6 Top Tips for Increasing Productivity in Your Business

What do we really mean when we talk about productivity in business?

A business that is producing lots of work may seem super productive, but what if the team or business owner is pulling extra hours or feeling like they are run ragged trying to keep on top of everything?

Productivity is not about doing more, it’s about completing tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible, making the best use of the time available to you. It’s about how much work is accomplished within a given timeframe, not how many hours you put in before you see the results.

When we’re not being productive, valuable time is lost to activities that aren’t enhancing the business or driving it forwards towards its goals. Ever been in an hour-long meeting where you came away feeling like a quick phone call would have done the trick? And what about those client emails where you end up repeating the same thing over and over again to different people? These things can sap our time and reduce our focus, which ultimately means we don’t get as much done.

Thankfully, there are lots of ways in which you can enhance your productivity with a few simple shifts in how you work!

“Productivity is not about doing more,

it’s about completing tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible”

Here are our top 6 tips for increasing productivity in your business.

 1) Optimise your workflows

It’s easy to have our head so firmly ‘in’ our business that we don’t notice if the way we’re doing things still makes sense. We are creatures of habit, and sticking to “the way we’ve always done it” means we have familiarity and comfort – our methods are so well-rehearsed that we don’t need to give them much thought. It’s easier than trying to change it!

Or is it? Allocating some time to look at your day-to-day business processes, whether it be for how you work with your clients or if you have a team, identifying areas that could be quicker, easier or simply better allows you to make adjustments that can add up to a huge time saving when considered in the context of a week, a month, or a year of your business. (Not to mention the added bonus of an improved client experience!)

We’ll let you into a little secret here… optimising your business processes doesn’t have to be hard! Start by noting down the steps you take in a given scenario, such as signing up a new client. Then consider the following:

o   How long does it take? Could it be quicker? If there is something slowing it down, what is it and how can it be improved?

o   What’s your experience of the process and what’s your client’s experience? Is it easy or frustrating?

o   Which bits are good and what doesn’t work so well? Why?

o   Is there a better way to do this?

o   Can this be supported better by technology?

This can also be applied to how you’re working with your team, is everything stored in your head? Are you giving instructions every time you work with a new client?

Get your critical thinking hat on and identify some key changes you can make to smooth these workflows out. You’ll feel so refreshed and relieved when you do!

2) Make use of online collaboration tools

Whether it be with your clients or with your team, having an online workspace that makes it easy to collaborate on projects or daily tasks will help save time and increase productivity in your company.

Making sure everyone in your team is clear on who is responsible for what and how work passes from one colleague (or team) to another means you’ll spend less time explaining and managing those tasks. Of course, clearly managed expectations and well-defined procedures help here, but thankfully there are also some great online tools to help with managing workflow.

Using web-based collaboration apps not only means that your business can easily work online but it’s accessible for you, your team and clients. You can check out some of our favourite top tech tools here and we’ll be talking about the best ways to collaborate online in our next blog.

“Having an online workspace that makes it easy to collaborate on projects

or daily tasks will help save time and increase productivity in your company”

3) Automation & Integration

Automation is going to become your new best friend! But what does it actually mean? Automation is the technique of making a process or system operate automatically. Whether it’s getting your email newsletters set up and scheduled to go out, or creating actions so that your invoices automatically get sent to new clients as soon as they confirm their contract – this is going to save you a huge amount of time!

BUT it gets even better than that! It’s one thing having automations set up within the individual systems, but many cloud-based software systems now offer the ability to integrate with each other, meaning you can get your systems talking to each other, so everything works seamlessly together. Zapier offers an amazing way to integrate your systems and actions so that your business can be as streamlined as possible. This will make sure your systems are working productively for you!

4) Plan your projects

We often underestimate how many projects we take on in our business and how big they actually end up being. Investing some time up-front to plan your projects properly will save you time in the long run! And the good news is there are some really handy web-based tools to help with this such as Trello, Click-Up, Asana, Monday.com and more.

Once you’ve got your project plan, share it with your key stakeholders, suppliers and/or team and then work through your actions, make sure others do the same and stick to your deadlines.

5) Get friendly with time management

Wait! Don’t close the page – hear us out! We’ve already established that increasing productivity means working more efficiently, but what does that actually look like in your day-to-day tasks? We wouldn’t be who we are if we didn’t talk about planning. Pick a day that works best for you to plan your week ahead, set your goals for the week and write out your to-do list; better still use an online app like Trello to do this! Then figure out your priorities and be REALISTIC - if you have 30 things on your to-do list and 10 of them have been there for the last 3 weeks, realistically you’re not going to do all 30 tasks. Look up Eisenhower Matrix for the best way to prioritise.

If you need to then block time in your diary to focus on specific areas, such as team time, networking, marketing, client work or training and development, etc. Give yourself permission to dedicate certain times or days to specific activities. You may want one day where you do all your client calls, or maybe you want one day to focus ‘on’ the business? Either way this will make your working day more productive!

6) Focus on what you do best, Outsource the rest!

Now we know it can seem daunting to hand over work to someone else when you think “I could just do this myself”, but trust us, when you find the right person who connects with you and your business it’s like finding a lucky leprechaun! Whether it be a VA, Social Media Manager, Bookkeeper and so on, outsourcing is going to be life changing in your business. This person will take care of those tasks you don’t need to be focusing on! Allow time to do any handover or training, but once it’s set up, it will be fab!

Benefits to increasing productivity in your business

Introducing these tips will not only improve productivity but hopefully reduce your stress levels. It can increase staff morale and help your business be more organised. This could then allow you to either take on more work OR get back some well-deserved time in your day so that you can go on to enjoy the things you love!

Should you want to discuss further how to improve productivity in your business or team then why not book a discovery call and find out more.