Does your business not function as efficiently as you would like? Now is the time to assess your current business setup and improve productivity from both manager’s and employee’s perspective.
Improving Productivity from a Management Perspective
Review and Improve Technology
As a business owner, you are constantly busy with running your business. This can cause you to be complacent about just accepting your business processes, and where things could be updated. It is crucial to review your current software and technology and how they interact with your business procedures. If the technology tools don’t match your business model, it is time to try a different setup that will improve process and worker efficiencies, and better fits your customers’ user experience.
Adopt a Mindset of Continual Improvement
Let your employees know that you want them to be able to improve items of concern before their frustrations become problems for the business. Proactivity is crucial for increasing productivity, as well as just making life easier for employees in the future. A way to show your commitment to improvement is to encourage learning opportunities for your employees. Provide your support in technical and skills enhancement training, both internally and externally. Professional development opportunities are both a perk and a morale booster, which pays off in what boosted staff will return to your business operations. An employee who feels supported will want to go above and beyond for your business.
Identify Performance Goals
Communication with your employees is the most important aspect of many businesses. The culture you create can either limit employees or motivate them. Performance goals are a way to improve communication and results. Give employees goals with deadlines and commit to the due date, while making sure that adequate training, instruction, and resources are also committed. It’s also important to give positive feedback and constructive criticism to your employees at the end of each project so they feel properly valued in the workplace for their contributions.
Outsource Overhead Functions that Require the Highest Specialized Expertise
Your business is built on set of core competencies that perform and deliver goods, services, and/or experiences to customers who are willing to pay for what they receive. The employees, their know-how, and the technology they use together form the infrastructure of core competency that — if honed effectively — provides your business with a competitive edge. The specialized expertise of your employees and your specialized management expertise are a source of competitive advantage. But what about the overhead functions that are essential to run the business, but not directly involved in the infrastructure of core competency? Unless your business delivers hot water heater repairs to clients, you don’t need to keep on staff a highly specialized expert in hot water heater repair, for example. Look for highly specialized overhead functions in your business that can be outsourced to gain access to greater expertise, without maintaining the fixed cost of overhead payroll in those areas. Legal services, accounting services, and IT services are typical examples of highly specialized overhead functions that can be accomplished at a higher level of expertise but lower cost of performance by outsourcing.
Improving Productivity from an Employee Perspective
It’s important to inform employees on how they can improve their own performance and productivity in the workplace. Create communications with these components in mind.
Avoid Unproductive Meetings
Most companies become involved in routine meetings for administrative and team purposes. It’s in good practice that employees take the time to write notes for their timely meeting whenever something noteworthy happens. This strategy works better than scrambling to look prepared when the meeting comes, because your issues can properly be addressed. Simply creating a shared agenda that employees can contribute to before the meeting will boost productivity and provide better content to address.
Create a Balanced Work Schedule
As an employee, it can be very difficult to manage time with overlapping task assignments and competing deadlines — these can create an overwhelming environment. It is very easy to feel burned out in a chaotic workplace. Having a smarter schedule can improve energy levels and boost morale. Employees must utilize their breaks efficiently. For example, enjoy a change of scenery when it is time for a break. Exercise can vastly improve the way one feels at work. Get up and move around to get the blood flowing while at work, to counteract the sedentary confines of deskwork. It can be a smart tactic to implement time blocks for tasks. Stay focused on a task for an hour and then walk around for a stretch after the fixed duration. This will create a beneficial rhythm where an employee can feel productive without feeling burned out.
Do Not Attempt to Multitask
Fun fact: multitasking is actually a myth. It is not possible to complete multiple tasks at once. You actually complete tasks slower this way because of the personal overhead of switching attentions back and forth — your brain can only focus on one task at a time. Multitasking is not productive. Having a task schedule for multiple items due is a better way to effectively use your time than trying to commit to all of them at the same time.
Improving Overall Cost-Efficiency
Implementation of effective tools and technologies, well-organized and orderly business processes, and meaningful communications among staff and between managers and employees will hone your business operations to a more competitive and purposeful level of productivity. Productivity that is targeted and well coordinated wastes less time and resources, enhancing cost-efficiency and profitability. If you want to see the improvements in financial performance, these are best monitored and tracked with the help of a professional expert accounting service, and the act of knowledgeably tracking financial accounting data in turn enables further refinement of cost-efficient implementations.
At Baum CPA, our professional accountants will offer your business cost-effective, outsourced, professional expertise that can take care of all your bookkeeping, payroll, and accounting needs at a fraction of the cost of an in-house accounting staff. And we can give the tracking and analysis of your financial performance fresh new eyes and minds toward enhanced productivity and cost-efficiency. Why not treat yourself to this simple pathway toward improved productivity? Book a consultation appointment by clicking here.
This blog and its authors provide this content strictly for informational purposes. No content herein should be misconstrued as financial advice. Everyone’s specific circumstances vary — Always consult with a qualified, licensed financial advisor, legal counsel, and tax professional before venturing into any investment or business activities.