Work efficiency is important and makes a significant overall difference to the business output. Here are some ways to improve it.
1. You Are The Boss, Delegate
It may sound like an obvious thing, but it can be hard to implement especially when your company is still in its infancy stage. You are more into having a direct hand in the operations rather than delegating tasks because you want not but the best results. However, your needs to check everything including the small details may see you waste valuable time that you will never recover.
You are keen on making your venture a success, and thus you invested in qualified employees. So why make such an investment and not give them responsibilities and trust that they will handle them satisfactorily? By delegating tasks, you help your staff gain knowledge, skills, and experience in various aspects of running the business and this is to the benefit of your company. You hired them, now let them prove their worth.
2. Match Tasks To Skills
Knowing the skill proficiencies of each of your employee will ensure that you maximize on their expertise. For instance, you can pick that creative, extroverted employee that thinks out-of-the-box to pitch ideas to clients. But, the same person may not do well when faced with detail-oriented or rule-intensive tasks.
It is expected of every staff member to give their best at everything they do but are you sure that a particular employee is an ideal person to handle a certain job? You should consider such things before delegating tasks to ensure everyone handles what matches their skill set.
3. Establish Good Channels Of Communication
Communication is a vital part of growing a successful enterprise, and this is made possible through the use of technology. A touch or swipe of the screen, a click of the mouse, or press of a button is today’s avenue of communication, but does this suffice on its own? No. research done by McKinsey shows that employees waste nearly 28% of their time sending emails, an activity that takes up much of their work hours, next to the hours allocated to handle their duties.
Rather than having them rely on emails, you can have them use other faster communication options such as social networking tools like Slack. Also, encourage your staff to adopt a more direct form of communication such as making calls or holding face-to-face meetings. Such option will take fewer hours compared to the time used up sending back-and-forth emails.
4. Have Definitive, Focused Goals
The employees will only push the business towards the direction given to them, let them know your goals, and they will focus on achieving that objective. Make sure that the goals are explicitly defined and achievable. Use the same principles when assigning task making sure that they are precise and as narrow as possible for the staff to know what is expected. Clearly explain the impact or objective of the assignments.
Your goals should be ‘SMART’ (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely). Every assignment you hand out should meet this requirement; and if it doesn’t, then it should be tweaked to help the employees stay focused on the job at hand and work efficiently.
5. Use Tech
Better technology will make the whole efficiency of a business far greater and really help to improve things.
Better quality tech enables better communication and has a range of other positives for a business. Faster broadband is also a plus, so always look for the best broadband deals for faster broadband.
6. Unload The Excess
Assign duties accordingly; avoid giving small jobs to your staff when they are already focused on a larger task. Understand the team’s routine so that you can identify what you can cut to unload the much they have to do allowing them to concentrate more on the high priority assignments.
For instance, employees are expected to hand in daily reports to the supervisors, yet the supervisors rarely read them daily. So, you can do away with the reporting requirement, which merely an unnecessary formality that wastes valuable time that would be directed towards doing something constructive and beneficial to the business.
