It's never easy to complete a set of tasks as a team without specific plans. Lack of time, pressure between colleagues, substandard work; the consequences of a lack of planning can be significant and can prevent you from getting the most out of your team!
However, do we really have time to predict everything that each employee has to do? Not always! We need to trust our team and create a productive environment. To support your efforts, Outgo offers you these 5 easy tips to improve your team's productivity.
Be nimble!
Agility is a popular concept when it comes to teamwork. The idea? Sprinter! The concept of working sprint is to determine a period of time with a number of goals to be achieved.
The goal is to accomplish the tasks that will bring real value to your customers. During a sprint, the team determines a list of tasks to complete in order of priority and how long your team takes to complete them.
After the sprint, a productive team meeting is organized to observe the tasks completed and those for which your team has run out of time. In this way, it is easy to observe and what it can be improved during your next sprint.
A sprint requires a team that is fast, coordinated and that values mutual help. The idea is not that every employee spreads over the tasks of others. However, when an employee completes his or her main task in a sprint, he or she gives a hand to his or her co-workers. A good way to advance your team while socializing with them!
Set and clarify your team goals
Careful! Here we are not talking about simply completing a list of tasks to be accomplished. Rather, it's telling your team where you would like to go as a company while paying attention to the weaknesses that need to be improved.
Talking about your goals with your employees helps to coordinate your efforts while ensuring that each employee prioritizes his or her task. In this way, everyone will know what they need to work on to ensure the success of the company and be productive.
Perform a short daily follow-up
To support your team in carrying out these tasks, it is essential to keep up to date on the tasks performed and the tasks to be performed. For this purpose, it is ideal to hold short meetings where each member of the team lists what he or she did the day before and what he or she intends to accomplish today.
In this way, everyone knows what everyone needs to achieve in the day. It also pushes your team to outperform themselves in these personal tasks while not wasting too much time in your day.
These short meetings are expected to last no more than 10 minutes and are primarily used to identify obstacles to accomplishing tasks and what everyone can do to resolve the situation.
Respect the meeting schedule
It may seem unnecessary to say this at first glance, but meetings with no specific purpose are a real waste of time for some employers. Every time a meeting between, bosses or colleagues is organized, it is imperative to have some intention and a meeting schedule.
In this way, everyone will respect the time of the other while ensuring the consistency of his remarks. After all, in business, time is our best ally!
Be productive at your meetings by respecting the agenda and taking notes on key points of your meeting. Both are essential to ensure that the meeting has achieved its goal while meeting the deadline.
Actions that will result from your meeting must also be recorded in order to follow up with your team member on the completion of their tasks.
Promoting personal productivity
Although this is the last point to address, it is certainly not the least! To improve team productivity, it seems essential to promote the productivity of each employee.
One of the best ways to engage your colleagues to produce to the best of their abilities is by applying the Pomodoro technique, created by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It's very simple! Start your day by timing 25 minutes of work and ask your team to work on a specific task. After these 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break, and we start again! After 4 periods of work, give yourself a longer break of 10 to 15 minutes (after all, you deserve it!).
Among other things, this technique can reduce the number of distractions while setting various small goals for your team. In addition, the short period of time causes a sense of urgency and helps your team members overcome themselves. Also, short periods of work allow employees to keep their maximum focus on the task they perform.
Another way toimprove personal productivity is to use a task organization system. These systems are convenient to centralize all the tasks and information available on your team.
While all of these techniques improve your team's productivity, it's important not to rush your team by implementing them overnight.
Go quietly and reward your employees' efforts when they exceed themselves. After all, while productivity is essential to the business, it should be remembered that each of your colleagues is human and that sometimes a good relationship between employees is much more essential to the proper functioning of the business than a technique that improves productivity.
And you? What are your tricks to get the best out of your employees? Share it with us in comments and remember that the best employee rewards can be found on Outgo!
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