We always talk about being more productive and efficient in the workplace, but what’s the difference? Productivity is the quantity of work produced by a team, business, or individual. Efficiency, on the other hand, refers to the resources used to produce that work. With these definitions in mind, we can see the importance of both qualities.
As a business owner or manager, you want your team to be productive when it’s time to be productive, and you want your team to be efficient all the time. When a lot of work needs to be accomplished, you want your team to hammer out that work. You also want your team to complete tasks and projects using the least amount of time and resources.
Let’s discuss how to effectively build productivity and efficiency in your workplace.
Get Employee Feedback
Gathering employee feedback is always important, especially when determining which processes and systems work in your company and which do not.
You can discuss employee feedback during performance reviews or team meetings, gather feedback from anonymous surveys, and receive feedback via email or in person. Whichever way you decide to gather employee feedback, don’t forget to track it and determine the best solutions.
Check out our more in-depth blog post on the importance of employee feedback, how to get it, and what to do with it.
Encourage Continued Training
According to research, additional training on current jobs benefits employees’ productivity. The key is to keep improving your employees’ skills and knowledge.
Continued training is essential in fields like technology and marketing since they are constantly changing and evolving. You want to ensure your team is up-to-date on the latest tactics to reduce the amount of time it takes to accomplish a task or project. If there’s a faster and easier way to accomplish something, you want your team to do that!
Maintain a Clear Company Vision
When a company has a clear vision and communicates that vision to the team, it can boost company morale and increase employee performance. Sharing that vision with your team is important in having a company vision. If your team isn’t on board with the vision, it won’t be accomplished.
If your team believes in the company’s vision, they are more likely to stay productive to achieve the company’s goals and vision.
Track Employee Time
It’s easy to lose track of time. It happens all the time when you get in the zone and focus on what you’re doing. However, it would be best to track your time to improve your efficiency, which is the amount of time it takes to accomplish a task or project.
By tracking your time, your team can visually understand how long it takes to accomplish a task. For example, if a content creator takes an hour to create a newsletter graphic the first time they complete that task, maybe next time, they can see what adjustments to make to shorten that timing. They can achieve skills to use their time more efficiently.
By tracking time, you can also have a better insight into your employees’ daily tasks and improve workload distribution.
Productivity vs. Efficiency
Now that we’ve discussed how to build more productivity and efficiency in the workplace, which is more important? What is more valuable? Productivity or efficiency?
You may produce a high output rate with productivity, but your work may be full of errors that you’ll need to return and fix. So, even if productivity is high, which refers to the amount of work accomplished, it doesn’t matter if you were not efficient enough to meet your target.
Therefore, efficiency is gold.
Here are a few tips to help you focus on efficiency:
- Be intentional with your resources
- Maintain the production level you currently have but with a lower number of resources and time
- Prioritize your goals
- Check out our blog post on how to effectively prioritize your tasks!
- Reduce waste
- Try to find comparatively less expensive alternatives that can do the same tasks you are currently doing or producing
- Automation
- Outsourcing
- Try to find comparatively less expensive alternatives that can do the same tasks you are currently doing or producing
Productivity and efficiency are essential for business success because they dictate the amount of work that is accomplished. As mentioned above, when a lot of work needs to be accomplished, you want your team to hammer out that work. You also want your team to complete tasks and projects using the least time and resources. Nevertheless, business owners should always want their teams to work most efficiently to cut down on time and resources because that ultimately saves money.
Don’t forget to check out our video on Processes & Profitability, where we discuss how to increase your profits by adjusting your processes.
