When you’re running a business, the more you achieve, the better off your agency will be. One important component of achievement and success is employee productivity. Can you teach productivity? The answer is yes! In order to increase productivity and attract more clients, try these helpful tips to motivate your team.
1. Give a Context to Your Work
When you’re striving for productivity, it’s important to remember your goal. Set clear benchmarks for different time periods at your agency and make sure that your employees know what they are supposed to be working on and when. Establishing clear deadlines and goals that fit into the greater work of your organization will help your employees prioritize their tasks.
2. Set Up a Work Plan
What happens next? Some people are very good at seeing a goal and creating a road map to achieve it. Others need a bit of help. If your employees seem to be working hard but not getting anywhere, they may need training that helps them develop a work plan for a day, a week, or a month of work. Setting up a clear work plan can help your team remain focused on the task at hand.
3. Prioritize Your Work Day
What are your priorities? It’s easy to get bogged down by small details and fail to progress on the big projects. Every day when your employees come into work, they should have a maximum of three tasks that need to be accomplished in depth. Encourage them to keep a list of priorities and consider which one must be done today. Focus on that first priority and see it through. These priorities should follow the work plan that they’ve laid out, gradually accomplishing steps that lead to a greater goal. Prioritizing the night before helps people think about how they’ll approach their list when they return to the office.
4. Set Aside Time for Administrative Tasks
In these days of email overwhelm, administrative tasks can take up most of your day. After you’ve had some focused time working on your priorities, give yourself a designated amount of time to catch up on important emails or return phone calls. These administrative tasks are important, but try not to let them take over your entire day. Designate specific amounts of time for administrative task management, and then return your focus to your work plan.
5. Stay Focused
If you’re working in a busy, open-office environment or in a workplace that’s very social, it can be difficult to stay focused. Even your phone and computer can serve as distractions. There are so many possible things to do that it’s hard to get deeply involved in a task and see it through to completion. To focus, encourage employees to let others know that they can’t be disturbed for a time. Employees can wear items such as noise-cancelling headphones if the ambient noise becomes too much. Encourage them to turn off external distractions such as their phone and focus in a dedicated way for twenty to thirty minutes. Reducing external distractions helps employees become more productive.
6. Consider Productivity When Scheduling Meetings
Are you meeting just to say you’ve met, or are your meetings accomplishing something that an email could not do? When you’re planning meetings, remember that these take up a lot of many individuals’ valuable time. If you need a meeting, plan for tight facilitation so that it stays on time and on track. Plan meetings for the afternoons or other times when your employees will not be focused on individual work.
When you want to boost your productivity, connect with others in your field. An membership with Agents Alliance not only gives you access to professional consulting services, you also receive discounts on E&O insurance and other products. Contact Agents Alliance today to learn more about the benefits of membership.
