3 Strategies for Improving Business Productivity

Technological advancements, customer expectations, and, in particular, globalisation have raised the demand for enhanced productivity. After all, Australian entrepreneurs have to compete with firms in China and India, where labour costs are a fraction of what they are in Australia.

Productivity, in its most formal definition, relates to how well an organisation turns input (such as labour, materials, machines, and capital) into goods and services or output. However, it is no longer confined to measuring input/output ratios. Increasing productivity essentially means working smarter. You may search for ways to enhance efficiency almost in any department of your firm.

Unfortunately, most employees spend just around 27% of their time on skilled tasks – the jobs for which you employed them. The majority of their time is spent on busywork or is diverted by distractions. And if the time they spend doing valuable work is wasted due to delays and inefficiencies, you lose not only business performance but also employee engagement.

Why Productivity Is Important for SMEs?

Increasing productivity allows your company to grow and prosper. Whether you’re seeking to maximise output or increase service bookings, increasing productivity allows you to:

• Revenue growth: When you and your employees are more productive, your company makes more money. According to Harvard Business Review, organisations that are 40% more productive have operating margins that are 30 to 50% larger than their competitors. Streamlining processes not only saves you time while selling your products or services, but it also improves customer service. Employees that are productive and satisfied interact with customers more effectively, which contributes to the kind of brand loyalty that keeps profits coming.
• Business Growth: If you want to expand by opening new stores, opening a branch office, or increasing online sales, an effective workflow allows you to do so. Growth necessitates a long-term company concept, a clear purpose, and adequate resources. Creating a productive work environment satisfies the first and third criterion since it demonstrates that you’ve established a solid foundation that functions and that you can perform efficiently.

How to Improve Productivity?

1. Utilise Communication and Collaboration Tools

Communication has never been more crucial. Shooting emails back and forth isn’t enough in this day and age of limited personal interaction and remote employment. Even the simplest projects today require teams to coordinate across multiple applications. Adding steps to a previously simple procedure can jeopardise the efficiency of the most fundamental jobs and drastically slow the entire operation.

Investing in modern digital collaboration technologies, which increasingly dominate the business environment, is the ideal method to manage a virtual staff. Through intuitive visual displays, live updates, and performance statistics that assess individual employees’ efficiency, these can allow instant and effective collaboration.

Cloud-based file-sharing platforms like Google Cloud and Microsoft OneDrive, as well as software solutions like Slack, Asana, and Trello (https://trello.com/en), enable your firm to simplify all communication through a central hub, effortlessly transfer files, and update living documents in real time. All users can participate, and many of these services show which modifications were made by which team members. These sorts of software increase transparency and make everyone accountable for their allocated responsibilities.

2. Use Technology to Improve Operations

Web-based technologies allow you to significantly change the way you conduct your organisation, if you want to expand market share, actively pursue cost reduction or higher efficiency, or prevent customer service issues. Spreadsheets, off-the-shelf software solutions, and business-specific, custom-developed apps are all examples of production management tools. Following are some examples:

• E-purchasing (online purchase) is an alternative method for obtaining supplies from providers. Because you are no longer confined to local retailers, this technology allows you to obtain more competitive prices. In general, transaction processing costs are lowered, and there is less paperwork.
• Smart inventory control solutions can assist you in reducing inventory levels, increasing profitability, and shortening customer response times. Online and order management solutions combine inventory information with your company’s purchasing, accounting, and e-business systems, allowing you to conveniently track order progress and inventory movement across your organisation. You will also be able to detect high and low periods, which will help you to optimise supplier purchases and manage working capital more effectively.

It also aids in keeping up with technology advancements and ensuring that your company is utilising the most recent innovations to increase efficiency. To keep up with current technologies, you can use the internet or go to trade shows. Trade exhibitions are a fantastic source of knowledge because software providers frequently make their material available to participants. You can also network with other companies in your field who have already tried and tested new developments. Knowing what your competitors are doing might help you narrow down your search for solutions that are relevant to your industry.

3. Achieve Realistic Goals via Accountability

Transparency is crucial for firms that do not have a physical location. Productivity is a measure of how well time is spent, and having more available hours does not guarantee that those hours will be beneficial or even utilised. The first step is to ensure that employees are putting in at least the required number of hours. Tools that track when your employees sign in for the day will notify you if they are present and putting in the necessary hours. If you do not have the ability to manually track this data, you can install time-tracking software, such as TSheets to manage it for you.

Once you’ve determined that employees are working the hours they are supposed to, assist them in making the most of their day. Giving staff clear daily goals or targets can boost morale and productivity since individuals perform more efficiently when they are focused on a specific goal with a deadline.

How do you go about setting this goal? Working backwards, you split it down into manageable subgoals. Determine the output you expect from your personnel by reverse-engineering the process to offer a set of outcomes.

Assume your goal is to send 200 containers before the end of the week. First, determine where a chair has to be on Friday AM in order to ship it that weekend. Repeat this method for your product every day of the week, or every week or month for longer-term goals. This creates detailed instructions with clear expectations for both you and your employees. This technique can also help you become more acquainted with your staff’s gritty job and provide a greater understanding of the monthly, weekly, and daily goals for each position.

Final Thoughts

Improving efficiency keeps your staff happy, increases earnings, and positions your small firm for long-term success. Don’t worry, you don’t have to implement all of these productivity tricks all at once. Try a few at a time to progressively maximise workplace productivity rather than overwhelming staff with a slew of changes all at once.