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Getting Things Done: The Golden Rules Of Productivity

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It should be fairly straightforward, right? You come into work in the morning, do whatever is needed to be done to complete the tasks before you, and then go home at the end of the day. Job complete! Except it isn’t that easy. We aren’t all as productive us as we should be, and work is often less unfinished come close of business. It can be frustrating, especially if we are then forced to work overtime as a result.

Here then, are what we have termed the Golden Rules of Productivity. By adhering to each principle, you should, as our title suggested, stand a better chance of getting things done.

Rule #1: Prioritise your day

There will be some tasks that need to be completed during the day, and others that can wait until a later date. Therefore, focus on the most important tasks first, and only when they are done, focus on the other things. This way, you won’t run the risk of having to stay behind at work to complete those tasks that come with a deadline. Continuing with this principle, consider doing those jobs that you hate first too. While they will be a drag, you will be less inclined to procrastinate if you make an effort to get them out of the way first. You will then have more time to concentrate on the other tasks that are on your to-do lists.

Rule #2: Simplicity is king

Don’t get bogged down with tricky or time-consuming tasks throughout the day. If you can find a way to simplify your business tasks, then do so. There are some ideas in the linked article, for example, with descriptions of software tools that are designed to deal with some of those tasks that you might need to focus on during the day. And there are hundreds of other apps and programs available that are designed to streamline your day and boost your productivity. Do your research and download anything that could help you manage your workload.

Rule #3: Focus on your strengths

It is highly unlikely that you are competent at every task that befalls you each day. And even if you are, there will be some tasks that could be handled by others. Therefore, concentrate your time on those tasks that a) you have the skills to complete, and b) that directly fall under your remit. Then outsource or delegate any other aspect of your business that would only slow down your productivity otherwise. Thinking about your IT, as an example, you could hire an IT consultant if you aren’t proficient or don’t have time to concentrate on this one area. A company such as Ntiva gives you more time to focus on core business functions, as they have the expertise that you might otherwise lack. Think about the tasks that take up your time unnecessarily, and find the people to help you.

Rule #4: Take a break

By working extensively without any breaks, you will tire yourself out, both physically and mentally. As a result, your productivity will suffer, as your lethargy will cause you to work and think slower than normal. During the day then, plan to have a break at regular intervals so you are always in peak condition to work. And the same applies at home. If you are always taking work home with you, you will limit the amount of time you get to rest. Your sleep might then suffer, and when you return to work the next day, you might get less done because you are in a tired and exhausted state. Focus on your work-life balance, and enjoy your downtime so you can be fully refreshed when you’re back at work.

Rule #5: Just say “no”

When a colleague wanders over to have a chat with you, say no if you know you have work to do. When a client offers you more work, say no if you know you won’t have time to complete it on time, or to a quality level. When you are tempted to check Facebook or any other time-wasting activity, tell yourself no, as these innocent activities will only eat into your time otherwise. There are times when you might say yes to improve your productivity. If somebody offers you a helping hand, then do answer in the positive if you can rely on them. But in all of those instances that could stop you from getting things done, just say no!

Final word

Adhere to the rules in this article, and you will stand a better chance at getting things done in the day. You might then have the opportunity to go home and relax, instead of taking your work home with you, or worrying about anything that has been left unfinished.

Let us know what you think, and if there are any other rules that should be added to this list, please share your ideas with us.

How To Be More Productive When Working Online

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Productivity |How To Be More Productive When Working OnlineBeing more productive as a business online largely depends on having the right tools and the right knowledge to use them effectively. IT now lies at the core of any successful business. Employees need to know how to use a computer effectively if you are going to reap the gains of productivity and efficiency. Nonetheless, this typically revolves around a lot more than knowing how to type on Microsoft Word. With the array of software solutions available today every business has differing requirements from their employees.

Nevertheless, the issue comes because not all businesses have the capability to provide training days for their staff. They may not have all of the equipment necessary for example. Thankfully, this issue is one that can easily be solved. An IT mobile classroom provides a great option for small to medium size businesses. Companies will come to your site and they will set up a training room in your conference or meeting room. They will provide you with the perfect platform for carrying out any courses or workshops you wish to hold.

The most obvious benefit of going down this route is convenience and time efficiency. After all, if you were not to use the services of an IT mobile classroom then you would have to move all of the desktops from your business into one room. This is extremely inconvenient and may not even be feasible in a lot of cases because of servers and different connections. A mobile IT classroom takes all of this hassle out of your hands. The company in question will bring all of their own equipment and they will set it up themselves in a mere matter of minutes.

Nonetheless, convenience is not the only key factor associated with this service. You should also consider the cost efficiency of this solution too. There are several ways small businesses can make savings by going down this route. For those who don’t have the resources, the only alternative to a mobile IT classroom is to send your staff away on a public course. This will need to be paid for per person and so is assured to be more expensive. Not only will the course itself be, but you will need to subsidise for travel expenses and possibly overnight accommodation too. And then there is the fact that you do not require permanent facilities and therefore there is no need to spend on equipment.

