Every small business should strive to reach maximum productivity. Not only does this ensure that you’ll make the most of your time and resources, but it also stands to impress clients and bolster your professional reputation. However, without even realizing it, many small business owners inadvertently hinder productivity within their respective enterprises. In some cases, such mistakes are made in the interest of increasing workplace productivity. As such, if you suspect productivity is on the wane, there’s a chance that your actions are a contributing factor. To help keep workplace productivity at healthy levels, take care to avoid the following blunders.
Improperly Delegating Tasks
It stands to reason that every member of your team has their own respective strengths and weaknesses. As such, some employees are better suited to certain types of tasks than others. However, when business owners fail to recognize the various specialties of their individual workers, improper task delegation is likely to result. Needless to say, assigning team members to tasks that are ill-suited to their respective skillsets can be a recipe for disaster. Because the work they produce will need to be modified and amended on a consistent basis, the tasks to which they’re assigned will take much longer to complete.
You can nip this problem in the bud by familiarizing yourself with each of your employees’ skillsets and assigning them tasks to which they’re perfectly suited. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t encourage your team members to continue learning and expanding their repertoires, but neither should you make a point of placing them in roles they’re currently not suited to occupy. A little bit of forethought and planning can go a long way when it comes to proper task delegation and heightened productivity.
Taking on Too Many Projects at Once
You’d be hard-pressed to find a small business that isn’t constantly trying to court new clients. However, if your current workforce lacks the manpower to tackle a wide assortment of projects at once, you should avoid biting off more than you can chew. The temptation to accept new work and deal with the consequences later can be very powerful for fledgling enterprises that are desperate to build a steady base of regular clients. While wanting to carve out a name for your business and generate fresh income is certainly understandable, taking on more work than your team can handle isn’t going to work out in anyone’s favor.
First of all, tackling too many projects at once is practically guaranteed to wear your team thin and compromise the overall quality of what they produce. Secondly, after seeing the quality of such work, the clients who commissioned it are unlikely to become repeat patrons. In other words, this approach to business is fair to neither your clients nor your staff. In the interest of avoiding this, take care to never accept more work than you have the time or manpower to produce. To get an accurate accounting of how many projects you can reasonably take on at one time, make use of cutting-edge business analysis tools.
Not Allowing Employees to Work Remotely
As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, many desk jobs don’t require a regular physical presence in an office. Not only is remote work conducive to employee safety, having the freedom to work from home can also help reduce stress and make the whole work experience considerably less overwhelming. Furthermore, remote work has also been linked to an increase in productivity. That being the case, any business owners who disparage telecommuting would do well to reconsider this stance. While some people tend to be more productive informal workplace settings, a fair number of us are far more alert and productive when operating from the comfort and safety of home.
You’d be hard-pressed to find an enterprise for which solid productivity isn’t vitally important. Your team’s ability to maximize their time and manpower can prove tremendously helpful when it comes to wowing new clients and hanging on to existing ones. However, even if you’re fully aware of the importance of good productivity, there’s a chance you may be inadvertently hindering it. So, if your team’s productivity levels are well below what you’d like to see, it’s worth taking a look inward and identifying any ways you may be contributing to the problem.
