As a business manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that your team is productive and efficient. To achieve this, you must promote communication and feedback, provide proper training, encourage open communication, and inspire your team. Communication and feedback are essential for building trust and maintaining a productive team. By communicating both personally and professionally and providing feedback on their performance, both positive and negative, your team will understand their performance and what they can do to improve.
Proper training is also necessary for workers to be productive. The exact types of training will depend on your industry and company. Managers must monitor their workers and ensure that they remain motivated. Small businesses may not be able to afford to hire inspirational speakers or organize retreats to motivate employees, but there are other ways to keep them engaged.
Encouraging open communication is also important for time management. Ask your reports about the challenges they face, how you can help them allocate their time more effectively, and if they need more resources. Hold quarterly team meetings for colleagues to discuss priorities. If a direct report is still not making progress in their work despite apparent efforts, do some research to discover the root of the problem. Business productivity is directly related to the degree of commitment of a person to their work and to their employer.
A Harvard Business Review study shows that people work more when someone observes and appreciates their efforts. It is up to company managers and leaders to create an environment that's motivating enough to keep people focused. As a manager, one of your biggest responsibilities is to inspire other people to be the best versions of themselves. If you do it right, everyone on your team will not only be more productive and efficient, but they will also be more satisfied with their work. You must find ways to balance leadership mentality (focusing on helping other people) with finding ways to do your own work. To compete with large corporations, managers must find ways to improve business operations, such as increasing employee productivity and reducing friction between operations.
The more you capture the attention and interest of your team, the more likely you are to increase productivity. Frequent one-on-one conversations are the best way to ensure that individual team members manage their time in the way that best suits them. Involve employees in decision-making and explain their role in achieving the company's objective. If you hear complaints about weekly updates on the project or status, consider ways you can make it easier for everyone. You can make your company more efficient by making it easier for your workers, reducing unnecessary employee workload with the right tools, and prioritizing well-being with paid holidays. Avoid micromanagement by giving employees enough space to do their work. Meetings are a valuable tool for teams to collaborate, share ideas, and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Keep people informed about things going on behind the scenes. Asking them about something you know has been happening in someone's life or seeing how someone is doing when they seem a little depressed can create a stronger connection between you and everyone on the team.
