People have tried to improve their productivity for thousands of years. It’s in our nature to figure out how to do things better and faster. How to work smarter, not harder.
Today, workplaces continue to evolve in the age of the internet and under the growing influence of AI.
In the past, if you were to say that the hardest-working person you know hasn’t left their couch this week, it’d sound like a joke. But, today, you can do almost anything from your living room sofa.
So, now, how do we enhance our productivity?
We’re sharing the top ten innovative pathways to enhance workforce productivity in 2024.
1. Flexible work arrangement and smarter scheduling
Some people prefer to work from home – the reasons vary. However, studies have shown that employee productivity when working at home is higher than at the office. In fact, according to Apollo Technical, they’re a whopping 47% more productive.
Sure, you can force them to come to the office, but if their productivity levels are SO much higher at home, why would you?
Here’s another consideration. Modern labor often includes teams consisting of people in different time zones. These remote workers are also working on self-imposed daily schedules. So, for this to work in practice, you’d have to encourage using scheduling software for employees, not just management.
People have different tolerance levels for distractions, so some outperform their peers when they can work from home. Others need an office space to thrive. To get the best of both worlds, give people a chance to choose for themselves.
As stated, if possible, you should give your staff the choice to work from home. Keep in mind that this alone may increase your appeal as an employer and deepen your potential hiring pool.
The key thing to remember is that people working from their devices are always a cybersecurity liability. You must find the best security practices for a remote workforce and make a solid BYOD policy. This way, you’ll make up for the most significant shortcomings of this model. Apart from taking security measures, encourage your remote employees to defrag Mac as part of their maintenance tasks, for optimal performance.
2. Avoid overworking your staff
This is quite intuitive, but it’s something that many employers fail to understand. Today, you have so many options to meet an impending deadline or handle a sudden increase in workload.
You don’t have to rely on a too-small staff because you believe the workload will trail off soon. You also don’t have to hire extra employees and worry about extra payroll if the workload does taper off.
There’s an alternative to hiring full-time employees.
You can hire freelancers, look for virtual assistants, or even rely more on AI tools. Most of these tools are SaaS, meaning you can cancel them if you feel like it when the pressure subsides.
Consider incorporating invoicing software into your workflow, providing a flexible solution during workload fluctuations without risking staff burnout or morale.
So don’t risk your dedicated staff and employee morale by stressing and overworking them. Find a solution that works for all of you and remove the pressure.
3. Better time and resource management during corporate travel
You’re crossing a huge item off the list by finding a way to manage corporate travel more efficiently. Namely, these people represent your enterprise. This means that their representation may plot the future course of your business.
However, they also need to manage their expenses while abroad. They should also engage in time management and juggle booking arrangements. This is a lot easier with the right travel management software (like Navan or myBiz).
Also, remember that people traveling for work may still participate in projects back home. They may have to attend meetings, share data via the cloud, and more.
Fortunately, this is a cinch with modern conferencing tools, cloud-based project management platforms, and cloud storage. Most companies today already have remote or hybrid work models, so working during travel isn’t an issue.
4. Remote Team building
In one of the previous segments, we’ve mentioned allowing people to work from home. For instance, as many as 12.7% are working from home full-time, while 28.2% work a hybrid model. While this is an amazing concept, it can create one significant problem – the lack of a sense of belonging. It’s a lot harder to feel loyalty to a boss you’ve never met in person or coordinate with coworkers you only know from profile pictures.
At the same time, this belonging is vital to employee retention and productivity. So, how do you do team building with remote teams?
Virtual meetings are the most obvious answer there is. They’re how to provide your staff with face-to-face interactions with their coworkers. And communication is the key.
Before the pandemic, events like Office Olympics and paintball were common team-building strategies. In today’s more remote world, team building is more virtual but no less fun and effective at building connections.
From trivia tournaments to holiday parties, teams from around the globe can gather around their computers for laughs and insights into their coworkers. Companies like Teambuilding.com are among the best at offering this incredible service for companies large and small.
They help teams learn employee communication skills and build connections that create strong teams even when individuals are thousands of miles apart. It’s one of the very best ways to improve employee performance and enhance communication and relationships within your organization.
5. Make e-learning more accessible
Training always affects productivity. After all, training leads to skill enhancement, a boost in the consistency of performance of employees, and error reduction. These three factors directly affect the effectiveness of any action.
Now, you can handle most in-house training via instructional videos. You must learn to make better instructional videos to boost onboarding and training.
Improve your production value and, more importantly, learn how to get straight to the point. To remain compliant with ADA laws, improving your video training content with captions and subtitles is essential today.
Also, according to verbit.ai, three-quarters of people watch videos (even educational ones) with the sound off. While a generic captioning device might suffice, a specialized tool for making e-learning subtitles is even better. In instructional videos, clarity of expression makes all the difference.
6. Use VR and AR in training
In the previous section, we explained in detail the importance of proper training for productivity. With enhanced reality, this training can be far more immersive and efficient.
