How To Improve Workplace Productivity At Your Start-up
Productivity is just about doing things; it is about doing things that matter, doing things that align with your mission, vision, and goals.
Do you struggle with productivity in your start-up? Or you don’t even have an understanding of how to get your subordinates to get real work done?
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Productivity is vital for every organization, and every start-up founder has to prioritize this. How do you improve workplace productivity at your start-up? Here are some ways you can:
Set clear job descriptions: When you set clear explanations, you help your staff to know what is expected of them. This also helps both parties to know whether there are improvements at work or not. A clear job description is a must, and you get to make sure you have one in place for every position.
Set clear vision and goals: You can come up with a system of setting clear vision and goals for your business within a period of time. Doing this would guide everyone in your start-up to work towards common goals and be more productive. Sujan Patel, co-founder, ContentMarketer.io in this article by Business Insider explained that “Say NO to things that don’t help you with your 6 month, 1 year, and 5-year goals.”
Avoid micromanaging: Micromanaging is always counter-productive. Resist the urge to micromanage your staff, instead, hire people you trust to get the job done and allow them to do the job. Micromanaging can hinder your team from working productively, and it can affect their communication with you. In this article by Business Insider, Peldi Guilizzoni, CEO, Balsamiq stated that “Hire enough people who are better than you to be able to delegate a large part of your job to them. Finally, now I get to be CEO and spend my day thinking strategically.”
Reward productivity: Rewarding productivity can help more of your team members to be more productive. Your staff can all come early to work and leave at the set time; but are they productive? Are they getting the right work done at the right time?
Train your employees: You should also train your employees to be more productive. Teach them what you know and introduce new systems that would enlighten them on how to get more work done.
Set a reporting system: A weekly or a daily report system can help your subordinates stay accountable. With a reporting system, you would know pending tasks, completed tasks, and tasks that should be done the next week or the next day. According to the CEO and co-founder of Tilt, James Beshara, in this article by ScribblePost ”keep a list of what you did that day (outside of the most important things you HAD to do), and then create the list of the things you have to do for tomorrow.”
Introduce the right tools: There are a lot of tools you can introduce to your team members that would help them stay productive. Get into the habit of researching and introducing useful tools that can help your staff members like Toggl, Slack, Forest, etc. to help your team members stay productive. According to Nick Gray, founder & CEO of Museum Hack, in an article by Project Manager, “We keep ourselves productive by assign clear deliverables with specific deadlines and tracking time with a tool called Toggl which includes easy to read graphs on how we are spending our time. Our flexible work schedule helps us attract and retain talented, passionate people who are results driven.”
Make breaks compulsory: Breaks are one of the important aspects of productivity. Set break periods in your start-up and ensure your staff members adhere to them. It is counter-productive to ignore breaks because you actually need break periods to stay productive. In addition, you should also enforce mandatory vacation time for employees. Matt Collins, Owner, and Founder of Loans Now explained in this article that, “As a quick growing company, it can be easy to burn out your staff,” he said. “At our company, we enforce a mandatory paid time off equal to two weeks per year. Even the most committed employee needs time away from their job, time to relax and time to clear themselves away from the pressures of the job. We have found consistently that after taking some time away from the job, employees return more motivated, more productive and with a new level of commitment.”
Make sure meetings are productive: It has been said over and over again that not all meetings are productive. Just because it’s Monday or Friday doesn’t mean you need to have a meeting with your team members. Meetings should be productive, and there should be a clear goal for every session. Meetings take time and if you would love to have one, ensure you have a clear agenda that would be passed across to everyone before the meeting time.
Build a conducive start-up environment: One of the major determinants of productivity at work is having a conducive environment in place. If your team members aren’t comfortable in the office or if there is nothing in place for them to support their work, then productivity can be far-fetched. Take care of the environment and make sure it is supportive and conducive enough for your staff.
What are some of the things you intend to do in order to improve productivity at your start-up? Do drop your comments below!
