Download The 3 Best Ways to Improve Your Team’s Productivity (IT Help Desk, Delegation, Etc.)

Productivity is something we all know is important, but is your team doing enough to prioritize it? If you don’t have the right infrastructure, processes and technology in place, the answer is no.

Useful tactics to increase productivity

Productivity is a measure of effort, efficiency and results wrapped up in a neat package. It is a metric that managers and business owners can use to measure success over a period of time. It is the driving force behind successful businesses. And it is up to a company’s management to put systems, processes and people in place to increase productivity gradually over time and ensure that the business is moving in the right direction.

Not sure where to start with improving your team’s productivity? Here are some ideas:

Automate with IT Help Desk and other software

Automation can potentially change the game for your business. Although there may be a certain learning curve, investing in automation software can help you maximize your employees’ time and increase productivity.

IT help desk software, for example, can help you easily capture, triage and address support tickets with minimal employee involvement. And when a team member is needed, the response is much faster and more efficient because of the streamlined way the ticket is managed.

Other examples of tasks that can be automated and streamlined with automation include billing, payroll, marketing, call routing and accounting.

Eliminate activities that waste time

Every organization has time-wasting activities that eat into the schedule and limit the output and effectiveness of key team members. If you want to maximize your productivity, you need to identify and neutralize them. Here are a couple of examples:

• Meetings. Research shows that the average employee spends four hours preparing for and attending meetings a week. (That’s 10 percent of their entire work week.) And in many cases, these meetings could be avoided in the first place. When planning meetings, think more strategically. First, create a firm time limit of just 15 to 30 minutes. Second, invite only people who are absolutely critical to the meeting (limit invitees to a maximum of five people). Third, start exactly on time and avoid any small talk or chatter that does not directly contribute to the purpose of the meeting.
• Email. Did you know that an average of 28 percent of an employee’s total working time is spent checking, reading and responding to emails? As with meetings, much of this time is totally unproductive. We recommend switching to a more efficient and less distracting form of internal communication, such as an application like Slack. And when it comes to external email, employees are encouraged to set aside specific blocks of time for email (and to log out of their accounts outside of those times).

The average team can free up several hours per day just by addressing meetings and emails. Think of it this way: What if, by reducing the number of meetings and streamlining email inbox management, you could eliminate 60 minutes of wasted time per employee per day? For a team of 25 people, that’s 25 hours per day, 125 hours per week and 500 hours saved per month. Imagine what your team can achieve with 500 extra hours of availability each month!

Delegate and outsource

You only have so much time in a day. In fact, time is one of the few definitive limiting factors you and your team face. No matter how hard you try, you cannot stretch or extend time. However, you can learn how to do more in a limited amount of time by intelligently tapping the right resources. More specifically, you should embrace the art of delegating and outsourcing.

Through proper delegation, you can free up time in your daily schedule to focus on the most important tasks and critical responsibilities. (And if you learn how to delegate effectively, you can achieve the same quality of output in a faster and more cost-effective way.)

Outsourcing is another option you have to effectively move “beyond” time and get more done within a specific time period. The beauty of outsourcing is that you can find other partners who are skilled in areas where your team is inexperienced or weak. And in many cases, you can complete the project or task more affordably than if you were to hire a full-time employee to handle it.

Put everything together

There is no easy way to increase productivity. It is a team effort – a combination of effort and strategic discipline. Hopefully this article has given you some ideas you can use to start increasing efficiency and productivity in your own organization. Good luck!

This post was last updated: 9 September 2022