Finding new ways to make your business more efficient is a constant cycle, and one that is often hard to get right without cutting corners. Projects might still take too long, while meetings may amble unproductively. Business owners often overlook the simple changes they can implement that will make an immediate difference to their business. Below are a few tips to maximise the efficiency of your business, without compromising your current workforce.
Automate Tasks + Workflows
Many CEO’s spend almost 20% of their time on work that could be automated. Incorporating technology to take on large manual workloads for certain tasks can take huge pressure off of employees, and can be incredibly simple to setup and manage, such as creating an electronic client onboarding process. Automation can reduce the use of time and resources, and lessen the margin for human error to be made, improving both efficiency and accountability.
Limit Interruptions
Meetings, notifications from emails and messages you feel you have to respond to, all constantly interrupt your working day. When we are interrupted, we are then faced with something referred to as ‘resumption lag’, whereby it takes us about a minute to regain focus. A study featured by the National Library of Medicine also found that quality of work significantly reduces when faced with interruptions, when compared to ‘non-interrupted’ working conditions. To avoid this, consider encouraging self-limiting notifications for certain apps, and assigning certain blocks of time throughout the day to respond to emails and queries. If meetings are often interrupting the workflow of your employees, consider scheduling them on the same day if possible, to allow employees to block out chunks of time of uninterrupted work.
Enhance Productivity
Plan your time carefully in relation to your goals, and ensure this is reflected in your clear communication to your employees, whether it be in a short daily briefing or via regular email updates. But while pushing on to reach targets is crucial to success, knowing when to stop is equally important. Encourage your employees to take regular short breaks, to refresh their motivation and sustain output.
Tricks such as the Pomodoro technique can help you and your employees to dissect your time and tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. By working on a single task in short, sharp bursts, you minimise distractions, and sustain focus, enhancing your chances of being able to see a task through to completion.
If you would like to learn more about how coaching can help you to take action on these steps, please don’t hesitate to contact me at paulmccarthy@actioncoach.com.
