9 Simple Ways to Increase Team Productivity in the Workplace

A satisfied workforce is a productive one. Happy employees communicate effectively, make better decisions, and manage stress more easily. They help the business thrive and grow with efficiency.

Every business wants to increase productivity. But how do you achieve this? And what do you do when productivity dips?

Improving productivity at work isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. Sometimes you only need to tweak one thing. Other times, you need to revamp entire business processes, from internal policies to the company culture.

Why Employee Productivity Suffers

Workplace productivity can slump for various reasons, with the most common including:

  • Inefficient businesses processes
  • Too many distractions
  • Lack of development opportunities
  • Low motivation and morale
  • Poor management procedures
  • No team camaraderie
  • Inadequate tools and technology
  • Ineffective internal communication

How Businesses Can Increase Productivity

How Businesses Can Increase Productivity

If you’ve noticed a dip in performance around the office, the following tips can prompt employees to be more productive and help you reverse the downturn.

Examine Efficiency

Examine Efficiency

Whether stemming from inadequate business processes or poor personal work habits, the result is the same: inefficiency wrecks productivity.

Help workers take stock of the way they work. Often, changing little things here and there can add up to big gains.

Respect their productive time and try to discourage multitasking. If there’s a certain process that you or your team could execute better, consider the aid of a productivity app. For employee downtime, provide space that lends itself to more meaningful breaks, such as reading, brain games, and light physical activity.

See our article for more tips on how to improve work efficiency.

Minimize Distractions

Modern workplaces are loaded with productivity killers. To increase performance, you need to snuff them out.

Each employee works differently and has different challenges. Whether it’s social media, email, too many meetings, a cluttered workspace, or something else, you can’t know what’s distracting them if you don’t communicate. So talk to your team. Find out what’s slowing them down. By equipping yourself with this knowledge, you can more effectively minimize distractions now and moving forward.

Invest in Employee Development

To get meaningful contributions from employees, they need to have a stake in the success of the business. There’s no better way to show team members that they matter than by investing in their growth.

Sit down with employees to set goals and create a strategy to achieve them. Then provide opportunities for training and development that will help them not only reach their goals, but grow with the company. Empowering employees with their own roadmap will improve their focus and keep them engaged.

Empower Employees to Make Decisions

Empower Employees to Make Decisions
Delegating duties and decision-making responsibilities gives employees a sense of accountability. While it isn’t without a degree of risk, it allows your staff to enhance their skills and experience. It also keeps you from micromanaging, which can frustrate employees and squash their effectiveness.

If you can get to know your team personally as well as professionally, you’ll more effectively identify their strengths and weaknesses. This way, you can assign roles that suit them, increasing the likelihood of success.

Carry Out Meaningful Team-Building Activities

Carry Out Meaningful Team-Building Activities

One of the biggest challenges virtual teams face is developing team spirit. With everyone working in their own bubble, it’s hard to foster the camaraderie needed for effective teamwork.

Team bonding activities can boost momentum. But with Zoom fatigue increasingly prevalent, the onus is on you to create a meaningful remote team-building experience that doesn’t resemble another meeting.

Share a virtual coffee break or after-work drink to check in. For something more, try a virtual escape game or trivia quiz. Rather than making activities mandatory, incentivize employees to take part. Sponsor a meal out, encouraging employees to get away from their desks and spend time with loved ones. Then have employees report the experience to the team by sharing photos or stories.

Use the Right Tools and Technology

Employees can’t work efficiently without the right equipment. But resist the urge to try every new software or app. Instead, craft a toolkit that reflects the company needs, automating business processes while streamlining workflows and team collaboration.

Go for all-in-one tools, such as feature-rich communication platforms and tech support tools. By affording you multiple functionalities on one platform, you can eliminate instances of switching back and forth between apps, or tool overload, both of which are hugely counterproductive.

Improve Communication

Improve Communication

Of all the characteristics that define high-performing teams, communication reigns supreme. Without effective communication, information doesn’t flow, collaboration doesn’t happen, and processes break down.

Adopt a holistic approach to account for both the company technology and the innate styles and preferences of your employees. A robust instant messaging app for business, such as Brosix, offers you text, voice, video, and mobile capabilities, enabling communication in any instance across any platform.

Employees are humans after all, with unique needs and idiosyncrasies. Take a team psychology test to shed insight into individual and group personalities. This way you can identify barriers to communication, zero in on the team psyche, and even provide a fun team-building activity in the process.

To communicate better around the office, don’t miss our guide on improving team communication

Introduce a Flexible Working Policy

Odds are some of your employees prefer the independence of remote work while others thrive in the action of a busy office. Offering a flexible work policy affords your team some freedom over their work routine. It also provides them an opportunity to get ample rest and eliminate their work-related headaches, such as lengthy commutes, noisy office spaces, or work from home distractions.

What’s more, allowing employees to pick the work environment that best suits their productivity demonstrates that you value work-life balance and well-being. Boosting both business efficiency and worker effectiveness, it’s a win-win.

Encourage Feedback

Encourage Feedback

You can’t make improvements if you don’t know what’s broken and where. Feedback helps you pinpoint the issues so you can make changes that inspire greater productivity.

Feedback can be instructional or inspirational. But it must be constructive. When employees succeed, let them know by providing positive reinforcement. When performance isn’t up to par, give specific guidance on how to work better, and resources to facilitate course correction.

Go beyond the annual performance review by incorporating feedback into the daily stand-up, as well as establishing an anonymous suggestion box. These different outlets not only promote internal communication, but increase the likelihood of success. The team will be more agile because of it. And employees will be happier and more effective.

Develop the Right Strategy to Improve Productivity

With this advice, you should be able to diagnose the productivity-related issues that your team faces, as well as develop the right strategy to rectify them. As many problems stem from poor communication, a team communication tool such as Brosix could be a good starting point.

With rich messaging and collaboration capabilities, robust administrative control options, and industry-leading security features, Brosix is geared towards improving communication and productivity. Request a demo today and experience the benefits for yourself.

Improve Your Team Communication Today.
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Nikola Baldikov

Nikola Baldikov is a Head of Marketing at Brosix, specializing in SaaS marketing, SEO, and outreach strategies. Besides his passion for digital marketing, he is an avid football fan and loves to dance. Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @baldikovn.

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