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How You Can Boost Productivity Within Your Small Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Productivity| How You Can Boost Productivity Within Your Small BusinessWhen you’re the owner of a small business, it can often seem like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Unanswered emails, unfinished tasks, rising stress levels, and a to-do list as long as your arm are all fairly common, and can often leave you feeling overwhelmed. You can relax, though, because we’ve come up with five great ways to boost productivity in your small business.

Utilize Organizational Tools

To stay on top of daily, weekly, and even monthly tasks, the best thing to do is to utilize some of the great online tools available for businesses. Asana is a brilliant work management app that allows you to organize and plan your workflow more easily; tasks can be scheduled either for yourself or for other team members, and there’s also a great built-in messaging feature which can easily replace traditional emails. Microsoft Teams is fantastic for coordinating staff messages and arranging meetings, and also includes a handy conference call element.

Choose Business Coaching

There’s nothing more helpful when you’re struggling than receiving motivation and tips from someone with more experience and knowledge. INFIX are a team of consultants who provide small businesses with coaching packages on how to grow your company, via one-to-one online video sessions. Covering everything from strategy and goal-setting to growth and pricing, they’re a one-stop shop for anyone who has hit a stumbling block within their business.

Motivate Your Employees

One of the secrets to a successful small business is happy employees; it’s proven that motivated and upbeat staff provide better results, so it pays to take this into consideration. Setting reasonable working hours, providing fair pay and being supportive are all great ways to stay on top of staff morale – and remembering to give credit and encouragement is also key. Another great tip is to seriously consider flexible working requests; parents and guardians often require time off at short notice, and being understanding in these situations is beneficial.

Delegate Tasks

As the owner of a small business, it can often be tempting to try and manage all of the most important tasks yourself – but this is often a one way road to unfinished work and dissatisfied customers. Many employees will be keen to progress within the business, take on more hours or further their career, so increasing their workload can be beneficial to everyone concerned. Giving employees more autonomy and responsibility isn’t only helpful to you – it can also make them far more productive.

Pick the Right Foods

Eating the wrong foods at work can put you on a fast track to flat energy levels, sluggish thinking and low motivation, so ensure you fill your body with the good stuff throughout the day. If you’re super busy finding time for lunch can be tricky, so make sure what you do eat is packed with nutrients; avocados, quinoa and chia seeds are all superfoods which stick with you, and can easily be mixed into a quick and tasty salad. Keeping healthy snacks on hand is also a great tip (and one your staff will thank you for!); nuts and seeds, dried fruit and even the humble banana are all great for keeping hunger at bay throughout the day.

6 Ways to Increase Your Team’s Productivity

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | 6 Ways to Increase Your Team’s ProductivityLeading a team isn’t simple, no matter the size. Whether you’re in charge of a team of five or a team of 500, there are obstacles you must overcome. Your goal is efficient, hard-working staff that boost the business’ quality and increase profits. To do this, you must be a leader who promotes productivity, and here are six ways you can do that.

1. Communicate Effectively 

A crucial part of leadership is having excellent communication skills. Without them, you run the risk of miscommunication that will lead to errors, frustration, and loss of morale. Provide your staff with constructive feedback, a clearly defined task list, and have an open-door policy. This way, your team will know they can rely on you to be honest and give help where it is needed, which will boost productivity.

2. A Comfortable Environment

Assuming that you and your team work the standard 40-hour week, you are spending a third of your time in the workplace. By creating a bright, comfortable environment, you will cultivate a productive team that enjoys being at work. Add plants, install wide windows, and have an area where your team can hang out and discuss. You could even provide auto sliding doors that use sensors to open, providing your workplace with a brightened, automatic entrance.

3. Give Praise 

Acknowledging a job well done will boost a worker’s productivity. If your team is constantly hearing about where they’ve made errors, they will begin doubting themselves and it will show up in their work. By providing positive feedback, they will feel valued and have pride in their work, and they will carry on doing a great job.

4. Use Incentives 

People work best when they have a goal and a reward. Provide that reward by bringing incentives into the workplace, and you will see a definite uptick in hard work. In study findings written by Harold Stolovich, they found that incentive programs engaged participants, attracted quality employees, and that the employees valued the incentive programs. Some rewards you could employ include lunches out, coupons, and bonuses.

5. Understand Their Strengths

Each team member is an individual with their own strengths and weaknesses. You cannot expect one employee to work in the exact same way as another, so get to know your team and their strengths so that you can take advantage of them. It will benefit both you and the employees, as you get their best work while they are able to enjoy hitting their goals easily.

