7 Productivity Tips for Teams to Apply to Achieve their Goals

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, your team is probably struggling with productivity issues.

Email bloat, unproductive meetings and not knowing what your team members are doing can prevent employees from crossing over the items on their to-do list.

Your team is completing less work and spending more time on unproductive tasks.

Regardless of how productive your team is, there are always ways that can take workplace productivity to a different level. This ensures that your team meets its goals without overshooting the budget.

Now, without much ado, let's discuss some tips for improving a team's productivity.

7 productivity tips to boost team productivity

Here are some tips for increasing the workplace productivity of your team:

1. Use a performance review software

It goes without saying that employee performance plays a vital role in the company's success and its productivity. Companies worldwide are using performance review management over an employee performance appraisal program.

While the former focuses on enhancing employees' productivity, the latter highlights their shortcomings. Productivity increases when employees receive constructive feedback.

That’s where a performance review software like Leapsome comes in.

This software gives employees the message that their company wants to help them improve their skills, knowledge and abilities.

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As these performance review tools provide an illuminating look at the employee's productivity, employers understand the areas that require improvement. Apart from tracking employee performance, these tools help employees set goals, add deadlines and get reminders for providing an update.

Managers and team leaders can then monitor progress and ensure employees are on track for success.

It's a must-have tool in your tech suite because it serves many purposes to help a team grow and remain productive.

Interesting statistics: Companies implementing this software focus on continuous performance management that helps increase productivity by 66% and achieve 64% of the top organizational goals.

2. Avoid conducting unnecessary meetings

Most meetings have a bad reputation when it comes to employee productivity. Why?

They are long, tedious, and don't yield effective results. According to a survey, 47% of employees complained that meetings wasted their time the most at work.

The same survey reported that 40% of employees waste up to 30 minutes searching for collaborative space for meetings.

In short, meetings can be one reason your employees miss deadlines and are unproductive at work.

To ensure your team remains productive and achieves their goals, send invites to those team members who need to be involved in a meeting. Also, create a specific agenda for every meeting and keep the meetings as short as possible.

Hold a stand-up or walking meeting rather than conducting a daily meeting that runs for more than an hour.

Experimenting with different types of meetings and reducing their durations can significantly impact your team's productivity.

Interesting statistics: Set clear objectives for every meeting because 72% of employees believe that it's essential for being productive and making the meeting a success.

3. Clarify expectations

Another great way to enhance productivity is meeting with your team members and communicating their priorities and expectations from the job. Communicate the top three or four areas you want them to focus on.

Your team members might not be productive when they have seven or eight projects on their plate. So, give them work that they can finish without getting stressed. Also, be explicit about the time you expect them to spend on a particular task.

For instance, when proofreading an article, tell the team members not to spend more than half an hour on each article or blog.

Helping them understand the quality of work without micromanaging can help them improve productivity. Also, describe the outcome you expect from your team and let them determine the steps to achieve organizational goals.

Spoon feeding them and telling them how to complete every task creates bottlenecks and hampers productivity.

Pro-tip: Choose the right communication tool to ensure cooperation and healthy work culture in your team.

4. Train team members to manage their time

A truly productive team focuses on improving productivity by providing adequate training.

Though this might vary from team to team, it's essential to train your team members on best practices for managing their time.

Dealing with interruptions and managing email workflows without wasting time is the key to increasing productivity.

Though this is a foundational requirement, building time management skills isn't easy.

Teach your employees the two-minute and five-minute work rules. The two-minute rule states that employees should immediately complete tasks that require less than two minutes, and the five-minute rule tells employees to spend five minutes of every hour doing something other than work.

Going above the gimmicks and gamification empowers a team to remain productive and achieve organizational goals.

Pro-tip: When your employees can manage their time, they remain productive and complete organizational responsibilities.

5. Isolate the team from distraction

Having laser-focused employees helps build a productive team. So, in your team, imbibe a culture of limiting the use of email, phone and social media to focus on completing a single task at a time.

While these distractions don't require too much of your attention, when they occur, they can seriously disrupt the team's focus, resulting in loss of productivity.

Often, employees put everything on mute whenever they need some time to focus on a task or project.

Considering the number of distractions employees have today, this tactic can significantly improve productivity and help your team accomplish organizational goals.

Pro-tip: Don't stop the usage of phones and social media because it hampers productivity because employees can feel caged in.

6. Prioritize work based on key results

Each employee has many tasks in their bucket on any given day, and each seems essential and urgent. So, where should an employee start their day?

Should they devote their time and brainpower to completing one task or focus on multiple smaller tasks?

So, it's essential to have a clear understanding of how your work ladders up to company-wide goals. It helps you better understand the task and projects that have the largest impact.

Interestingly, according to one survey, employees who have clarity about their work impacts their company are two times more motivated than their counterparts.

Focus on completing important tasks before moving on to less impactful tasks. If any task or project is not supporting your company's larger goals and missions, rethink their importance.

Pro-tip: Prioritizing your work based on its impact on the company's short-term and long-term goals can increase your team's productivity.

7. Diminish lower priority work

There will be scenarios where your team members have too much on their plate. In such a scenario, assigning low priority work decreases workplace efficiency, and employee productivity can be forgotten.

By following workload management techniques, you can improve the team's efficiency and boost workplace happiness.

To identify lower priority work, managers often look at a project's bigger picture and identify tasks that require completion on a priority. You can do this by conducting a need assessment test.

For instance, if there is an urgent project that has a more significant impact on organizational goals, complete that project first. Defer the lower priority work to a later date.

Also, if there are two equally important tasks, focus on delegating one of those tasks to another team member with more time and bandwidth.

If there are certain lower priority tasks that you cannot defer, delete, or delegate, find ways to reduce the time required to complete them.

Interesting statistics: According to research, employees who have a positive work-life balance are more dedicated and productive by 21% than those who are overwhelmed with too much work. So, reducing lower priority work can be a game-changer for your team.

Making your team more productive

Your team productivity is like baking cupcakes, where the right quantity of ingredients can lay the foundation for a tasty and creamy cupcake.

Empowering your team members to be productive requires a well-mixed batter of different components and tips.

While there is no single way of sky-rocketing your workplace productivity, you can try these seven methods and gradually notice the change.

Remember that productivity is not about achieving remarkable proficiency, and it’s not about managing every minute of the day. Productivity is a complex process that involves multiple corporate disciplines.

When companies focus on workplace productivity, they create a happy and collaborative work environment.