If you want your business to flourish, you need a productive work environment where employees can focus, collaborate, and produce amazing results. An unproductive work environment can be detrimental to your company and can cost you thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
To decrease the amount of time wasted while at work, you need to create a culture of productivity that encourages employees and teams to work their best. Take a look at our tips below to bring your productivity up a notch.
Table of Contents
Invest in the right tools
Business owners today have an advantage over business owners of the past due to the abundance of tech tools available to them. All tools are designed to make life easier. Take a look at some essential business tools you should invest in now to boost productivity:
- Workstation tools, such as the best wireless printers, laptops, mouses, keyboards, and hard drive, will keep all essential items in one place so employees can work without having to visit different parts of the office.
- Software, such as project management software, time tracking software, and operation management software will streamline tasks and projects and allow employees to collaborate.
- High-speed and encrypted WiFi, to ensure teams can work safely without lagging computers that take a lifetime to load a new browser or website page.
- Safety tools, such as an SSL certificate for your website and a password tracker, make sure security breaches don’t wipe away important documents, steal information, and take time away from important projects.
Hire a dedicated workforce
As they say, one bad apple can spoil the entire bunch. This motto holds true for employees, as well. One negative employee can throw a major wrench in the productivity of other employees, creating a negative work culture that isn’t focused on getting the job done.
To ensure you hire the right employees, follow these tips:
- Create a thorough job description that outlines every aspect of the role, the daily duties, the qualifications needed, and any additional information.
- Start with phone interviews after you begin receiving applications to better gauge candidates. Then, move on to in-person interviews and final interviews. Make sure to allow team members to partake in the interviewing process to provide their own insight on the potential new hires.
- Conduct a background check to determine the person is who they say they are—you’ll be surprised at what a background check can uncover, such as criminal, education, living, driving, and credit history.
- Create a thorough onboarding process for the new hire to make their transition into their role as seamless as possible.
Set goals and expectations
Your team members need to know what they’re working toward. Setting goals and expectations will outline the steps they need to take to reach new heights and accomplish something. The goals you set depend on your company and clients, but should be attainable and have clear objectives. Additionally, each team member should have their own individual goals to reach, too. This will give them the motivation to work their hardest and know how they’re contributing to the team.
Redesign the workplace
The physical environment where your employees work plays a vital role in their productivity levels. Let’s say you have a team of writers who have to bang out 2,000 words a day. If they’re working in an open-space office where other teams are loud and noisy, they may not be able to concentrate and hit their word count.
If possible, create separate sections of the office for different teams to work. Those needing a quiet space can be put together in one area of the office, while those who need to talk and collaborate can be placed in another area.
Other improvements you can make to your office design to boost productivity include:
- Painting the walls the right color. Yellow is proven to boost creativity, while blues and greys are more calming and relaxing.
- Placing plants throughout the office to reduce stress and improve air quality.
- Setting a comfortable room temperature between 68 degrees and 72 degrees.
Promote healthy habits
Have you ever tried working when you were sick? If so, you probably noticed you didn’t get too much done—thank your headache for that. Healthy employees are productive employees.
To boost productivity, encourage healthy habits and provide your employees with health benefits such as medical, dental, and vision insurance. You should also encourage daily walks to break up the day and reset their minds, along with offering an employee gym membership, healthy snacks in the office, and exercise equipment that can be used during breaks.
Wrapping up
Creating a productive work environment doesn’t have to require a complete overhaul of your company. Implementing a few of these tricks, whether investing in productivity-inducing software or filling the company kitchen with healthy snacks, will motivate your employees to work more efficiently.
About Carson Derrow