Another issue associated with taking a public course is the fact that you have no control over what your staff are being taught. After all, your need for the popular Office 365 solutions may be different from another company’s, which is why in-house consulting and training is a must. If you have in-house training you can ensure that your employees are only focusing on tasks that are going to be used whilst in the workplace. This ensures no time is wasted. Optimum efficiency will be gained and you don’t run the risk of the workshop being ineffective. Not only this, but you can be assured that all of your staff will be in attendance. When inconvenience is caused by having to go to a new location etc, quite frankly you will note that a few people fail to attend. You don’t have to worry about this if the training is carried out in-house.

If you don’t currently have the facilities to carry out training courses and workshops on premises then assess all of your options before sending your staff on a training course. Opting for an IT mobile classroom is something that is likely to provide you with much more benefits and therefore is definitely a more viable and advantageous solution.

Eliminating Procrastination from Your Company

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Productivity| Eliminating Procrastination from Your CompanyIf you have an employee that procrastinates, hopefully, you will have spotted the signs. They always have something else they must do first, or they will do what you are asking tomorrow. They may say they just do not have the time, or that they will do it in half an hours.

You want your employees to be as productive as possible, but there have always been procrastinators in most workforces. They can unsettle the other members of staff and generally make your workforce unhappy. If you have someone like this in your workplace, how can you deal with the problem to eliminate it?

Have A Chat With Them

The first thing to do is to try and find out why they are behaving this way. Have an informal but direct chat with them and ask the question. It could be that they have a personal problem, or that they do not know how to do what you are asking but are afraid to admit it. The answer could be any one of a hundred things, and most times it can be problems that are easily solved, especially if the issue is work-related.

How To Deal With A Procrastinator

Being forceful is often the wrong way to deal with this type of situation. Forcing the person to meet deadlines won’t work either, and usually, logic does not enter the equation.

It seems that it is much more effective if you use a bit of cunning with your employees. Chat to them about deadlines as though they do not matter too much, and get involved with the job they are doing. Your personal involvement can make a big difference, as generally. they are concerned about letting you down.

According to research, this is the best way to deal with procrastinators, as it becomes a habit for them and having their boss around much of the times breaks them out of their normal routine.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Productivity| Eliminating Procrastination from Your CompanyRemove Distractions

This should apply to all your employees, but even more so to those that procrastinate. If you have large windows overlooking a busy street, have blinds installed to block out the daily lives of those walking by. If you want to know how to block websites on a Mac – Setapp has the answer. This would stop them playing games or looking at social media on your systems, and should reduce the amount of time spent on these things during working hours.

Anything that distracts employees from their work should be removed, and then they will become more productive.

Hold Them Responsible

If you hold each person is held responsible for the job they should be doing, and a deadline is missed because one person procrastinates, the other staff members will not be too pleased and will try to make sure that it does not happen again. Sometimes, pressure from their workmates will do more good than anything a boss or manager can say.

If you have done everything you can to prevent the procrastinating and it carries on, there may come a time when you have to say enough is enough and in fairness to your other employees, replace that member of staff.

A Happy Workforce is a Productive Workforce

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Workforce Productivity | A Happy Workforce is a Productive WorkforceThis is quite an obvious thing to say, but it’s surprising how easy it is to forget when your mind is on other aspects of running your business. The happiness of your employees should be one of your priorities because, without them, your business is likely to fail. When was the last time you asked them how happy they are?

Unfortunately, taking your employees happiness for granted is easy to do, but it’s not the most sensible course of action. If your team feel valued and are contributing to something great, they’re more likely to put the effort in.

If you find your staff members are less than happy, take note of the following tips to help you turn it around.

Praise Good Work

If one of your team does something good, make sure they receive praise. It’s human nature to enjoy receiving recognition for a job done well, and all it takes is a simple “thanks for your hard work.”

Reward Hard Work

This tip is going to take a little monetary investment, but your business will be amply rewarded. If there’s a member of your team who has been regularly going above and beyond what is required of them, then it deserves to be rewarded. You don’t have to break the bank to do so, but time off in lieu, a bottle of wine, treating the team to cakes on Monday or a Friday lunchtime meal out will make your team feel valued. If they feel their hard work is being valued, they’re more likely to want to repeat the effort.

Train Them In Sattelite Skills

Sattelite skills are skills that are part of your usual skills package but may not be practiced in the day-to-day. They are lateral capabilities that provide someone with the capacity to widen their professional abilities and help them work together with other professionals more readily. For instance, helping your programmers train in UX/UI development can help them more readily program with interfaces in mind. This can work up to the very top of a field, such as doctors, nurses and other medical or clinical professionals gaining experience in aesthetics training. This shows your willingness to invest in the career of your staff, while providing them a plethora of directions to improve in.

