourcing HR tasks such as benefits package management would allow your HR team to devote more time to employee training. This will not only improve your HR department’s productivity but will also help you get better employees throughout the organization.
Simply outsourcing a time-consuming task from one department has a big impact on the entire organization. Explore your own business and see if there are any tasks that would be better off in the hands of an outside service.
Simplify Common Tasks
If you can’t outsource your tasks, look for ways to simplify them or make them faster. To do this, you should analyze your current operation and see which tasks you perform the most often. Whether the task is complex and important, or simple and secondary, finding ways to reduce the number of steps required to complete it can save those who perform it a significant amount of time over the course of a year.
For instance, let’s say your business regularly sends out proposals to new clients. Currently, you have someone whose job it is to create each proposal from scratch based on the individual client. To speed things up, you could make use of a business proposal template. Your employee now would just have to edit only the necessary information based on the client, saving them a lot of time. They could then send out a lot more proposals on a daily planner template, thereby increasing the number of new leads.
Create a Communication Plan
A communication plan is a document that outlines everything your team needs to know about where, when, and how they should communicate with each other. It might say when you are going to have team meetings, when someone needs to update your clients, what method of communication to use for daily updates, and more.
By creating a communication plan that outlines all of this, you take out a lot of the guesswork. Your team will know their responsibilities when it comes to communication so that there are fewer errors and people are more likely to have the information they need when they need it.
Analyze Employee Strengths and Weaknesses
Every employee on your team has skills they excel at and areas where they could improve. To improve your workplace efficiency, you should look to assign tasks to people based on their strengths and weaknesses.
This would ensure that everyone is working on tasks that are most suitable for them so that they can produce better results. In order to do this, you’ll need to take some time analyzing your employees. To gain a good sense of where your team member’s skills lay, you need to perform some assessments, including interviews.
Seek Feedback and Implement Changes
Finally, make it a habit to regularly seek feedback from your team. Ask them what they think you could be doing better or what would help them be more productive. You may find that your employees want more opportunities to work from home, need different software or have suggestions for how to structure projects differently.
Once you start gathering feedback, implement any changes that sound like they might work and measure the results. Your employees probably have some great ideas for how to make things better – you just need to ask them.
Focus on Improving Workplace Efficiency
As you can see, it doesn’t take much to start improving efficiency. A few basic strategies, like outsourcing some common tasks or seeking feedback from your employees, can make big differences in how your organization operates.
Start with a few of the abovementioned strategies, then work in more over time. If you can make it a habit to always seek new ways to improve efficiency, you should have no trouble keeping the productivity levels of your team high.
Ingrid Maldine is a business writer, editor and management consultant with extensive experience writing and consulting for both start-ups and long established companies. She has ten years management and leadership experience gained at BSkyB in London and Viva Travel Guides in Quito, Ecuador, giving her a depth of insight into innovation in international business. With an MBA from the University of Hull and many years of experience running her own business consultancy, Ingrid’s background allows her to connect with a diverse range of clients, including cutting edge technology and web-based start-ups but also multinationals in need of assistance. Ingrid has played a defining role in shaping organizational strategy for a wide range of different organizations, including for-profit, NGOs and charities. Ingrid has also served on the Board of Directors for the South American Explorers Club in Quito, Ecuador.
