How Do You Optimize Efficiency in The Workplace
The main goal of optimizing workplace efficiency is to improve the performance of your employees. Is there time wastage? Are they utilizing all the resources? Do they innovate ways to carry out tasks in the shortest time possible? These are some of the questions that employers use to check the efficiency of their employees. Before diving into the practical aspect of efficiency, it is important to note that it is not achievable overnight. Even where the employees have been taught all that it takes, they will not improve their productivity the following day. It takes a lot of commitment and patience to set up working mechanisms that improve the overall productivity of your employees. The following are some of the tried and tested ways that can help in increasing efficiency in any organization.
Providing Feedback Regularly
Regular feedback is essential to the life of any growing company. The feedback can be either positive or negative. You should introduce a platform where there is performance appraisal of the employees. This will allow the employees realize where they need to make improvement for general growth of the company and where they need to take corrective measure. Create a culture of open communication by allowing the employees to give feedback on where they would want improved in the company to better their performance. This gives the employees a sense of ownership of the organization and will work towards the set targets to and improve the general productivity.
Continuous feedback from customers and other stakeholders should never be ignored when making strategies to improve the general performance of the organization. Feedbacks are important to the organization in making both short-term and long-term strategies in an organization.
Offer Rewards and Incentives
Studies have shown that offering rewards and incentives greatly improve employees’ performance. Giving employees gives them reasons to continue making positive contribution to meet the set performance targets. Incentives go beyond the salary and other monetary related gifts to the employees. The following list shows how to increase work efficiency through appreciating the employees in an organization.
- Upgrade their equipment where possible.
- Offer them better parking spots.
- Give them ample lunch breaks.
- Offer breastfeeding rooms for mothers.
- Offer sports and fitness facility like gyms.
- Mention names of performing employees when having meetings.
- Offer holiday and leave packages.
- Honor performing employees publicly
- Send personalize messages to congratulate and say thank you.
Embrace Team Building Activities
Most organizations focus too much on the happiness of their customers to the detriment of their employees. It is important to make sure that the management organizes team building activities for their employees on regular basis. Team building activities helps the employees improve on their communication, build team work, build trust, resolves conflicts, proper coordination and they get to know each other better. You can hire professional personal coaches who have an already set curriculum to teach the intended goals. Since performance highly depends on the activities of the employees, team building cannot be ignored since it creates a healthy relationship among the various teams. Since team building is fun, it creates a happy workforce that in turn leads to an improved performance.
Encourage Group Chats
Communication is essential in improving employee’s performance. Introduce communication in the organization by introducing group chats like WhatsApp. This will help in sending messages and receiving information to the group members regardless where they are. The employees will ask for questions and receive feedback on time. Chat groups also help in resolving urgent information fast and the actions taken on time. Group chats offers the employees a platform to air their views and where they would want improvement done in the organization. Group chats is also a tool for employees to further their welfare organization and help from the organization to an employee can be made. This will greatly boost the morale of the employees that will in turn show an improvement in productivity.
Simplifying Routine Tasks
There are some routine tasks that consume the valuable time of the employees. While they may not be easily noticeable, the truth is that they greatly take up the time that would be used for the improvement of the productivity of employees. Some tasks are usually repetitive and can simply be improved by use of technology. Where employees need to use a password any time they need to get access to information can be simplified by use of personal cards to open the security system. This will not only cut on time taken to access but also increase the security of information of the organization since you can trace who accessed the system at a given time and the task they performed. Ultimately, the employees will be more efficient and the wasted time will be used to carry out other tasks.
Automated Time Tracking
When using the automated time tracking, the organization is able to know the time taken to carry each task, tasks they prioritize and know where they can improve. This will help in reducing the employees eating up to the time of the organization. The human resource department will have less time in calculating the working hours when calculating remuneration making it more efficient. Automated time tracking is also an important tool to help in planning with the aim of improving the overall productivity of the organization. The management can use the time tracking to know the areas they will add more resources to improve the rate of performance and the task each of the employee is best suited to do.
Optimizing Payroll Process
Preparation of a payroll is usually a daunting task especially when you do it manually. A lot of time is wasted when calculating the gross and net pay of each employee considering the compliance to the labor laws and tax rules. In order to improve the performance of the accounting system in the organization it is important for the organization to adopt an automated payroll system. The system is prone to fewer errors and saves on the computing time. Employees will feel confident and comfortable when working since they know all their working hours are captured and properly calculated. This will in turn improve the morale of the employees and increase the efficiency in the workplace.
Integrating Attendance with Payroll System
Another aspect that improves embracing technology is integrating the attendance to the payroll system. This greatly saves time for the human resource department since the attendance of the employees from the time tracking system is combined with payroll and automatically calculates the salary. The system is costly but the overall result saves the organization more than when it would have been done manually. The integrated system is fair to both the employee and employer and improves efficiency in the human resource administration.
Training Employees
Training is one of the best ways that you can use to improve the efficiency of the employees and the general productivity within the organization. Training will help employees understand how they can do tasks in the organization. It helps them cut the time they would have taken trying to guess what they are expected to do by equipping them with the necessary skills and knowledge. Organizations should organize mentoring classes, workshops and courses to build a technologically updated workforce. This improves their productivity and increases opportunities for the company.
Embracing Telecommuting
Many organizations believe that employees cannot be productive enough when working out of the workstation. Who will supervise them? How can work effectiveness be improved when working remotely? How will we communicate with employees out of the office? These are some of the questions that many employers are left asking themselves. There are many communications technologies that are available in the market that can help them answer their questions, among them being Wondershare DemoCreator. This is built-in software allows recording of virtual meetings among employees. The employees can work remotely and communicate effectively and with ease.
DemoCreator comes with a tutorial that is easy to understand and use without special skills or knowledge. The DemoCreator allow saving of files and documents in Word and infographics like chats, images and audio formats. Documents saved in the system can easily be edited and shared on any platform. The employees can make their presentations on the screen and accessed anywhere around the globe. Using this computer screen recording software, employees can send their presentation and attend to trainings and meetings virtually without having to be present in the office. This greatly saves on the resources of the organizations’ since only a computer and internet connection is required. Employees in different parts of the world can make their contribution from home when sick or even in cases of international pandemics like COVID-19 that has restricted travels. This in turn will greatly improve the morale, efficiency and productivity of the employees.
Secure DownloadSecure DownloadThe question of ‘how do you optimize efficiency in the workplace?’ has a simple answer of ‘make your employees happy.’ A happy workforce means an increase in productivity, which is what every business strives to achieve. Make changes in the habits drastically improves the employees’ productivity and improve the efficiency in the office operations.
