The seven best ways to make business staff more productive

If a business owner is not helping its staff to be more productive, chances are competitors are already one step ahead.

Marketing specialist Diana Muresan sayd: “When I started working in a bigger team, I immediately knew it was time to organise things.”

To have a productive team, one must make sure that the environment is friendly tasks are automated as much as possible to save time. It can be challenging to find something that keeps business staff motivated and productive, but owners will start seeing results immediately once they find the right strategy.

This article identifies seven tips that helped me keep my team organised and increased our productivity.

A transparent and honest environment

People are much more motivated to work when they feel valued and appreciated. Small business managers must know how to effectively communicate with their team to keep them at their maximum productivity.

Transparency in a work staff is proven to maintain long-term success. Nonetheless, some limits must be respected if teans don’t want that transparency to become frustrating or disturbing. If the goal is to increase honest and positive communication between staff members, everyone on the team should understand the expectations as well as the limits.

An excellent strategy to develop a transparent work environment is to communicate the company’s values and intentions to staff members. They will immediately identify with them and have the courage to share what and how they feel.

Flexibility regarding work time

No one will ever go to work happy if they are always worried about being late and criticised for that. To make team members feel more comfortable, a great solution is offering them the freedom to make their own schedules.

Of course, one can give them some guidelines and maybe even some time intervals when they have to be at work, but it can be helpful to let them create their program. For example, perhaps some people are more productive in the morning and prefer to come to work at 7am and finish earlier; meanwhile, others struggle to wake up and feel at their best in the afternoon.

Schedule flexibility will make employees happier with the idea of going to work and will increase their productivity by allowing them to choosing their working hours themselves. There’s more to read about why work flexibility is a smart strategy here.

Staff management systems

Here’s what worked for me best: digitising my staff management process. For example, to increase work productivity, managers can make scheduling meetings or appointments a lot less complicated using a scheduling software.

For appointment-based businesses, it’s easy to keep track of your staff’s schedule, set up an online booking page, and keep an eye on the team’s financial reports – everything in a single app.

Even those who don’t work with appointments can still use this calendar app to track schedules and remind each staff member about their upcoming meetings or other important events.

Making it fun to work

If you don’t know how to effectively manage your salon staff, there’s always the possibility of simply making things more fun so that the team is still motivated to work and be more productive.

Many business consultants might say that having fun at work or working in an environment that is too relaxed will lead to less productivity and concentration. But let me tell you that it is not true at all.

If one can find a balance between the focus moments and fun breaks, the sweet spot will increase productivity like nothing else.

Breaks are essential

This is what worked best for me so far: to be at my maximum productivity, I work intensely, after which I take short breaks to disconnect for a while.

Staying focused for a long time decreases productivity and can affect workers in the long term, but taking short breaks once an hour is a key to reconnecting with fresh power.

Therefore, organising regular, short coffee breaks with employees to have fun, laugh a bit and talk about anything except work will quickly show benefits in productivity.

Rewards

Another great way to stimulate employees and make them more productive is to offer them a reason to do so. Employee recognition and appreciation of their work efforts will make them continue to increase their productivity level.

Before rewarding your staff members, it’s important to think about their primary needs, and give them precisely what will appeal to them most. For example, do they need more free time? Then it’s a good idea to add some extra days off in the year. Do they need more money? It’s worth thinking about raising their salary or offering them a bonus.

All these gratifications will contribute to increasing productivity at work and increasing the business’s profits.

Giving and asking for feedback

There’s no way to increase work productivity if one doesn’t know how efficiently things are running now and how much they’ve evolved over time.

Productivity evaluations and feedback are something managers must do in team meetings if they plan to take their business to the next level. As a result, staff will better understand what they should change or improve in their job, and they’ll feel appreciated for what they’ve excelled at; managers will also receive feedback to learn what they do well and what they should change in their attitude, procedures or behaviour.

Giving feedback and receiving it is a win-win for everybody, and trust me, those who do it regularly find their business staff will be more productive and share their positivity with clients.

Conclusion

All the steps that I presented above are best to apply for anyone thinking about increasing productivity in their team. Even if companies choose to follow all of them or just the ones they like most, they will immediately start seeing results if they implement them well and communicate the plan to staff.

Diana Muresan, marketing specialist