It’s in the best interest of every entrepreneur to not only invest strategically, but also get the best out of the resources at hand. Hiring more people to handle the workload also means more monthly costs. So before doing that, it’s imperative to evaluate the productivity levels of your current staff and increase them if they are found to be below optimal levels.
This begs the question of how can you measure productivity in the first place? Of course, this depends on the type of work your employees are involved in, so it’s hard to provide a general answer. However, measuring work-related output might be easier than you had imagined, and this is because of the following simple fact: your company is probably using computers to do the work. Which means that the productivity of every single employee can be measured in one way or another.
The answer lies in clearly defining your goals and expectations and the timeframe in which these goals have to be met. All of these can be tracked down to a single employee. If your company is using a network that requires daily logins from the employees, measuring productivity becomes an even easier task. But in order to measure it and analyze it, you have to set aside some time in order to do so.
Still, there are certain things that are known to boost the productivity levels of every employee, and there are general guidelines on how this can be achieved. First of all, you need to make sure that the workspace is clean in neatly organized. For example, if the office is in disarray, finding a particular office item or file automatically becomes more time consuming, which negatively affects productivity.
The next step is making sure that the tasks are as scheduled as they can be. This avoids the negative impact of distractions. For example, it’s hard to concentrate on a particular task if you’re constantly waiting for emails and having to reply to them, without knowing when the next email is going to arrive in your inbox. This has two solutions. Either set aside a particular hour in the day that is reserved for sending and answering emails, or delegate the task to a particular employee who is going to handle it all day, thus enabling others to concentrate better on what needs to be done.
It’s also important to rule out any drug or alcohol abuse when assessing the productivity levels of your employees. One way to do that is by administering an oral fluid lab test to them. An oral fluid test is easy and unobtrusive and can help to identify any potential substance abuse problems within a company before they snowball.
One of the most important aspects of maximizing productivity is being able to recognize individual strengths and shortcomings, and balance them out within the team. For example, particular employees are more skilled in the customer relations department than others, and as such, can probably complete the tasks faster and more efficiently than others. Recognizing this will not only enable you to bring the best out of your employees, they will also be happier with their jobs.