When you are a business owner, you are always thinking about how you and your team can utilize the time spent in the office more effectively. You don’t want to end up paying your employees their wages, only to find that a lot of hours each week are being completely wasted, due to bad business practices and poor organizational skills. Whilst some loss of time is inevitable, there are many ways to reduce the hours that are lost in your business. Here is how you can be more productive in the workplace with 6 simple tips.
Stop micromanaging your team
Whilst you have a natural inclination as a business owner to want to know that things are being done correctly, you are wasting your time – and the time of others – if you are prone to micromanaging people.
This is because you could be doing things that are of more importance, and also because it will cause your team members to get stressed out, which will prevent them from working productively. Put a bit of faith in your employees, and wait until you can see the final results. Don’t hang around while they are working, trying to control the direction of their work.
Allow your employees to work from home
Trusting your team to work from home is a big deal, admittedly. You always want to be sure that they aren’t just sitting in bed streaming shows and occasionally replying to emails so that it looks like they are staying on tops of things.
However, many people note that they get more work done at home, and that they enjoy a combination of both home and office environments. When your team do come into the office, they will be more focused, as they won’t see it as a boring 9 ‘til 5 requirement, which can be quite demoralizing. Trust them a little, and reap the rewards of doing so.
Cut out excessive email communication
Let’s be honest, a lot of time wasting in the office is a result of excessive email use. If we are not writing an email, we are checking our accounts every 15 minutes, just to check that we haven’t missed out on something.
Emails really could be holding your office productivity back, so encourage your team to only check their emails a few times a day. Using an email to SMS service is a good idea so that you can send out emergency alerts straight to people’s phones, and they won’t need to be refreshing their accounts all of the time as a result. This will help a lot!
Make plans, and stick to them
So much time is wasted in offices because people don’t really know what they are supposed to be doing. Planning is minimal, and team members are expected to navigate their way around a long list of tasks, with no real short-term, or long-term, direction.
Call meetings – quick, standing up meetings – and be straight down the line about your imminent, and future goals. If you want to make your team feel like they are working towards something (which will increase productivity), and you also want to make the most out of the time that you have got, then make plans where you can.
Outsource menial tasks
If you want to have more time to do the important jobs, rather than the menial ones, then it could be a good idea to see what you can outsource. Whether it is the phone answering that you just can’t stand, or you are sick of trying to get that IT to work, there is somebody out there who could deal with it for you, so that you can get these things done without having to pay somebody a full-time wage to do it. This will mean that you have a lot more time to focus on what’s important, and as such, you will be more productive in the office. No more wasting time answering calls!
Time yourself
A great way to make sure that you get jobs done is to time yourself. If you know that you only have an hour to get something done, then you are a lot more likely to sit there and get to work on it.
The same thing applies to the office day on the whole: if you know that you are not going to stay over at work, and as such you will have no extra time, then you are probably going to get things done a lot quicker, and you will be utilizing those hours in your office properly. The best way to beat time is to make it work for you, by providing yourself these challenges and striving to meet them.
So, if you want to utilize your office time more efficiently, then remember these simple tips!