Show that You Care

When employees feel they are cared about, productivity increases. How do you show that you care about them? You need to ask how they are and ask how they feel about working for you. Take the time to find out more about them, whether it’s professionally or personally. You could consider introducing an employee survey platform to help gather the answers you need; you can visit Inpulse.com to find out more. Often, a simple “how are you” is enough to make an employee feel valued.

Take Time Out from the Daily Routine

It’s possible to make the workplace a happier one by planning fun things to do away from the office. Take your employees out for the day and have some fun. If your employees feel you’re doing something nice for them, they’re guaranteed to be happier.

Encourage Community Minded Attitudes

Build a sense of workplace community by encouraging people to greet each. Lead by example, and others are sure to follow. What’s more, make sure all company executives and managers do the same.

Foster Personal Career Goals

It might seem like something selfish you’re encouraging, but when each employee has their own personal career goals, it’s going to keep their minds focused. Rather than getting involved in or stressed about office politics and workplace stress, they’ll have something better to think about.

It’s possible to have a happy workplace as long as you take the time to make it so. If your employee survey highlights the fact that there are people in your organization who aren’t happy, try the tips above, and you’ll be making a difference.

Quality Quantified: Learning To Measure Your Employees

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Employee Metrics | Quality Quantified: Learning To Measure Your EmployeesNo two people will perform in exactly the same way when it comes to the work which they do. Some will be able to work for days on end, getting average results while they throw themselves into their work. Others, though, will find it easy to get excellent results, but won’t have the stamina to work for more than a few hours. As an employer, it is extremely important that you are aware of these strengths and weaknesses if you want to be able to leverage them correctly. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the best ways to measure your employees, assessing how well they are working for your business.

Peer-Reviews

While you will get a good insight into your business when you’re able to spend time with it, the people working for you will often have the best idea of how their team mates are getting on. When someone isn’t pulling their weight, for example, most offices will be well aware of it, and people won’t be very happy. Peer-reviews are a great way to overcome this. Once every six months or so, you should have your employees anonymously rate one another on different aspects of their work. In the end, you should be left with a range of interesting statistics.

Of course, when you’re relying on other people to give you information, you have to be wary of pettiness within your ranks. Some team members may simply dislike one another, resulting in negative feedback which doesn’t truly reflect their work. To overcome this, you should be looking for examples of bad feedback which seem to be unanimous, ensuring that you’re not going to pick on someone because other people have decided to be mean to them. This is only the start of your measuring, though.

Personal Development Plans

It can be very easy for people to slip into a pattern with their work when they aren’t pushed to do more with it. This leaves a lot of employees to let their skills become stagnant, and they will never be able to make their role more complicated. Personal development plans have been used by businesses for decades to track their employee’s performance throughout the year. Staying on top of something like this is absolutely crucial, and forgetting to give people their assessments will limit the success you are able to find from it.

This works by talking to your employee and outlining the areas in their work which need to be improved. You can agree on a target for them to reach, along with talking about the way that they will reach it. This works extremely well, as it gives your team the chance to understand how well they are doing, rather than simply working at a job which doesn’t give them any feedback. If you hold meetings with each team member every couple of months, you will quickly see their work start to get better, especially when your employees are young.

Customer Feedback

There are few people in the world who have an insight into your employee’s effectiveness than the customers they work with. Getting feedback from people like this isn’t always easy, but it will open the doors to some truly honest information, and this can be hard to get when you’re only working internally. You should only ever ask for feedback when a customer has had something done for them, like making a purchase or getting some product support, as this will ensure that they have their experience fresh on their mind.

Of course, though, you need to make this as easy as possible, or you could find yourself struggling to get people to fill in your forms. There are loads of companies out there with the tools to help you to collect feedback from your customers. By using a service like this, you will put your surveys into the hands of experienced professionals, ensuring that your customers always have the best experience. As time goes on, you will learn what you need to do to be able to handle jobs like this for yourself.

Digital Metrics

Nothing tells a better story about the success of your team than numbers. When people are working for you, it’s crucial that they have targets in place, and that you have a way to make sure that they are reaching their targets. In the case of a call center, each person on the phones will need to talk to a minimum amount of customers each day. Collecting this information is easy, and you can have your employees do it themselves by simply adding to a spreadsheet whenever they complete a piece of work.

Their Past Experience

When people are trying to get a job from you, they will always give you an idea of what they’ve done in the past. It’s fair to build your expectations for their work out of this, with those who have had very complicated jobs being able to overcome issues which other people won’t be able to face. It’s fair to judge people based on their past experiences, but you have to be careful not to take this too far. Employers will often make the mistake of pushing their best and brightest as hard as they can, leaving those who need motivation the most to struggle, and causing an imbalance of work in the office.

It can be hard to make sure that you’re getting what you pay for when you hire people. A lot of companies spend huge amounts of this area, giving each of their team members enough money to live on, while also paying for loads of other little features which come with them. As time goes on, this will get easier and easier, and you will get better at pushing people in the right direction. Of course, though, this work is very important, and this means that you will need to avoid letting it become too routine, as this will make it easy for employees to get around it.