6. Leave Them to Their Work

Micro-managing results in a quick descent into unhappy employees. You hired them for a reason, so you should trust that they have the business’ best interest at heart and will do a fantastic job each day. Have confidence in your team by showing them freedom in their work and they will show you their appreciation through productivity. Their sense of responsibility will let them shine while allowing you to focus on other areas of the business.

9 Team Building Activities Your Entire Staff Can Enjoy

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | 9 Team Building Activities Your Entire Staff Can EnjoyIn theory, organizing team building activities is a perfect way to get your team to get to know each other outside the office and form a stronger bond within the office as a result. However, finding the right activity for everyone if you are running a company that has multiple departments can be a real challenge.If your workforce is very diverse, there’s a good chance that preferences are going to vary – especially if you have a workforce in which there are employees who are not all the same relative age. This is why you need to find a way to celebrate these differences by choose activities everyone feels comfortable participating in.

Here’s a list of fun team building exercises everyone can participate in and enjoy.

Scavenger Hunt

Purpose: Teamwork

A scavenger hunt is a classic team collaboration game. The rules are easy:

Split your team into equal sized groups and send them out with a list of fun things to find. You can choose whether you want to do this in the office or outside the office. Set a time limit for all groups and put together some fun clues or even riddles that will force your teams to get creative and use not just their eyes but their brains as well! Whichever team comes back with the most items once time has run out is the winner.

Minefield

Purpose: Communication and problem solving

For this indoor game, you will need an empty room or hallway and a bunch of random office items. You can use office chairs, paper, boxes, anything you have around the office that isn’t too delicate or expensive to create obstacles in the empty space or “minefield.” Divide teams into pairs in which one of them must be blindfolded.

The other one must guide that person from start to finish without setting off any mines. That means they cannot step on any obstacles or venture outside the given boundaries. Their only guidance is the voice of their partner. You can change the number of pairs and obstacles depending on how difficult you want this game to be.

Three Truths and a Lie

Purpose: Getting to know each other

This is a really easy game. Before starting, give each team member four slips of paper where each of them can secretly write down three truths and one lie about themselves. It’s very important that the lie is believable. Instruct them not to reveal to anyone what they wrote down!

Then allow 15 minutes for conversation between the team members. This is the time when everyone should go around the room and talk about their written talking points in random order. The goal here is to convince others that your lie is a truth while you try to guess other people’s lies by asking them different questions. Remember- you should not reveal your truths or lies to other team members, even if everyone else has already guessed everything!

Say My Name

Purpose: Breaking stereotypes

Everyone should write down names (e.g. someone famous) or types of people (e.g. professor, doctor, wealthy, athletic) on name tags. Then put those tags on each team member’s back or forehead so they cannot see who they are but everyone else can.

Give people a few minutes to talk to each other and ask questions. The point is to treat everyone according to stereotypes related to the name on their tag. After each team member figures out who they are, they should exit the game and leave the rest of the people to continue playing. This game allows your employees to have fun and engage in conversation while confronting stereotypes at the same time.

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | 9 Team Building Activities Your Entire Staff Can Enjoy
Office Trivia

Purpose: Bonding

This is one of the easiest team building games to put together! All you have to do is come up with a series of questions about your office and then test your team’s knowledge. You can ask a variety of questions such as: “What brand of computer does a certain employee use?” “How many people are in the finance department” or “How many windows are there in the office?” or “Who takes their coffee with cream and sugar?”

Besides bonding people through conversation, this fun and easy team building activity is great for testing how observant people are and how much they know about their office, company and colleagues.

Community Service

Purpose: Enhance teamwork and collaboration

Find an activity that reflects your company values, get out of the office for a day and do something good for your community. This team building activity is not only excellent for getting your employees together and bonding through something that’s incredible positive, it’s also great for the overall image of your company in terms of local marketing.

When businesses go out into their communities and help people in need, the members of the community take notice and reward those businesses with loyalty.

Mural Painting

Purpose: Enhancing creativity

For this fun and creative team building activity you will need paint, brushes and something to paint on. It can be a canvas or a wall of your building/office. The point is to give each member of the team complete freedom to paint whatever they want. Give them a general theme and then let everyone create their own colorful masterpieces.

If you are giving an individual canvas to each employee, put them together and display them in your office as a mural once they are dry. Some people might refuse to paint at first because they don’t think they are talented, so make sure you explain to everyone that this is not a contest. This game’s purpose is to show that everyone has a creative side once they overcome their fears of showing it.

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | 9 Team Building Activities Your Entire Staff Can Enjoy
Make Your Logo

Purpose: Problem solving

Start by asking everyone to empty their pockets, purses and wallets and gather all the coins you can find and then place the coins on a table in front of you. Each team member should create their own logo for the company or team using the coins in front of them in one minute.

