Every business requires effective use of available resources for it to reap maximum rewards. That is everyone’s dream. It rarely happens though. There is wastage everywhere. Human capital is the most vulnerable when it comes to waste. The time wasted in a single week is enough to complete several important tasks that a company may have to pay for. For example, the time each employee spends on social media can save the company from spending a single dime on social media. But it is not used to help the company.
Companies have to think of ways to improve their productivity. Here is a list of things that a company can try. These tips work well when they are ingrained into a company’s culture.
Taking healthy breaks
Our bodies are a work of art and science. There is what we can do and what our bodies cannot do. Science shows that human beings can only maintain maximum attention for about 90 minutes. From there, concentration slows down, retention diminishes after every minute, and overall creativity dims significantly.
You can make it the company’s culture for people to take 15-minute breaks every 90 to 120 minutes. You don’t want to have 1000 minutes every day from your employees. You want to have quality minutes doing productive work.
The break freshens up the person giving him an opportunity to see things from a different perspective. If he or she was navigating an ambiguous situation, he gets time to cool off, too.
Scheduling your day
A company must have a clear plan of how to go about every task. It all starts by breaking down each function into small tasks that can be completed efficiently.
Employee motivation is a key ingredient to productivity. One way to improve motivation is through success. If an employee can complete their tasks on time, they are motivated. They enjoy working with the company. Every day, every employee should have targets. The company has to go further and encourage them to have a daily schedule.
You cannot divorce an employee from their personal lives. You have to support them so that their personal life does not get into their way. If someone has a daily schedule, he or she knows when to allocate family time, social life, and work life.
Emails take a considerable amount of time. Failure to give them maximum attention can often lead to back and forth communication. Employees should find quality time for emails in their schedules.
Taming social media wasting time
In a month, employees spend an equivalent of up to two workdays on social media. Well, the company pays the employee for a full month despite receiving services for two fewer days. The loss could be significant if you were to assume that every employee takes the same break.
Increasingly, companies are implementing a social media policy where employees’ access to social networks is limited. Without a clear social media policy, companies cannot control how often and how long people spend networking instead of doing their assigned tasks.
One easy way to control Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, and other notifications is to put them off. Such a policy would see every employee switch off data during office hours. The person can read updates during coffee and lunch breaks.
Automating routine tasks
A computerized machine can easily do some routine tasks at the workplace. A simple email list can help you automate updates, subscriptions, and notifications from receipts. A programmed computer can easily do many things such as payment confirmation, order confirmation, and even social media feedback.
When something cannot be automated safely and cheaply, it can be outsourced. Allowing your employee to do routine tasks can often lead to a waste of time. That person is better off doing high impact tasks.
No distractions
Specify the time for interruptions. There are so many distractions directed to supervisory staff, such as junior employees making inquiries or referrals. It can easily cripple their workdays. One easy way to avoid that is to set specific consultation or referral times.
Productivity is closely linked to the level of attention required for each task. If an employee cannot give a specific task maximum attention, he or she will take forever to deliver or will simply hand in substandard work—all of which can be costly to the company.
Some meetings can be replaced with an email
About 60 percent of employees believe that meetings are truly a waste of time. Most companies spend an average of an hour every day on meetings that often turn out to be repetitive and uninspiring. Scrapping such meetings can save the company up to 30 hours a month. A simple morning email from specifying the important updates in point form can replace the one-hour meeting.
An employee will spend just 5 minutes brushing up on it, and then he or she can get to work. Research shows that people are more productive in the morning. Imagine taking an hour of the most productive time of the employee away. That is an easy way of bringing down their productivity.
If you cannot scrap the meetings altogether, you can limit morning strategy meetings to just 15 minutes. Employees also hate crowded meetings. They are unlikely to comment or weigh in on important issues. Keeping the meetings between three and seven people is ideal.
Time tracking
It is one way of automating routine tasks. What makes it imperative is the fact that an employee has to deliver on his or her mandate irrespective of the other competing interests. He or she will want to take a wellness break or to make a call back home. In between doing those tasks, the employee has to stay grounded to do essential business tasks.
These tasks often have a timeline. Some tasks feed into other employees’ functions within the production funnel. A late project can cause a series of delayed projects and overall losses.
When it comes to tracking time, there are four critical aspects:
- Who is working?
- What are they working on?
- How long have they been there?
- How important are the tasks?
Time tracking is better when automated. It ensures that everyone is doing what is most relevant to the company. The employee completes the task at the appointed time so that the product of his or her work can go to the next level.
Conclusion
Time management and productivity is an ongoing concern among business leaders. Some are relying on growing technologies to spur productivity. They must also supplement those efforts with employee training, workplace policies, scheduling, and automation of routine tasks.
