Productivity is not easily achieved—and when you do achieve it, it becomes even harder to maintain. As a team leader, your guidance will be the driving force behind your team’s productivity. If you plan on increasing your team’s effectiveness, you’ll need to implement some key management solutions.
Related: Productivity tips for businesses
Let’s move on to the practical steps you can take to improve your team’s productivity.
Implement clear communication
Effective communication is one of the key prerequisites for a thriving workplace. It drives fast, clear and precise flow of information between individuals and groups. A lack of proper communication can greatly decrease productivity. According to research, employee productivity is expected to increase if you implement direct lines of communication, both in terms of software application and personal relationships.
How do you do this? First, your employees should have a clear set of communication guidelines. These will include communication hierarchy and conduct guidelines that cover tone of voice, language, brevity, etc.
Communication needs to be transparent and to the point. To be succinct, provide your employees instructions for how information is handled, who are the correct recipients, and what are the key elements that every communique should contain.
Failing to establish these guidelines will lead to decreased performance due to noise and redundancy.
Finally, always keep your team connected. Inspire social media bonding and connect the team within a unified business platform or program. Encourage them to share their opinions and support every employee by showcasing their strengths and qualities within the network.
Develop trust
True productivity within a team is rarely achieved without mutual trust. And trust is earned, rather than demanded or expected. Your team needs to trust your judgement and decision-making as much as you need to trust your team.
Additionally, support trust and camaraderie within the team itself. Two heads are better than one—but if one doesn’t trust the other, then they won’t work together for the common goal.
How do you do this? First, earn the trust of your team by showing true leadership in the form of smart quick decision-making, honesty and attentiveness towards others. Learn as much as you can about your employees and help them reach their goals. In turn, they will respect you and feel they can rely on you.
Once you’ve earned their trust, you can start building a bond between them. By giving them a push here and there, helping out from behind the curtain and orchestrating their workflow, you can encourage the team to grow closer and develop a trusting relationship. This will lead to better collaboration and productivity.
Manage funding
Constant cash flow is important not only for productivity and security but also for the long-term development of the company. While it’s good to have employees who are passionate about their work, passion and love will not pay the rent.
You can nurture your team’s productivity by assuring that they will be rewarded for their work. This is how you create a thriving collective. The way to secure funding is, of course, to get clients. This is the main determining factor of your company’s success.
When working on acquiring new business opportunities, you’ll need secure funding to keep your business afloat and your team working productively. You can’t be burdened with slow-paying customers, so you will definitely need a flow of cash to get the project going. One of the best solutions is invoice factoring, which can secure your cash flow and provide immediate funding.
As we all know, money makes the world go ’round. That’s why, by securing funds ahead of time, you can raise employee productivity and set high goals right from the start.
Impose deadlines
Deadlines are a key tool of productivity. While everyone would like to have as much time as they comfortably need to finish a task, it can actually be detrimental to their performance. People tend to thrive under pressure, but too much pressure can make them crack, so it needs to be carefully balanced.
What is carefully balanced pressure? It’s the fine line that you as a leader must draw between peak productivity and diminished performance. For your team to work at peak performance, they need to have the right kind of stimuli. And deadlines are one of them.
Deadlines should be imposed seamlessly and calmly. Always present a deadline as achievable, and give your team an inspiring pep talk to set the tone.
Next, deadlines need to be prioritized. You can’t simply impose twenty deadlines and expect people to remain calm and avoid panicking. No, deadlines are like tasks—they need to follow a hierarchy. It is the leader’s job to carefully plan out every deadline and put it in hierarchical order. This will give your employees a clear sense of direction and an action plan, and they will feel empowered to tackle the tasks with clear and precise guidance.
People say that there is no “I” in team, but every team is comprised of unique individuals, with unique sets of strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is susceptible to distraction and procrastination, and maintaining top team performance is quite a challenge. Luckily, with these powerful solutions, you can create a productive working environment.
