How we increase productivity of our teams
The quality of your team, their skills and their commitment with the project defines their productivity, and therefore, it defines too the success of your business.
Our ability to manage our team, to motivate them, and see their best potential will impact on their perform, so the more you know about it, the better.
In our case, with our own teams, there are a few techniques that we try to keep going and evolving and that help us increase the productivity. Today we want to share with you some of those ideas.
Increase productivity of our teams
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Set effective standards of communication in the professional environment
Whenever the sources and ways of communication are not standardized within the company or a team, it becomes obvious in their productivity. So to avoid our employees or team members to be in a loss when they have to communicate situations and how and to who, it is crucial to set standards and rules well defined that will work for everybody.
The best time to set this rules and standards on communication is during the first team meeting. Actually it is also a good idea to come up with a dossier that clarifies these rules, that way it is always available for every member of team and we make sure that the same criteria has been shared with each and every employee.
Of course, these ideas of communication need to work for everybody, and we should be open to listen new proposals based on their own experience while working along those rules.
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Understand first the way your team functions
Pay attention to the way your team works and the organic ways they choose to communicate information beyond the standardized rules. Maybe there are better options or tools to bring up and accelerate or better the efficiency of that communication and the productivity of the team.
So we highly suggest you to be open to new proposals. Your employees can always send an email or knock on your door to talk about it. But to avoid missing good ideas due to their doubts on how to bring those new proposals up, create an “official” way to canal those proposals, so they know how to do it and you can learn more about what their needs are to get better results at work.
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Limit distractions
The most common reason why workers usually get distracted is interruptions. Interruptions break our work-flow, our concentration and our timing. They also can be both direct and indirect, meaning it can be someone making extra noise at the office, personal conversations or unnecessary communications at the wrong time and the wrong channel.
Actually the average worker is interrupted every 3 minutes and 5 seconds.
To avoid this, there must be some rules and solutions that must come from us. In our offices, we respect the “do not disturb” signs. Whether is actually written on a post it, or just wearing headphones, it clearly means: “please do not interrupt me”.
Having a company chat helps the communication flow, but it can also mean a never-ending source of interruption. So, whenever it is possible, ask your employees to use the “Not available” status.
And lastly, when it comes to avoid interruptions, especially if your office is an open space, designate a quiet area, where everyone can go to be in a quiet space where they won’t be bothered. This also eliminates stressful situations amongst the team members when someone needs to concentrate and they can’t.
At the end of the day, we highly recommend you to basically educate your team to communicate in a formal way that is understandable and feasible for everybody and that works with the type of work they have to do.
