If you think that setting the deadline is the ultimate solution to your team’s productivity problems, you’re wrong.
A deadline may be a good way to temporarily increase your team’s efficiency, but you shouldn’t rely only on this method. And while there are many other effective ways to increase a team’s productivity, this all is essentially trial and error and it will take some time to figure out, which strategies work best for your team’s productivity.
Loss of productivity is a common problem for many companies. For instance, in America, 70% of employees claim they feel unproductive, and this is the majority of the U.S. workforce. And, while the deadline seems to be a good solution, there are other ways that can substantially improve your team’s productivity without a tight deadline on their shoulders.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at different ways to increase your team’s productivity without tight deadlines:
1. Incorporate Transparency and Feedback in the Corporate Culture
They say that honesty is the best policy. In terms of productivity, encouraging transparency and feedback is a very effective strategy. That means that if an employee cannot cope with a certain task by a certain time, they should be honest about it and you should encourage that type of behavior.
There are several methods you as a leader can use to incorporate transparency and feedback in your corporate culture. Veronica Wright, CEO of the Resumes Centre, shares the most effective ones:
- Ensure anonymity. It’s natural that employees might feel a lot nervous about the consequences of sharing feedback or confessing they cannot cope with the task. This may lead to some understatements, which may impact the productivity of the employees in a negative way. To avoid this, you as a leader should ensure anonymity and let the employees share their feedback in private.
- Ask them direct questions. If you want to incorporate transparency and boost their productivity, don’t beat around the bush and go straight to the subject. However, mind your tone when you ask questions. The tone of voice that’s too authoritative may negatively impact their answers.
- When giving them a task, ask about possible issues and challenges they might face. This way you’ll make sure that they know that you’ll be understanding and helpful.
The ultimate goal of all these strategies is to build trust. And the team, where trust prevails, is a productive team.
2. Encourage Communication with Performance Tracking Software
Effective communication is an important part of creating a productive team. But if you have a huge company, and there are several departments working on the same task, it gets hard for them to keep up and they may start to procrastinate.
A simple solution to that is introducing performance tracking software that has the following features to help improve your team’s productivity:
- A simple interface for task and project management. The tasks can be assigned to a certain person, making it visible, who’s responsible for each part of the project.
- You can see the progress of each employee who works on the task, helping you track their performance and identify any challenges.
- Group chat and video chat features to hold meetings to solve any issues as quick as possible.
- The ability to share files that are also get safely stored on cloud storage.
Performance tracking software helps keep everything in one place. That means that nothing gets lost on its way to certain team members, everyone has access to all the files and information. Employees don’t have to contact each and every team member, who’s also working on the task, separately. Thus, they are able to perform quicker and more productively.
Obviously, performance tracking software requires financial investments, but it will definitely pay off in terms of improved performance and increased productivity. “Since we introduced performance tracking software to our employees and held several seminars on how to use it, we’ve been able to observe a 50% increase in productivity and job satisfaction”, says Pat Fredshaw, the head of the content department at Essay Supply.
The reason why the team’s productivity was able to improve so much is in the fact that task management software doesn’t give the employees an opportunity to procrastinate. They have all the necessary tools and information at hand, which helps them do their job faster and more effortlessly. And no deadlines are necessary!
3. Give Your Employees Educational Opportunities
Think for a moment: does it happen sometimes that your employees cannot do the job because they don’t have the necessary skills? If it does, then it’s your obligation as a leader to encourage your employees to learn and to provide them with relevant educational opportunities.
To organize that, your company should have a separate department that works with sponsors to provide employees with the opportunities to learn. Jessica Fender, chief marketing officer at Onlinewritersrating, shares her team’s experience: “As a leader, you come across some kinds of issues every day. But if your employees lack some skills, that’s definitely your job to help them improve. Since I initiated regular courses, the employee performance has substantially increased, my colleagues feel more fulfilled and satisfied.”
Jessica also says that introducing the right tools to the employees is the key to better productivity. For instance, during a lecture on writing marketing emails, the employees were introduced to tools like FlashEssay, WriteLoad, and Grammarly that help proofread emails and write them in the correct style.
If your employees feel that they get enough opportunities to learn, they will be more likely to exercise their new improved skills at work. Thus, productivity levels will rise due to increased job satisfaction. Employees become more engaged, and, according to stats, their productivity levels get 27% higher due to improved engagement.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, you don’t need a tight deadline to improve your team’s productivity. Their performance largely depends on how well the communication in the company is and where there are trust and transparency in the company’s corporate culture. Hopefully, these tips will help you create a dream team of employees, who are always productive and engaged.
