In the world of business, time equals money. The faster and more efficiently you can get things done, the more money you will save. Efficient use of time can make a world of difference in how successful your business is. It doesn’t matter whether you are a startup or a well established large corporation, increasing your productivity is always a good thing. Here are some practical tips to help increase your businesses productivity almost immediately.
Teach Time Management Techniques
One of the biggest causes for time lost is lack of awareness. Your team may not realize how much time they are losing on certain tasks unless you assess your performance and teach them where they can make improvements.
And while working as fast as you can non-stop may seem like the best way to use your time, the truth is that more often than not, more breaks may be what your team needs.
Encourage your team to work in spurts of time with zero distractions, followed by short breaks where they are allowed to stretch or focus their energy on something other than work. Statistics show that the more breaks you take, the more focused you will be during your stretches of work.
Automate
If you haven’t at least looked into automation software yet, then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to waste less time manually completing time consuming tasks. Automation is one of the most effective ways to streamline your processes and focus on more revenue generating tasks while letting software handle the monotonous.
Use Project Management Tools
Project management tools are a great way to boost your team’s productivity and keep everyone on track at the same time. It helps everyone stay on the team page by communicating with each other in one single destination. It helps keep communication streamlined, and ultimately makes it easier for everyone to stay on track.
Use The 80/20 Rule
Known as the 80/20 rule, the idea is that 80% of results come from 20% of your business’s efforts. In other words, identify and focus on what your high impact tasks are that will ultimately generate the most value for your business.
What are the top 20% tasks that will ultimately contribute to revenue generation and growth? All of the low value tasks that take up a considerable amount of time, should be handed off to automation so you can focus on the high priority tasks that will ultimately generate the most positive results.
Encourage Work Life Balance
One of the biggest causes of employee burnout is a lack of balance in priorities. When employees are giving so much of their time and energy to work that they fail to have any sort of personal life apart from their job, it can start to leave them feeling depressed, stressed, and downright unproductive. Encourage your employees to take more breaks, give them more flexible work hours, and hire more employees to spread out the tasks if needed.
