Workplace Productivity: 8 Ways To Help Your Team Get Things Done

You can make your team an effective unit and help them get more things done by making time to focus on workplace productivity. Even small changes in the way your team works now can result in significant improvements in creativity, inspiration, and efficiency down the road.

In this article, the workforce management experts at Sling give you tips and suggestions for improving workplace productivity for you, your team, and your business as a whole.

How To Improve Workplace Productivity

1) Provide Seated And Standing Work Options

If your team works in an office environment, one relatively easy way to improve workplace productivity is by giving them both seated and standing work options.

There are plenty of alternatives to the traditional desk, including:

• Standing workstations
• Adjustable-height desks
• Risers and adapters for static desks

And with the mobility of most teams these days, you can even create workspaces using lounge chairs and sofas for the complete gamut of seating options.

2) Minimize Distractions And Interruptions

Distractions and interruptions can be the death of workplace productivity. But you can help your team stay focused throughout the day by training them to avoid the things that draw their attention away from the task at hand.

When they’re focusing on a challenging job, remind them to:

• Turn off their phone
• Close their email and chat apps
• Silence notifications on all devices
• Let coworkers know they’re unavailable
• Shut the door (if they have one)
• Move to a quiet part of the office
• Wear noise-canceling headphones if necessary

Taking these small steps will minimize distraction and interruptions so your team can concentrate on being as productive as possible.

3) Make Breaks Mandatory

An engaged team will often “put on blinders” when faced with a challenging task and work their way to exhaustion fairly quickly.

To maintain workplace productivity and keep energy levels high you may have to make breaks mandatory throughout the day.

Regular breaks — even those as short as five minutes — give your team time to unwind and de-stress so they can return to work physically and mentally refreshed and ready to go.

4) Encourage Your Team To Eat And Drink

Your team may be raring to go in the morning, but if they don’t fuel that fire, they’ll slowly lose momentum. That can have a dramatic effect on their focus, their thinking, and their workplace productivity.

You can help them prevent this slow drain of energy by encouraging them to eat and drink regularly during the day.

Provide healthy snacks between meals and stress the importance of staying hydrated with at least four cups of water while they’re at work.

Whether they consume this food and drink during breaks or while they work, their productivity will be better for it.

5) Add Plants To Improve Workplace Productivity

If you’re looking for an effective and low-cost way to improve workplace productivity, add plants to your office environment.

Adding a bit of green does more than just spruce up your team’s space; it also transforms the aesthetic of your office and brings a softer, more natural feel to the room.

Not sure how to incorporate plants into your decor? Here are some simple solutions:

• Place a plant on everyone’s desk
• Set up a row of tall plants to separate work areas in a large room
• Arrange a large plant (or a cluster of smaller plants) in an unused corner
• Line up smaller plants on window sills or unused surfaces

Plants also have the added distinction of creating a better first impression on your guests and making them feel more welcome and at home.

6) Outfit Your Office With Natural Light

Illuminating your office with natural light is a great way to improve workplace productivity. But not every office, workspace, and desk is going to have access to a window.

Instead of resigning yourself and your team to the harsh blue light of compact fluorescent bulbs, incorporate lights that emit the softer orange, red, and yellow wavelengths.

One solution is to install lights that change automatically over the course of the day to mimic the transition from blue and green wavelengths in the morning to red and yellow wavelengths in the afternoon.

If that option isn’t feasible, try placing an adjustable-wavelength lamp at each workstation as a supplement for your current lighting system.

7) Consider Getting An Office Pet

A recent study by the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) reported that an office pet can improve work/life balance, reduce stress, and nurture focus and engagement.

All great things when you’re looking to improve workplace productivity.

Dogs and cats are the obvious first choices for an office pet, but a bird, a fish, a hamster, or a gerbil can also be a nice addition to your team’s environment.

Regardless of what animal you choose, it’s essential that you give this move some serious thought before you commit. Create a care plan so that everyone knows who’s responsible for feeding, watering, walking, and cleaning the new addition to your team.

8) Promote A Strong Sense Of Team

To improve your workplace productivity and keep it as high as possible, promote a strong sense of team throughout your business.

This is not something that happens overnight. But with a bit of persistence, you can build your teamwork to new heights.

Here are some suggestions for promoting a healthy sense of team:

• Arrange for leadership activities
• Make time for team-building activities
• Foster business-wide communication
• Include your remote employees with virtual meetings and games

Get creative and we’re sure you’ll come up with even more ways to cultivate a strong sense of team in your business.

Start Small To Maximize Workplace Productivity

If these tips are new to your business, don’t try to incorporate every single one by the end of next week. That’s just a recipe for confusion and disgruntled employees.

Instead, pick one or two that stand out and encourage your team to practice them until they become standard operating procedure. When your team masters those, pick one or two more and focus on them for as long as it takes.

If you find after a few weeks that one of the suggestions doesn’t work for your business, don’t force the issue — switch to something else and give it a try instead.

The point of these tips is to increase workplace productivity and to help your team get things done. If you’re just checking them off to say that you’ve checked them off, you won’t really know if they’re making your business better.

Find what works for you and your team and forget the rest.

Streamline Scheduling To Improve Workplace Productivity

One surefire way to improve workplace productivity is by streamlining and perfecting your business’s scheduling process.

In fact, we recommend that all businesses start with this essential first step before moving on to the other suggestions on this list. Scheduling is just that powerful.

And to help you and your team on the road to productivity perfection, download the Sling app for free today. When it comes to organizing, managing, and optimizing your workforce, there’s no better suite of tools than Sling.

The heart of the Sling software is its artificial-intelligence-based scheduling module that includes intuitive features like:

• Employee and task color coding
• Recurring shifts
• Time-off notices
• Double-booking and overlapping shift notifications
• Templates
• And much more…

Sling also contains a built-in time clock and employee work and attendance tracker. With this unique feature, you can turn any smartphone, tablet, or computer into a clock-in, clock-out tool.

You can even control labor costs and prevent time theft by establishing geofences around your business and setting limits on how early and how late employees can clock in or out.

But the benefits don’t stop there. With Sling, you also get:

• Cloud-based schedule distribution and communication
• A wide range of reports to help you make adjustments for the future
• Paid-time-off control to help you keep expenses low
• Powerful messaging features
• Your very own newsfeed
• Task lists for you and your employees

When you harness the power of the Sling app, you’ll save countless hours each week that you can then dedicate to improving your team’s workplace productivity even more.

For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit GetSling.com today.

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This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for specific advice.

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