You may also use pens, notebooks, paper and anything you else you have around the office to create the logo. The logo can represent the team members individually or you can work together to create a logo for the department or even the entire organization. It’s a fun and creative game that encourages resourcefulness.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

Purpose: Communication skills

For this team building activity, you will need a small piece of paper for each employee and a list of well-known “couples” such as peanut butter and jelly, Romeo and Juliet, salt and pepper, and so on. Each team member should wear the name of one half of each pair on their backs.

Have everyone mingle and try to figure out the word on their backs while only asking each other “Yes or No” questions. Once they figure out their word, they have to find the other half of their pair. As they find each other, have them sit down while the rest of the team continues until everyone has connected with their pair.

About the Author

Tamara Luzajic is a web content writer and editor, currently working as a copywriter at Humanity, employee scheduling and workforce management software.

Nine Lies About Work – Is it more engaging to be a full-time worker, a part-time worker, a virtual worker, or a gig worker?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Nine Lies About Work - Is it more engaging to be a full-time worker, a part-time worker, a virtual worker, or a gig worker?Is it more engaging to be a full-time worker, a part-time worker, a virtual worker, or a gig worker?

According to the study, the most engaging work status is to have one full-time job and one part-time job.

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Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall. Copyright 2019 One Thing Productions, Inc. and Ashley Goodall. All rights reserved.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Marcus BuckinghamMarcus Buckingham is a bestselling author and global researcher focusing on all aspects of people and performance at work.  During his years at the Gallup Organization, he worked with Dr. Donald O. Clifton to develop the StrengthsFinder program, and coauthored the seminal business books First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths.  He designed the StandOut strengths assessment completed by over one million people to date, and authored the accompanying book, Standout: Find Your Edge, Win at Work.  He currently heads all people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute.  Nine Lies About Work is his ninth book.

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Ashley GoodallAshley Goodall is the Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco Systems.  In this role, he built a new organization focused entirely on serving teams and team leaders – an organization combining learning and talent management, people planning, organizational design, executive talent and succession planning, coaching, assessment, team development, research and analytics, and performance technology.  Prior to joining Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte, where he was responsible for Leader Development and Performance Management

5 Easy Ways To Keep Your Employees Happy

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | 5 Easy Ways To Keep Your Employees HappyA happy workforce is a productive workforce, so it’s vital to ensure you look after your employees throughout the highs and lows of your business journey. When people are feeling the strain, they become demotivated, and this can lead to low productivity levels, which is not right for overall company goals. However, there are some simple ways to make sure everyone stays chipper through the best and worst time.

Take a look at some of the critical areas to consider below:

1. Recognise and praise success

It’s easy to forget the little things in the workplace due to the amount of work going on. However, just saying ‘thank you’ for a job well done, or recognising a team on completion of a successful project can work wonders for self-esteem. When people feel they are going unnoticed, they will eventually lack the motivation to put the effort in. This, in turn, will affect levels of productivity and willingness to put maximum effort in.

2. Offer good benefits

Not all companies can afford to give an all-encompassing benefits package, but making small steps can be a huge motivational boost. Anything from supplying coffee on-site, implementing a cycle to work scheme and using eyecare plans, so employees don’t have to pay if they need glasses for VDU use is a great way to show you care about their health and wellbeing.

3. Create an inspiring work environment

No one likes to sit and stare at four walls all day so it could be time to start thinking about your office design. Optimising natural light is a great way to boost morale and happiness in a workspace. Plus, dedicating areas, so individuals don’t feel tied to their desk can give employees some freedom to move around and feel creative in a collaborative space. On an interior aspect, why not add colourful prints or incorporate a creative décor theme to add some fresh and vibrant vibes to often whitewashed walls.

4. Trust individuals

One of the main frustrations from many employees is that they feel management don’t trust them to make the best choices. In many cases, management cannot do and control everything on a daily level, so delegation is a must. Assigning trust and responsibility to people gives them a sense of pride in their work. It also helps people to strive for better results.

5. Communicate well

Communication is another sticking point in organisations, and many people always feel out of the loop. Of course, you can’t disclose everything to employees. Still, there will be times where sharing details of projects and plans is beneficial, so everyone understands the bigger picture. This can also work in business slumps as if you don’t share concerns and strategies for improvement; employees can feel vulnerable and out of control of their personal circumstances.

These are simple ways to get your whole team on track and get the best out of everyone daily. They are also easy to implement, and you’ll reap the rewards in loyal and trusting staff that want to see the business succeed.