Tip of the Week: Improving Business Productivity in Five Ways

“Improving productivity” is far from an unheard goal among business owners. What is less common, unfortunately, is a strategic plan to actually do it. We wanted to help, so we’ve assembled five strategies that can help improve productivity in the modern workplace.

Incorporate Employee Wellness into Their Benefits Package

It isn’t exactly breaking news that people who feel better tend to perform better in the workplace, in terms of both their physical health and mental well-being. Research has concluded as much, demonstrating evidence that the healthier the members of a workforce are, the healthier the business will be as well.

This makes any investments into your team and their health an investment into your business’ wellness, in a manner of speaking. You might add fitness programs or other health-focused activities into the benefits package you offer your team, and otherwise promote healthy living in your overall company culture.

Make SMART KISS Goals

How complicated are your business’ current goals and objectives? Do you have plans to accomplish them, and if so, are they as complicated as the goals and objectives?

This is where a business-friendly version of the KISS rule is relevant: Keep It Super Simple. Establishing a simple strategy with clear objectives, and benchmarks that are perfectly achievable not only make your goals clearer to communicate, but easier to actually accomplish. Using the SMART goal format is an effective way to do so:

Specific – In detail, what is your intention? What improvement or change is it that you want to make through your process?
Measurable – What metrics will allow you to track your progress towards your intended outcome?
Attainable – Will you actually be able to accomplish your goal within the parameters you have set, taking potential setbacks into consideration?
Relevant – How does your intention tie into your larger business goals? What will accomplishing your goal mean for your organization’s collective objectives?
Timely – How long do you have to accomplish this goal before your efforts become wasteful or irrelevant?

This approach makes your goal-setting more effective and structured, giving your team a greater chance of success with a clear objective to meet.

Eliminate Any Wastes of Time You Can

In other words, are you hosting meetings to communicate what could and probably should just be an email? Reexamining your business processes and adjusting them accordingly is a great way to improve productivity and engagement alike. By sacrificing processes that have become bloated and counterproductive, you embrace the opportunity to do more with your time.

Having said that, it is important to moderate yourself and see the value in how certain “wastes of time” can affect your employees. Take employee interaction. Is it empirically a waste of time to gather around the water cooler for a few minutes and chat? Sure…but practically, this kind of activity can build professional relationships. These relationships can then translate into improved collaboration and morale. While you certainly can’t let these kinds of activities escalate into significant time spent chatting idly, a little bit of it helps more than it hurts. The same can be said for things like social media use. There’s a fine line between scrolling through Instagram to decompress and mindlessly swiping away the workday. Finding this line and setting the limit there will give your team members the break they need without breaking down the processes you’ve established.

Take the Time to Reconsider and Revise Your Goals

Circumstances can and likely will change, which means you could very well find yourself in a different situation than you were in when your business goals were first set. This change may need to be reflected in your intended outcomes, as well as the strategy you follow to get there. Maybe the goal you made initially depended on some specific outcome, and things just happened to work out differently. You need to be prepared to pivot your process and realign your final goals to work with the situation you find yourself in. Doing a quick reevaluation will help you sustain productivity by helping your team stay motivated.

Cut Out Hustle Culture

Hustle culture, despite what all the social media influencers and thought leaders might tell you, is more likely to kill your productivity via burnout and disengagement. People need rest, people need a break, and—since your employees are people—they need you to set realistic goals and healthy boundaries.

Almost ironically, it’s things like a healthy work/life balance, vacations away from the office, and regular breaks that can actually do more to boost productivity than keeping one’s nose to the grindstone can. A bit of R&R can do wonders when your team members come back.