Efficient workflow throughout your company is what keeps your business running smoothly. A lack of productivity will seriously affect that workflow, and ultimately, your bottom line. With that in mind, here are a few things that may be impacting the productivity of your employees and how to resolve them.
Document Anarchy
Particularly in a large corporation, thousands of company emails, presentations and documents are created on a daily basis. The problem is that not all employees hold to company standards. This could mean using outdated company logos or incorrect email formats. There’s also likely a lot of time wasted searching for templates, creating them from scratch, or shortcutting by using old templates, such as letterheads, that have redundant information in them.
To resolve this, consider a program like Templafy, which will bring all of your employees onto the same page. This way, all employees have easy access to current templates for PowerPoints, emails and documents. This will ensure that correct, common formats are used for all company documents. For employee specific documents such as emails and letterheads, you can also create individual templates that will insert the employee’s information where necessary.
Meetings
There are two things to consider regarding meetings and productivity – whether the meetings are actually necessary, and making the ones that are strictly necessary more productive. Some research estimates that the average office worker spends 31 hours a month in unproductive meetings, yet they’re still a weekly, if not daily ritual in most offices. If the same goals can be accomplished over email, phone or Skype, don’t hold a meeting for it.
For meetings that are actually necessary – and there will be a few – change the way you run the meeting. Hold a standing meeting, which, as the name implies, means everyone stands rather than sits. There’s evidence that shows this improves performance and concentration, and therefore productivity. If nothing else, anyone who doesn’t like to stand for long will make sure the meeting stays on track.
Send out the meeting agenda at least a day in advance and stick to it. Sticking to an agenda will prevent the meeting going off track and if you’re planning an ideas session, everyone can have their contributions ready before they walk in the door.
Outdated Systems
Your budget review may be telling you that upgrading your computer system isn’t in the cards this year, but it might just be what’s limiting the budget to begin with. If your company is running on old hardware or software, but the demands of your work are moving along with modern tech, your quality of work and productivity will both suffer. Make sure your hardware – computers, printers, and even monitors – are up to date.
As for software, many companies make do with older software across the board, particularly for payroll, email, and accounting. This may be partly because the original software license didn’t include updates, or the updates have been neglected or deemed unnecessary. Having the best software available, and the latest version, will work wonders for productivity. Consider a software subscription, which doesn’t require the massive outlay of a software purchase. It also means you’ll receive updates as soon as they’re available.
You should also be using software to integrate all of your systems together. Having multiple different systems across different departments can lead to poor communication as each system is not compatible with the other. Integrating everything into one system will make things more efficient, whilst it can also increase collaboration across departments. If this doesn’t make sense to you, you might understand it better when you visit TEC – they have plenty of advice on everything to do with software systems and can give you an overview of SAP ERP systems which you may want to use.
Personal Issues
Conflict between employees may seem like a non-issue, and something adults should be able to overcome. However, the fact of the matter is that anything that affects your employees will affect their productivity. Conflict leads to a lack of communication and coworkers who don’t work well together. In order to work well and accomplish tasks together, employees don’t necessarily have to be best friends, but they do need to get along and should be able to communicate effectively. Host regular team building workshops to make sure your employees – and management staff – can coexist.
Additionally, it is important to address factors like fatigue, which can impact performance, affect productivity and team dynamics. Effective fatigue management for the workplace is necessary to ensure that employees are well-rested and capable of performing their best. By implementing strategies such as flexible scheduling and promoting a healthy work-life balance, companies can reduce the negative effects of fatigue. You may also wish to keep in touch with your employees, while still keeping things professional, to make sure any personal issues aren’t having too big of an impact on workplace performance.
Conclusion
There are many things that will impact company productivity. While you can’t resolve them all at once, these four areas are a good place to start. Make sure your whole company is using the same template for company documents, eliminate unnecessary meetings, keep your systems up to date and resolve conflict to make sure coworkers can coexist peacefully. A few small changes will have a long-term effect on your company, clients, and your bottom line.