Investing In Productivity: 4 Things That Are Slowing You Down

As a founder and business leader, it’s up to you to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of every day and every team member. To create an environment where your team feels motivated, satisfied, and ready to meet the challenges of each new day, this is critical to the long-term success of your business.

One of the curses of entrepreneurship is that you’re never quite able to look back on what you’ve accomplished and say that you’re completely satisfied. But by building a culture of introspection and support, your business can reach new heights of operational excellence, thereby making employees feel comfortable and maximize their output; the kind that leads to the legions of loyal customers and years of sustainable growth.

However, this kind of culture doesn’t just come overnight. You need to make an investment in your business productivity. And that needn’t necessarily be a monetary investment. It can simply be an investment of your time and attention on the things that could be slowing you down in business. Let’s take a look at some potential barriers that could bottleneck your team’s productivity and overall output.

Your operations

Your operations play a large role in defining your business and how well it runs. As the old song says, it ain’t what you do, but it’s the way that you do it. As a proactive entrepreneur, you should be constantly looking for new ways to make your operations more efficient and your employees more productive. This may mean relying more heavily on marketing automation, investing in new software, tools, and equipment, or simply being more receptive to training your employees in new ways and borrowing operational ideas from your competitors. 

Lots of entrepreneurs are very protective of doing things their way, even it is may not be the most efficient. But if you’re prepared to be fluid in your definition of what your way is and how the business functions, you’ll find that it’s easier to make your operations more efficient. 

Your comms infrastructure

In the 2020s, every business is a tech business to some extent or another. And the more reliant you become on digital communications, the more you need to ensure that you have the right digital infrastructure to keep your operation running efficiently. 

Structured cabling specialists such as richmondcomm.com ensure that your cables are organized in a way that not only prevents them from becoming a safety hazard but also confirms that they maximize the speed of your internal and external digital communications. Speedy communications, especially wi-fi, is critical to running a business efficiently. What would happen if your phone and wi-fi connection went down? How would you run your business? Simply put, you can’t.

You’re doing too much in-house

As a small team, you’ve all had to double up in your responsibilities and learn new skills as your business has grown. But as you strive for further growth, could you be biting off more than you can chew? That zeal to do everything your own way can actually prove detrimental to your operations and actually prove less cost-effective than outsourcing to an expert. Consider how much time you’ve spent on learning more skills that you could have essentially outsourced for a few hundred dollars? How much more time would you have had to focus on growing and scaling the business?

For us at FemFounder, we know we aren’t experts on setting up email sequences, so we outsource that task among many other duties. This enables us to focus on our strengths.

Third-party service providers won’t compromise your ability to do things your way. They simply take some of the pressure off your team’s shoulders so they can get back to doing what they’re best at. 

Your team are multitasking

Finally, neuroscience has proven time and again that there really is no such thing as multitasking. There’s just doing several things badly! If you want to squeeze the most out of every day, make sure your business has a zero-tolerance policy on multi-tasking. 

4 Ways to Increase Productivity in the Workplace

As any successful business owner will tell you, a happy workforce is your most valuable asset. Happy, motivated employees will be more productive and ultimately make your business more successful. Bored, miserable staff will not help you in the long run. Keeping employees happy while still working at the best of their abilities is a tricky tightrope to balance, but as long as you provide them with the right tools and environment, you can keep your business running at the top of its game.

Here are four easy ways to increase productivity within your business.

Be more efficient

Take a thorough look at how your business is currently operating and see if there is room for improvement. Look for areas in which time and money are not used to the best effect. Talk to your staff and see if there is a more efficient way they could structure their days or prioritize their tasks. Be open to changing the way you work.

Have the right technology

Technology can be your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how it is used. It can be a blessing or a distraction. Personal phones are an excellent case in point. They’re essential for making business calls and responding to emails on the go, but how often do they distract us from more important work?

Whatever industry you are in, there will always be new technology and software popping up that makes things quicker and more efficient. Office-based companies may find time management software makes their staff more efficient, but could, on the other hand, find that the resources spent on implementation and staff training are not worth the while. Manufacturing firms and other companies dealing with small parts could use a digital parts counting scale to save time spent on counting thousands of objects by hand. However, there is a risk of user error if the staff isn’t given adequate training in how to use new technology. Before deciding on whether or not to adopt a new system, weigh up the pros and cons.

Reduce distractions

A workplace full of distractions is not a suitable environment in which to stay productive. Chatty colleagues and visitors coming in and out can make it hard to concentrate on work. Consider whether you could have a room or area of your office devoted to quiet work for employees who need a bit of time to focus. Phones, mainly social media, are one of the biggest distractions. While it won’t be practical, or welcome, to enforce a no phones policy, encouraging them to switch off will help them stay productive. Lead by example, and do the same.

Make sure everyone is happy

A happy employee is a productive employee. If the staff is working in a positive environment that makes them happy, they will want to work hard. If they are miserable at work, they will check-in and out each day without any care for what they are doing. Show how much you appreciate them and reward them for every job well done.

