How to Fight the Productivity Recession

Wed, 14 Sep 11

Australian small businesses are facing a slope in productivity according to the Grattan Institute. With the holiday season on the mind, productivity will continue to decrease if you don't put a plan in place to fight this recession in your business. In this article, we've taken the best ideas and tips from business blogs to give you our 10 favourite ideas for boosting productivity in the workplace. Take a look, they might surprise you!

1. Keep Your Team!

Decreasing your staff count will not increase your producivity! Losing team players can affect morale, cause stress to the remaining individuals who must fill the hole and affect their quality of output. Instead of cutting numbers, reallocate roles and duties to the team member who can offer the best performance in that role. Be sure to get the team's opinion in this reallocation as this will give them the chance to jump at opportunities they will enjoy and take on duties that they know they can do well - you can hold them to it.

2. Count Your Steps

Consider your business layout... Are your employees given the tools to do their job in close range to their work station? Little things like walking across the room to collect items for a job adds to the time it takes to complete an activity and the risk of your employees becoming distracting or losing 'the zone' they are in when getting their work done.

3. Make Technology Work for You

Look at where you can streamline your business by moving to digital. Cutting out the need to transfer information from hard copy to digital will free up huors of your administrators' time. Implement a scanning system, or a barcode system to keep documents on track, without the need to create entirely new digital copies.

Technology = Productivity. On top of the time spent duplicating records, your business may be suffering from Old Technology Syndrome where your older, bottom-of-the-line hardware and software are absorbing all of your time. For example, if your business frequently needs tp print and your printer, although cost-effective initially, requires a lot of love to run and print when required, then you are ultimitely spending more money paying your team to wait around for their documents, and using time to fix challenges with technology that should be allocated to their role.

4. Have Visual Performance Tracking

If your business is predominantly run in an office environment, you should employ ways of visually tracking what work has been done to ensure nothing is overlooked and to keep an eye on under and overloads. For example, in-trays are a great way for each employee to track what is left to do, as well as weekly task sheets so they can tick off tasks as they go.

Whatever process is used will depend on the nature of the business. Some businesses may choose to have a type of system where employees will login to a computer system to determine if a goal has been met, or a deadline has been broken.

5. Make Your Team Feel at Home...

Craig Knight, principal researcher and managing director of Prism, undertook some research where workers were observed while operating in "lean" environments, i.e they were not allowed photos, plants and personal items on their desks or in their work space. These elements were slowly added into the mix to find the impact on productivity.

In this research activity, productivity of the participants rose as much as 30%. "If you give people a little bit of leniency and free space, you'll see productivity actually increase by a significant amount," explains Knight.

"If they feel comfortable, they will operating in a better environment and will be more productive."

6. ...Or actually send them there!

It is a common need for employees to leave early on the odd occasion for whatever reason and this means leaving their work load behind until the next day on site. If your business has the ability to set up networks and allow employees to login to their computers from home, with whatever device they choose, this gives the flexibility to ensure work is done if an unusual circumstance arises. With the technology available for business today, you can track and check up on your off-site employees as easily as if they were in the next room. Be sure to receive regular reporting when this is the case so you know the work is being done.

7. Manage Jobs with KPIs

You can't manage what you can't measure. Ensure your job descriptions are realistic, relevant and have clear, reasonable and achievable key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs give your team a goal to strive towards and, on or off-site, they are the one factor that will keep you updated on your team's performance.

8. Keep an Up-To-Date Database

Your database of clients, suppliers and partners is the most important tool for your business and your productivity. This about how much time is wasted trying to track down the contact details of someone you met or a company you have used in the past? You As your client base grows, it becomes too difficult to just store their business cards alphabitcally and go from there.

Instead, keep a clean, accurate and up-to-date database, accessible and editable by your whole team. Use different levels of access to ensure only senior-level employees or yourself can delete records or make significant changes. Modern database software means you can communicate with thousands of people with the click of a button. You can track responses, changes and, if you move on or your company does go belly up, you can be back in business in minutes thanks to your ready-made client list.

9. Outsource

Outsource all your non-core activities. Get rid of what you aren't great at, what you don't like doing or what just slows you down. By acknowledging your business strengths and recognising the weaknesses, you maximise your results without increasing your headcount. If you concentrate on what you love, you’ll save a lot of time and enjoy yourself, rather than doing a half baked job on something you loathe doing.

10. Have Some Fun

Staff morale is important to productivity; anxious, stressed workers are too busy worrying about their futures to do much work. Fun isn't expensive. Think about what your team would enjoy, for example Friday night drinks is popular in many businesses to finish off the week. Some businesses buy a round of coffees on the office tab from time to time or supply a free lunch on the odd occasion. If you are a small team, celebrate birthdays with cards and cake, or buy your team small inexpensive presents such as a $20 iTunes or CD voucher. It is often the thought that counts and your team will appreciate it and you.

That's our Top 10 Productivity Tips for ending 2011 in true style. If you apply just one or two of these to your business you will see a change in attitude and productivity amongst the team.

Thank you to Dynamic Business and SmartCompany for their contribution to this article.

Tags: Productivity, Human Resources, HR, Team, Management, Leadership