Being productive, focused and hardworking can be a key differentiate for an individual, team or business in being successful. So how do you improve people’s productivity?

The ability for a CEO or Managing Director to not only maximise his or hers performance but also each individual in the business, can allow them to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors which is why the topic of office productivity and performance is so hot. Here are our top 10 tips to improve your office’s productivity?

1. Tackle the Harder Tasks First

Being productive isn’t about working fast. It’s working on what matters and delivers the most value, and ensuring that work is done to a high standard. One of Jeff Bezos’ the founder and CEO of Amazon, top tips for how he remains so productive is always scheduling the toughest meetings and tasks first thing in the morning.

Studies have shown that people have the most willpower in the morning, so being able to identify your most important task for the day, and schedule it in for first thing in the morning will give you the best chance of completing that work to a high quality and being able to remain productive throughout the day.

2. Take Breaks Through Out The Day

Taking regular breaks throughout the day can be a great method to help you remain focused throughout the day. Focus can often be a factor that affects peoples productivity, so being able to remain focused throughout the day should help improve your offices productivity.

Making a coffee, getting a drink of water, having a chat with another colleague on a break or going for a short walk can be great ways to take shorts breaks throughout the day to help you remain being focused.

3. Block Out Distractions

Getting distracted by your phone, having a chat with your colleague or surfing the internet can be a serious time waster for people and businesses costing them hours in a day. Each time we lose focus and then switch back to a task it takes a few minutes to get back on track. We can even lose up to 40% efficiency by task switching which has a negative impact on office productivity.

Here are some great tips to remove office distractions and improve productivity. Another great method is having certain KPI’s and targets for people which are tracked for example using call tracking software for your telesales team. This creates accountability in the office which should help improve focus and office productivity.

4. Organise Your Day

Being prepared and organising your working day when you come into work can be a great way to improve your productivity.

Setting your tasks out for each day and prioritising your work will allow you to focus during the day, rather than thinking about what work to do next and when you are going to be able to complete a certain task.

Being organised and having a structure to your work will allow you to be consistently productive throughout the week.

5. Avoid Meetings Where Needed

Meetings can often be the biggest time waster in a business and have a negative effect on productivity. Especially when a meeting can take hours when same result could have been achieved in a 20 minute meeting.

Work with your colleagues to be able to identify when a meeting is needed or when something can be resolved in a quick conversation.

Being more selective, to whether you have meetings will allow you to improve your office productivity.

6. Plan For Meetings

When you have identified that a meeting is necessary, it is important to be able to achieve the set out result in a timely manner for it to not effect productivity negatively. Some of the best ways to achieve this is by having a set out agenda for the meeting and setting a time scale of when the meeting needs to be achieved by. This will ensure people in the meeting remain focused and allow it to be a productive meeting.

7. Manage Your Emails Effectively

Emails can often be a time consuming task for people in the office. So blocking out times in the day to reply to emails can be a great way to ensure your emails don’t build up and effect productivity negatively. Another great way is to respond to urgent emails immediately and then catch up with the non-urgent emails after work.

Here are 4 other top tips to keep on top of your email inbox.  

8. Use Appropriate Team Communication Channels

Using appropriate work communication platforms such as WhatsApp, Slack or an internal communications app can be a great way for people to communicate effectively and not effect productivity.  Rather than people walking over and chatting to colleagues, they can send a message or email via a communication channel which can then be picked up and responded to without causing a distraction in the office.

9. Dare to Say No

Do you often agree to help out a colleague despite having a pressing deadline? If you answered “yes” to this question, the word “no” needs to feature more in your vocabulary.

Some of the strategies I’ve already mentioned will help you reinforce boundaries around your time and what you focus on. Inevitably, however, you’ll sometimes be asked to help a colleague out with their work, which you didn’t factor in time for. It’s important to offer support to your colleagues and help them out where possible, but don’t let doing this effect your performance.

Question the urgency or priority of a request. But don’t be scared to say no to someone if it’s going to negatively affect your performance.

10. Track & Measure Performance

Tracking people’s performance and creating KPI’s that are visible in the office is a great way to create accountability and ensure people remained focused in the office.

Having competitions and league tables with your targets are not only a great way to create fun aspects to the working day, but also creates some competiveness which can be great for productivity.

These are just some tips to help improve your office’s productivity, which could give you and your business the competitive advantage it needs to continue being successful.