Keep your staff motivated and working to the best of their ability by following these tips.

How Organization Can Help Your Stock Room

They say that cleanliness is close to godliness. If that’s true, then organization-li-ness is certainly close on the totem pole. This is especially true when we need to prepare for an important event such as a corporate meeting or a public speaking engagement. However, it’s also essential for the most practical of daily business realities, in this case managing a stock room to perfection.

A stock room is more than just a place in which items are stored to be used for a particular purpose. A room of this nature may preserve an item’s freshness or condition for perfect use despite long periods of storage. It may also be that, such as in the case of a shoe store, a backroom stock needs to be accessed quickly and feasibly in order to guarantee a sale and provide a better service to our customers.

Organization can help your stock room, but it’s important to submit to the logic of this most reliable of environments and apply some of your own. To that end, we have some useful advice:

Color-Coded Organization

Color-coded organization can truly help you mark certain items depending on how they should be handled, transported, or where they should go. Bag sealing tape can be used in this way, allowing you to ensure your packages are prepared for freight in the best way, while also providing visual identification to ensure staff knows how to handle a certain item. Visual referrals such as this can help you save time by avoiding the need to continually refer to indexed measurements before managing your stock room. The more foolproof you can make this process, the better.

Continual Rotation

Rotation of your stock is, of course, important to get right. Placing newer items near the back and vice versa can help you avoid losing out on items due to a passed expiration date while retaining some backup items can help you in the case of a massive order or intensive sales need. Rotating your stock is also the best means in which to continually inspect it to retain its hygiene, and will help you continually organize your space in the easiest possible manner. With signed dates and accountable names tracked for every change made, you can ensure that confusions are cleared up in a matter of seconds.

Stock Handling Accountability & Management

Accountability, as explained prior, can help you understand whose role it is to clean the stockroom, and it can also help you understand where problems might be caused. For instance, it can be that in a kitchen environment you have no cameras, but if you notice that restaurant food is going missing, tying this to the last person who signed into a said room with their keycard may not be a hard task, provided you can verify those details correctly. The more you are able to ensure your stock room is organized, the better you can protect it.

With advice, we hope you can allow organization to better aid your stock room, day and night.

How Can You Do a Better Job?

When you’re a career-driven woman, it’s safe to say that you’re going to want to be able to grow and succeed in any field. Yet, in order to do that, you need to make sure that you’re doing the best possible job that you can. How?

Well, you should find that the below here ideas really help you out here.

Be More Mindful

First of all, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re as present and in the moment as you can do. Don’t waste time scrolling or procrastinating if you can help it. Instead, you need to make sure that you are mindful and channelling your efforts into growth, your progression, and doing great work. 

Tune In More

It’s also important to be alert. If you have any data at all relating to your job, then be sure that you are aware of it, that you’re always aware of your customer and what she wants, and that you make decisions based on what you observe.

Invest In Yourself

And finally, you’re going to want to make sure that you are investing in yourself too. You need to learn and grow in order to do a better job. And this means that you’ll want to be able to take courses and learn new things. The good news is, you can do this all online. And if you’re not sure what to learn or what platform, the below infographic gives you a breakdown of software based on customer satisfaction.

eLearning Industry The Best 20 Learning Management Systems based on Customer Experience Infographic 2019 Edition

Productivity Killers: Are One of These Things Killing Yours?

We all know that binge-watching television or scrolling through Instagram for five hours at a time is not an efficient use of our time. While these bad habits are the most talked about, there are other things that can kill our productivity and quality work.

Problems Outside of Work and at Home

Although we all pride ourselves on being work-life balance gurus, we know that's just not how things work in the real world. For instance, I know that if I'm having issues at home, I may bring them to work with me in some form--whether I am anxious, tired, or depressed.

But I'm learning that I just have to leave any baggage at the door and acknowledge the issue outside of work. Whether it's through getting more help at home (such as hiring a cleaning lady) or going to therapy, I've learned how important it is to address home problems (outside of work) so I can focus better at work.

Lack of Sleep

As an entrepreneur, one of the first things that usually goes is sleep. While sleeping less can help us get more done in the short-term, this is going to produce a lot of long-term issues including killing our capacity to produce at our maximum. Studies show that losing a meager 16 minutes of sleep every night can hurt our ability to stay focused. I always make it a point to sleep seven or more hours a night. If I don't, then I will be scattered and my work product will suffer.

Stress and Anxiety

Stress and anxiety can diminish our quality of life. When stress and anxiety go unmanaged, they can inhibit our ability to get things completed, cause strain on relationships with colleagues, and impact our overall work quality, which is why it's crucial we all manage it.

Being an entrepreneur is oftentimes a stressful journey (especially with the uncertainty and risks that come with it) but it's best to learn how to manage these issues to prevent burn out.

These three issues are definitely not easy to fix but there are ways to address them. By learning how to cope with home issues, get more quality sleep, and manage anxiety and stress, we'll be able to enhance our productivity and overall quality of life more efficiently.