Every business owner wants to increase the productivity of their staff and indeed themselves. It isn’t always easy, but a step up in productivity can really drive your business to the next level. It’s a simple thought process. If you’re being more productive, then more work can be done. This could be in manufacturing more items to sell, serving more customers, or reaching out for more sales. Productivity applies to all business industries, though the way in which this productivity is increased may change on a case by case basis. The tips below can give you the perfect introduction to it, leaving you with some base knowledge before you look at the industry specific stuff. Try some and see how you feel, and also how your employees respond because everyone is unique and takes changes to situations differently. Good luck.
Educate Yourself
You can’t start making changes without doing some research first or you could end up annoying people and alienating them. The same applies to yourself. You can try checking out marketing books & articles to increase your knowledge, but also look at other businesses and see how they’ve managed the various situations. Case studies are a brilliant way of testing what you want to do before you actually do it. Remember, people are different but if something worked in a similar workplace, you might as well try it too. Research is everything, doing it may make you less productive in the short term but think of the long term position of your business and you won’t mind doing it as much.
Training
You can make people far more productive by training them up to a higher standard. The issue here is that it takes you away from your business and running of it to train someone up. It’ll slow you down. But if you find the time to do this you’ll be able to impart your knowledge on others. It will always be worth it. If you’ve got the capital, you can even think about bringing someone else in and paying them to train your workforce, leaving you free to focus on other things your business needs to succeed. Just make sure they’re reputable, or they could do more damage than good.
Break Room
You need a good breakroom. Your members of staff will need somewhere to disconnect from work and recharge as they eat and drink. Make sure they take their lunches away from their desks. You might want to put a TV in there, or even a pool table. You need to make sure that you include cooking facilities at a bare minimum. Give them long enough too, an hour is a good amount of time. You can hang some art on the walls or at least give it a different paint job compared to the rest of your office. Try to allow people to go on breaks at the same time too. It will encourage cooperation and allow people to get to know each other a bit more, meaning they’ll work more productively together.