If you are a manager or a business owner, you already know how challenging it is to motivate your employees and encourage them to achieve their goals and milestones on time. Doing more with less and attempting to take full advantage of your limited resources is a continuous battle. However, it is crucial for the growth, success, and prosperity of your company. Efficiency is the key to streamlined business processes, and here are some simple yet effective ways you could create a more productive workplace:
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Minimize common distractions
Every workplace is quite a distracting environment by nature. But even though distractions are common, they still take up a significant percentage of your employees’ time, disrupting their focus and concentration, and increasing their error rates in the process. To that end, minimizing common distractions in the workplace should be among your top priorities.
Whether that means providing calm and quiet areas for work where colleagues and loud noises won’t get in the way, or even asking your employees not to use their mobile phones and other personal devices while working unless truly necessary, reducing distractions is bound to have a positive effect on overall productivity in the workplace.
Photo by Smartworks Coworking on Unsplash
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Promote clean workspaces
Keeping the workplace clean and tidy in an effort to reduce safety hazards is likely among your top priorities, but this alone unfortunately won’t be enough to boost employee productivity. A messy and cluttered workspace is another great distraction your workers deal with every day, which is why encouraging them to keep their desks clean can be quite beneficial.
From taking back used coffee mugs to the kitchen and clearing out their drawers to thoroughly wiping down their desk, computer, and other equipment, your employees should make an effort to maintain their workspaces for reduced stress and increased efficiency. To ensure maintenance is truly being carried out, you can incentivize your workers with small rewards throughout the week.
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Invest in a Gmail CRM tool
While Gmail might be a good email service many businesses prefer, it’s not exactly made for efficiency, as it won’t allow you to manage and organize contact details in a particularly helpful way. For that reason, investing in a great Gmail CRM tool might be key to productivity. Such a tool will allow you to create a clean, categorized, and centralized contact base you can easily access anytime and from any device.
It will also enable you and your team members to effortlessly update and comment on contacts, or even share them with one another and export to other applications like Google Contacts, WhatsApp, Outlook, etc. All of this makes contact management a more streamlined process that is bound to boost efficiency in the workplace.
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Move storage to the cloud
Apart from a messy desk and inefficient software, even a cluttered computer desktop could prevent your employees from performing their jobs optimally. What’s more, losing access to computers and all necessary files could truly be detrimental to your business, which is why it’s recommended to use cloud computing solutions for your storage needs.
Uploading all relevant files to a cloud will allow employees to keep their desktops clean, provide you with necessary backups in case of disaster, and even allow for more simple file sharing between employees and departments, giving everyone in the company easier access to vital information.
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Automate regular tasks
If you haven’t already implemented automation, keep in mind it truly is essential for more streamlined and efficient business operations. From something as simple as automating the lighting and temperature controls to more elaborate processes like payroll and onboarding automation, every tedious, repetitive task you could automate saves plenty of time and effort employees can direct towards work instead of unnecessary responsibilities.
Similarly, you could also invest in other aspects that will allow you to improve workflows, such as using visitor management systems, file-sharing software, or even outsourcing non-essential tasks like design work and copywriting.
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
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Try to discourage multitasking
Multitasking has become a common aspect of many job descriptions nowadays, and this requirement has only increased in this technology-focused environment where we are constantly bombarded with emails and social media alerts. However, research has shown that multitasking only forces us to create negative habits, as continuously switching tasks just makes us feel we have accomplished plenty when in reality we haven’t actually managed to complete much at all.
For that reason, you should aim to discourage multitasking among your employees in an effort to improve the quality and quantity of their work. This can be accomplished with fewer responsibilities, prioritized tasks, automation, and other aspects that help to reduce mental clutter.
Wrapping up
If your team is having difficulties staying focused and efficient, implementing some of the helpful organizational tips mentioned above could be of great help. While increasing productivity might be a challenging task, it truly is necessary for the success of your business.
