5 Productivity Hacks To Streamline Your Team

The crazy thing about hard work, only one in five Australians work longer than 40-hour weeks. Well, in a way that makes sense. After all, it’s not about just working hard – it’s also about working smarter.

Why spend an hour on a task that can be automated and take a mere couple of seconds? Why micromanage, when you could save so much time outsourcing?

Chances are if you are reading this, you are on the search for ways to improve the productivity of your team. Whether it’s to better meet deadlines, streamline the sales funnel, or for better team cohesion – you are at the right place.

Through this article, we are going to discuss 5-killer tips to help you improve your team productivity, without them even realizing that they are working harder and getting more done!

Let’s get started:

Make Use Of Time Productivity Tools

Being more productive is harder then said. Emails are on the rise, funny cat videos are everywhere, and of course, we can’t forget those memes your best friends/loved ones seem to send you on the hour every hour.

Which is why this technique worked so well for me.

It’s a time productivity hack that is proven to work (with a bit of neurological science behind it). The technique is called Pomodoro tracking. Essentially, you get each of your team members to commit to working 25-minutes without distractions.

That means phones off, YouTube closed, and Facebook notifications turned off!

Following those 25-minutes, your team has 5-minutes to do whatever they want. Studies have proven that our brains are able to enter a state of deep-focus for a maximum period of 25-minutes, after this -distractions start to counterweight productivity.

A great thing about using this technique is that you can encourage friendly competition between your employees. Which will help boost team morale, and of course, crush out more tasks in a given day.

Team Organisation Is Probably Your Most Valuable Asset

When it comes to running a team, you probably know all about the struggle of keeping everything organised. Making sure everyone understands exactly what they need to get done on a daily basis and tracking long-term deliverables and short-term milestones.

Which is where technology becomes your best friend. Or more specifically SaaS.

From e-procurement software, right down to organized Trello boards for team members to check in and update their workflow – this helps you keep track of what is happening on a daily basis, without having to micromanage team members. Which is actually terrible for both their morale and their productivity.

Encourage Questions To Prevent Procrastination

Procrastination is the arch-enemy of team productivity. In fact, when we look at the science of procrastination – it’s easy enough to see exactly what causes us to put those dreadful tasks off for as long as possible – just to find out they are simple.

One of the biggest contributors to procrastination?

Can you guess it…

That’s right, not understanding what needs to be done on any given task. Employees put off work they don’t understand all the time, until last minute that is – when they have no choice but to put on their big pants and get the job done.

Which is why you want to make sure employees know they can ask questions, no matter how stupid. This will ensure procrastination is kept at bay when employees could be crushing out “simple” tasks that you need to be done ASAP.

Here is a comprehensive guide to how you can encourage questions in the workplace.

Get Your Team To Batch Email Check-Ins Rarely

Regardless of whether you’re the CEO of a giant corporation. The project manager of an SMB, or a stellar employee. Emails are a nightmare.

Think about it, you get into the office. Whoops – there’s 30 outstanding emails that you feel like you need to go through and respond to. By the time you have done that at least an hour of your day is gone. Your mind is abuzz with a false sense of productivity, and important tasks are “left until tomorrow”.

Which is why you should set up a new procedure to help both you and your team members handle emails more efficiently. A great way to do this is to batch email-check in’s for specific times during this day.

For example. Spend the first 2-3 hours of your morning doing important work that actually makes a dent in your mountain of pending tasks. Check your emails, while sipping a tasty cup of joe. Then get back to crushing out more work until the end of the day, when you do your final email check-in.

Make Sure Your Meetings Are Short, Sweet, And Productive

“There are no secrets to success. It’s the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure” = Colin Powell.

Salary.com recently underwent an in-depth survey to discover exactly what was killing productivity in the workplace. Facebook, and poorly planned unproductive meetings topped the list for time-killers.

The best thing to do is have an agenda (fancy work for to-do list) of important topics that you need to go through during the meetings. Make sure you do not stray away from these points.

Of course, It’s always a good idea to get your team members to brainstorm ideas to help with these specific points, as long as the ideas that they come up with correlates directly to what problem you are facing. Here is a guide to help you ensure every meeting is a productive one.