Ten Effective Ways To Improve Employee Efficiency

Are you looking for ways to increase employee productivity? Here is a guide on how entrepreneurs can improve employee efficiency in their business...

An Entrepreneurs' Guide To Employee Efficiency

The life of an entrepreneur has its challenging days. Although it might seem easier to be your own boss because you can set your own work hours, the truth is, those building businesses tend to work longer and harder than everyone else. This is why all business owners eventually hire staff to help lighten their workload.

Over time, employees have begun spending more and more time in the office. The trouble is, while their hours might be increasing, efficiency is not.

With that in mind, here are ten effective ways to improve employee efficiency in your business.

1. Pick The Best Hires

A happy work environment tends to be an efficient one. However, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the positive atmosphere for everyone else. When you hire a person that:

• Gossips about their colleagues
• Slacks off at work
• Offers marginal customer service

They tend to do your business more harm than good. It is best that you avoid individuals like this altogether.

You can attract the right people by offering a good salary and benefits.

2. Match Tasks To Skills

Asking your staff to be great at everything is probably unreasonable. Although they might attempt all of the tasks that you give them, they are going to lose time on those that they can’t easily complete.

Instead, you should learn your employees’ skills and behavioral styles and match them to the right types of work. If one member of your staff is creative and outgoing, for example, they may shine when pitching ideas to clients but would struggle with reports or taking inventory. 

3. Have The Right Tools

Even when given work that they’re comfortable with, your employees aren’t going to be productive if they don’t have the necessary tools to do the job. Providing your staff with these essentials is one of your most basic duties as an employer. This includes:

• Printers
• Pens
• Paper
• Vacuum cleaner
• Coffee maker
• Software

And others. There are many tools that your staff may require.

You also have to train your team members the skills they need for their jobs. Expecting them to learn on the fly will waste time and lead to poor morale.

4. Communicate In Effective Ways

Most employers understand that communication is the key to an efficient workforce. Rather than relying on often slow methods, like email, you should switch to those designed for quick team communication.

A social networking tool, like Slack, could really speed up some processes. You can even try building bots for Slack to streamline other areas of your company's workflow.

Just remember that older methods of contact - like phone calls and meetings - can be more efficient in some circumstances.

5. Learn To Show Appreciation

When an employee doesn’t feel appreciated, they are unlikely continue to offer their best performance. In fact, it could even make them begin to hate their job.

To avoid this, you must show your team members how grateful you are to have them on your team, and that they treat customers well. Even if you provide a competitive salary, you should also offer a good benefits package, as well as other incentives.

When rewarding staff, make sure you consider their individual preferences. Not all rewards are going to be appreciated the same by all of your employees.

6. Treat Everyone The Same

Every single person under your employ should be treated the same way. Everyone has experienced having a colleague who was seen as the favorite among the managers. We can also all remember how frustrated and discouraged that made us feel.

When a boss has favorites, it can create problems within the workforce itself, resulting in a lower employee efficiency. Even if you like certain workers more than others, you should still treat everyone as equals.

7. Allow Flexible Work Hours

The standard working day runs from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon. Although these hours have been adopted by many businesses around the world, that doesn’t necessarily make them the most efficient.

Different people feel they’re most productive at varying times of the day. Some prefer to work in the early morning, while others get more done late at night. In addition, as technology evolves, so does the workplace. Some environments would benefit from a different workday plan.

Allowing your staff the opportunity to choose their own hours, could be a wise decision.

8. Keep The Office Tidy To Optimize Employee Efficiency

Regardless of what time your employees are in it, you must prioritize office tidiness. As an employer, it is your responsibility to provide adequate space to work. If your business premises is dirty and cluttered, then it risks the health of those inside.

The impact on your employees’ mental states will be affected, and result in a lack of productivity and creativity. While you probably don’t have time to clean the building yourself, you can always hire a cleaning service.

9. Cut Out The Excess

Although you should delegate tasks to your team, you must think carefully about what fills their plates. Wherever possible, you should avoid giving employees small, unnecessary work. Especially when they’re focused on a much larger goal!

If you ask your team to write daily reports, for example, but never have time to read them, then ask for weekly reports instead. Even if this only saves each staff member a few minutes each day, it will make accomplishing their other goals much easier.

Looking for technology solutions that aid employee efficiency is also helpful. If your team has time-consuming tasks to complete, but technology is available to speed these jobs up, it makes sense to embrace the technology and make it easier for your team to work more productively. Introducing systems such as sourcing management software will make previously laborious tasks, such as ordering supplies, much faster and far more efficient.

10. Utilize Feedback

You have very little hope of improving employee efficiency if they don’t know that they’re being inefficient from leadership's perspective. This is why performance reviews are so important. When you tell your staff what they could do better, it gives them the opportunity to improve.

That being said, improving efficiency isn’t just about what your team is doing wrong. The responsibility often falls on you too. So just like you give your employees feedback, you should ask them to review processes and procedures, as well as team performance.

Final Thoughts

Where the business world is concerned, time quite literally equals money. This is why you have to make the most of yours and your staff's time.

The importance of employee efficiency might seem complicated, but it does not have to be. Hopefully, after reading the advice above, you have some idea of how to improve productivity in your organization.