Virtual reality (VR) training can help create far more realistic simulations. In a computer-generated 3D environment, interactions with simulated scenarios will become far more realistic. This is true even for the most complex machinery operations. After all, flight schools and space programs have been using this method for years.
It’s also a great image boost since it helps portray you as a more tech-savvy enterprise.
AR (augmented reality) does more than just help with training — it actively provides on-the-job assistance later since it uses your phone. Everyone has their phone on them almost all the time. So, with the right AR tool, an employee can improve or modify their work process in seconds, simply by picking up their phone.
If security is a concern, you can provide employer-owned devices to connect with the AR tool, which then remain at the office.
7. Set smarter deadlines
Setting deadlines is an art form.
If you give people too little time, you’ll stress and overwork them (risks we’ve already covered). Setting unrealistic or unreasonable goals and expectations sets your employees up for failure, which demoralizes them and can increase turnover.
But giving people too much time can backfire. According to Parkinson’s law in project management, the work will expand to fill the available time.
The trick is to balance the amount of work with the staff’s abilities and the business’s needs. It’s not easy, but it is necessary.
Ways to help your employees might be productivity management tools like ClickUp. These tools help manage workflows and deadlines without micromanaging.
The customization also allows for simple adjustments when needed to schedules and deadlines. That way, you and your staff can find the right balance for your business.
8. Well-being initiatives
Well-being and productivity are directly connected.
No one denies that employee well-being is crucial to employee productivity, but how does one approach it in the workplace?
Flexible work arrangements and wellness programs are a great example of this.
Some workplaces are starting physical fitness programs, even going as far as to make an office gym. Others are organizing areas for 20-minute power naps.
Employee assistance programs (EAPs) are an amazing idea. These programs benefit employees going through hard times. These counseling sessions are confidential and fully anonymous.
Generally speaking, people underperform when they’re under stress. But this stress can also cause a lot of long-term harm. So, introduce EAPs, which provide counseling and mental health resources to employees who need them.
There are also various stress reduction programs you could implement. Two great examples are mindfulness and meditation programs or stress management workshops.
Of course, working from home comes with its own array of stresses and challenges. It’s easy to get caught up in overworking and long hours when work and home are in the same space.
It’s crucial to schedule and make time for self-care and to take regular breaks. As the saying goes, if you don’t make time for wellness, your body will make time for illness. Wellness is better – make the time.
9. Gamification of workplace tasks
It’s all a matter of perspective, and gamification can help drastically shift your staff’s attitude. It can make work feel like play and create a work-friendly environment.
Gamification:
- Increases motivation
- Enhances learning
- Boosts productivity
- Increases employee engagement
In many scenarios, you can use gamification to improve your productivity analytics. After all, gamification usually implies some sort of point system. Points are an easy metric to track. Leaderboards can help you see who the best performers are in your team, which could help you make better future pairings.
Most importantly, gamification will increase creativity. While immersed in “the game,” your employees will be more likely to think outside the box. In content marketing, creativity makes all the difference.
Coaching also becomes easier through play. Many people have problems taking directions from their peers. For example, if a team member is promoted to a management position.
However, when you group team members together and assign captains for a game, it helps them learn to work together as a unit. It’s easier to overcome feelings of rivalry when they feel less threatened and more at ease.
Practicing these skills can help create more motivated employees and train better leaders.
10. Become a better leader
Even concepts like leadership, arguably the oldest method to empower your team to be more productive, can get an innovative spin.
- Reverse mentorship: This is a scenario where you allow a junior team member to teach you a thing or two about a new trend or technology. This does two important things for you. First, it allows you to learn something new. Second, it creates a two-way teaching environment, further promoting self-improvement.
- Inclusive decision-making: There’s a reason you’re the leader and why you’re the one taking responsibility. Still, there’s nothing wrong with involving team members, even if just to hear a few counterarguments.
- Adjusting to remote work: Even during remote work, you want to talk face-to-face with your employees and check in on them. While IM tools are great for quick check-ups, conferencing tools allow for face-to-face interaction. It’s still not the same as an in-person meeting, but it’s a decent substitute.
- Create space for experimentation: When the structure is too risky or rigid, people are too cautious. While caution isn’t a concept with a bad connotation, it doesn’t necessarily leave much room for innovation.
- Data-driven leadership: Never before did you have the availability of so much data and analytical tools at your disposal. So, use this data with BI (business intelligence) software to get some actionable information. By acting on them, you’ll make your decisions more data-driven and harder to argue against.
Embracing modern technologies, trends, and concepts will help usher in your enterprise’s new era. Foster a company culture of strong leadership that supports a productive workforce.
Even small changes in productivity can make a big difference
The bottom line is that happy employees are productive employees. They’re more likely to stay longer and try harder.
Still, to improve productivity, you must recognize bottlenecks. Is it the inaccessibility of learning materials or that you didn’t consider an important aspect (like corporate travel)? What about your deadlines, work hours, and the mental state of your employees?
Each one of these things makes a difference. Address the ones that matter most and watch your employees (and company) thrive.