Managing an organization is no easy feat. It requires strength of character, transparency, integrity, and an endless list of similar traits. Central to these values and characteristics is the ability to lead your team. Good, value-based leadership is vital to building trust in your business, inviting your employees, clients, and collaborators to support your aims.
A powerful and sturdy leader can attract opportunities and talent to an organization, constantly adding value and developing your business. Further, a good leader oversees the processes of an enterprise, establishing and ensuring systems and policies that promote efficiency and productivity.
But how does one demonstrate good leadership? And what kinds of systems can you introduce in your work environment to prove your value as a leader?
The Importance of a Good Productivity Management System
Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of work. It’s about how much output you can reap from the input and the rate at which you complete tasks. There are many inputs or factors that can affect your rate of output or productivity. While some are direct, like materials, labor, equipment, and capital, others are not.
Consider the labor input i.e. your workers. There is a myriad of circumstances that can impact your workers’ productivity, including their wellbeing, mental health, stress, skill levels, and more.
Your business’ systems form an integral part of your workers’ productivity. With an efficient work environment and competent systems, things like stress can be alleviated, allowing your employees to focus better and work at their best.
Thus, setting up good systems that support productivity is an important part of leading. Let’s take a look at a few ways you can change or improve systems in your organization to increase productivity.
Nine Innovative Ways Leaders Can Change Systems to Boost Productivity
1. Share your vision
It’s important for your company to have a sense of direction and purpose; common values and goals that guide the actions and behavior of your employees. Setting up systems that offer these things is vital to creating a cohesive community of employees that can offer premium products and services.
As a leader, your role is to create a clear vision for your staff. Establish values and principles that define your company ethos, corporate culture, and code of conduct. Use these values to help you select and set goals that everybody can work towards.
You can also use demand forecasting for business planning and goal setting. Reflect on and revise these goals when necessary, making adjustments based on feedback from those that report to you directly.
By sharing your vision with staff and consistently monitoring the progress of your goals, you ensure rejuvenated efforts towards attaining your business’s achievements.
2. Establish a time-management system
Time is an integral part of productivity and a resource every leader ought to keep an eye on. Introduce a time-management system that helps your employees segment their time and complete tasks more efficiently.
One option is ‘time blocking’, a time-management technique where you allocate time-limited blocks for specific tasks. For example, blocking off thirty minutes for a call on your internet-based phone system.
This technique ensures workers complete tasks, as it functions as a kind of to-do list, making sure no work remains undone. It also gives a breakdown of the working day, promoting flexibility for emergency situations. And, by allocating work to time slots, workers avoid procrastination and delays, doing their best to complete tasks within the set time.
Using a system like this can also be beneficial to your productivity as a leader as it makes you more aware of how you’re using it. You can communicate your availability to staff and allocate time to issues that impede productivity.
3. Introduce efficient software
Continuing this idea of time blocking, technology makes it possible to measure and track productivity. For example, you can integrate a work-logging system into your worker’s dashboards, timing their work and allowing them to post updates on their progress.
This is just one example of the help that software can offer your business. Simplifying and automating work processes using technology reduces your employee’s workload and cuts down on the time spent on tasks, leading to greater productivity.
Bringing in tools like 4 line phone systems for small business makes life easier for your workers and develops a productive work environment. Even in the pre-hire stage, you can use applicant tracking software to streamline and manage processes.
4. Upskill your workers
Part of using technological systems for productivity is training and educating your workers on how to use this tech. You can do this through workshops, webinars, practical demonstrations, and article sharing, so they know what the best alternatives to Dialpad are and how they affect their work functions, for example.
The better your workers understand the technology, the more they can use it efficiently and without trouble.
In addition to upskilling your workers in this way, it’s a good idea to have professional development opportunities open to them. Some institutions provide support for workers who would like to continue their studies in a way that supports the work they do. Others offer educational courses as an employment benefit.
Whatever your approach, you need to view your employees as resources. Thus, contributing to their development benefits your bottom line.
5. Empower employees
In addition to personal and professional development opportunities, you must empower your employees in their work. Having the technology to support them is one way to do this and, of course, the efficiency of the business’ systems benefits their productivity. Providing incentives can keep your employees motivated and empower them too.
You can foster an atmosphere of empowerment by allowing your employees to be independent. Yes, leadership is important. However, autonomy is equally needed. Give your employees the space to do their work, illustrating your confidence in their abilities.
This boosts employee morale and nurtures a company culture of independent thinking and problem-solving.
6. Engage your team
This point might seem to oppose the previous one, but you have to strike a balance between remaining engaged and giving your employees space to work. Engagement is not about probing and hovering; rather, it is about interacting and facilitating.
Set up feedback mechanisms that allow you to communicate with your workers and figure out what they need from you to work better. Miscommunication happens, and the more a business grows, the more people you have to communicate with. Miscommunication and misunderstandings can quickly become productivity bottlenecks.
Consider feedback channels like video conferencing solutions, regular one-on-one meetings, or employee management platforms. Perhaps look into human resources software that supports HR personnel to assist workers.
Having direct ways to communicate issues means they can be addressed quicker and you can focus resources on fixing issues.
7. Maintain the work environment
One of the things you should encourage feedback on is the standard of the work environment. Employees work better in safe, well-maintained spaces. This is a practical solution to productivity issues i.e. if the necessary equipment isn’t working, productivity will slow down.
Establish regular safety checks and schedule consistent maintenance. Also, educate your staff on how they can report safety issues and observations using your feedback channels. Address environmental issues to help your employees focus on their work.
8. Create accessibility
If you want to increase productivity across your organization, all of your workers should have access to the tools you’ve introduced to boost efficiency. Access to the same information and awareness of the aims of any changes implemented links back to our first point.
If your employees are aware of what you’re working toward, they can consciously support your aim to improve productivity. Accessibility also eases obstacles to this, like having to ask others for permission and wait for communication.
With access, employees can simply knuckle down and get their work done.
9. Institutionalize productivity systems
Last but not least, institutionalize your productivity systems. Time-blocking is one example you can consider, but there are so many researched techniques that successful leaders use to guide their businesses.
Here are a few for you to look up:
- Getting things done
- Time blocking
- Bullet journaling
- Calendar system
- The daily trifecta
- Eat that frog
- The Eisenhower matrix
Utilize these tools, but do not depend on them as your sole productivity solution. They should work hand-in-hand with the systems above as enablers.
Final Thoughts
All leaders seek to optimize productivity in their organizations. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, what is evident is that improved productivity is about support.
Although you can educate your workers about different approaches to products, like those in the last point, this knowledge is ineffective if the workplace and systems are detrimental to your employees’ ability to complete their work.
Thus, productivity is about establishing different systems in your workplace that intersect with one another to improve productivity and facilitate the change journey. Combine all nine of the methods above to create a holistic solution of support to boost your productivity.