Your company’s productivity does more than impact how fast work gets done. It’s also a strong indicator of how motivated your employees are and how well-equipped they are to handle obstacles in their jobs. There’s never going to be a job that doesn’t have some tasks a person rather not do, but the right management style and operations process will help workers see the value in everything they do. This provides the motivation they need to push forward, work through challenges and see the potential for growth in struggles. The longer issues go unnoticed or unaddressed, the faster employees’ motivation wanes. By confronting these issues in a systematic way, you can reinvigorate your team and get them excited about their projects again.
Recognize Where Changes Are Most Important
Sometimes, trying to fix everything wrong with a company’s workflow only results in more delays, errors and frustration from everyone. Rather than thinking that the problem needs to be addressed top-down, consider a bottom-up approach instead. For example, if you notice that there is an issue with response times to morning emails, consider whether they are being delivered appropriately. In this example, you might ask are the emails being sent at least an hour before employees need to clock in so they’re at the top of their inbox when they start their day? Or are they being sent after the workday has started and being cast aside while workers tend to other tasks? Delivery is crucial as well. Many issues with communication impacting workflow can be addressed by changing the platform, rather than relying on email all the time, consider switching to a mobile group chat or Slack group.
Consider Automation
There are many essential processes that, despite their importance, are too time consuming. Consider web optimization. If you have an employee conduct a web optimization analysis by hand, you’ll be waiting days before they are able to organize, interpret and compile their findings into a cohesive report. Instead, it’s better to focus on tools that make workers’ jobs faster, easier and more accurate. A free optimization audit can provide immediate detailed results about how your site is performing. To improve, you can start implementing greater intent keywords into your strategy. Intent optimization is designed to match users’ specific needs and requests when they search online; companies that take intent into account consistently earn more and rank higher on Google.
Break Tasks into Actionable Goals
Smaller objectives provide greater motivation and a sense of achievement, as workers move through their day it’s far more gratifying to check off smaller tasks than to feel as if they’ve spent the last six hours working only to move a fraction closer to their end goal. Agenda tools like Asana can help workers stay on top of tasks and collaborate more effectively and it can also make it easier to identify problems early on and address them before they’ve inadvertently affected others’ work. When a company is struggling to meet deadlines, this can be caused by a variety of factors that are all easier to confront and resolve when there are milestones in place. These milestones can serve as check-in points that you use to address concerns, work around any setbacks and praise all of the progress that’s been made so far.