Burnout is inevitable when you juggle more tasks than you can count on one hand. When high expectations are set for your employees it can cause them to be extremely stressed and over-worked – which will consequently lead to the decline in productivity.
Reining in the troops as a Manager, you may experience difficulty to increase productivity of employees when these added stressors are prominent. If you are looking for ways on how to prevent wearying down employees and how to improve productivity for your entire team then you’ve come to the right place.
Give Them Tools
Outfit your team with the right tools rather than dozens of applications that may cause confusion and chaos. Tools are fabulous. But when there are too many, employees can often get distracted or worse forget they even have access to a specific tool.
Can you think of a time, when your corporate credit card was charged for renewal for a subscription that you no longer use? It might happen more than you think! By eliminating and consolating tools will allow for a simple and streamlined process.
There are countless of technology tools and with improvements in technology, it would be a shame not to armor your team with the right tools to help them work more efficiently. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of technology tools available at your fingertips. We’ve made it easy by laying out some of our favorites for you.
Clear Communication
We cannot stress how important communication is to the success of your business. We’d shout it from a megaphone from the top of the Empire State Building if we could. Aligning everyone on your team and establish a clear and streamlined communication method is a vital step for how to improve productivity of your employees. 
Voice communication is the obvious choice if you want a solid and reliable communication method. Texting and emailing can be a slippery slope – as words can get misconstrued easily.
An audio messaging app (like our own Voxer) can help make communication between your team to the next level. It allows your employees reiterate important information to management and team members with a simple click of a button. Using an audio messaging app will not only improve communication throughout your entire business but it will help boost team morale, encourage engagement and reduce added busywork.
Train Them Well
At one point or another, we can all relate to being the new kid on the block. Although cumbersome to train new employees, it is essential. It is the building block for maintaining employees for the long-run. Taking the time to educate employees on best practices, introducing them to their team members and encouraging them to take the time to learn about your business will be central to increasing productivity of employees.
We suggest spending the additional time to make training materials, especially if you have a small team. Giving new hires access to documentation and demonstrations via video, presentation or saved and recorded voice messages from an audio messaging app will prove to be useful. You wouldn’t want to throw your employees out into a torrential downpour without an umbrella as much as you’d want them to communicate to your customer’s without having any training.
Remove Distraction
We mentioned that using the right tools can help improve productivity for employees but, you’ll want to make sure they are not so distracted by using tools that they aren’t able to focus to get their task completed in an efficient manner.
People only have a finite amount of focus and jumping from task to task can often distract them from following thru and add precious time you don’t have to waste to accomplishing tasks.
Motivation Towards a Shared Goal
If you polled 5 members of your team on what your goals were, as a company, how many team members do you think would know the answer? If you aren’t sure chances are you need to make it clear what your team and company goals are so that everyone feels motivated that they are working towards the same thing. Like a well-oiled machine, your team needs to work together. Without one, your team will be lost, confused and perhaps unmotivated to complete day-to-day tasks.
We can’t stress enough how important team communication is in general on how to improve productivity. It is particularly important to motivate your team on working towards a shared goal. Alignment and sound communication is key to keeping everyone aligned.
Talk to Your Customers
Your customers can and will let you know a lot about your business. Now, it’s more important than ever before to pay attention to your customer’s as competing companies are popping up left and right with the rise of the technology movement and of course, fundraising efforts. Which is why countless corporations and even small business invest in User Researcher Teams. Taking time to speak to your customer’s enables your team to gain valuable insights into the difficulties they experience in their day to day 
Understanding your customer will undoubtfully aid your team’s productivity levels by giving you first-hand knowledge of what your team should prioritize first to provide the ultimate customer experience. Implementing their feedback will make them want to use your services again and again and most importantly, write you that solid online review.
Captivate Your Team
Just as you would try to capture the attention and keep your customer’s happy the same is true for keeping your employees motivated. When managing an on-demand teams churn is likely, but happy employees tend to stay with their employers for the long-haul. A study by Gallup reported that high performing employees have three things in common: talent, high engagement, and 10+ years of service within the company.
Individuals who don’t feel appreciated and wanted at work or more likely have no interested in productivity. Unfortunately, unhappy employees can lead to high levels of employee churn, especially with on-demand teams and as a result low productivity levels. Making team members feel welcomed and appreciated should be of high consideration when you are weighing in on how to increase productivity of employees.
Reduce Work Overload and Stress
Everyone needs a little downtime, whether they are on the clock or are regulated to clock out for a lunch or required a 15-minute break.
Nowadays, it’s pretty common for most deskbound workers to skip their breaks completely. A whopping 20% of employees are nervous their boss will think they aren’t hardworking and approximately 13% will also wonder what their co-workers will think of them stated a survey by Tork.
If you are a company that mandates employees take a break, you can probably see the benefits. When employees are able to decompress and sit down, socialize for lunch, go on a walk or run errands, they will certainly come back to work more refreshed.
Ready to Implement?
Taking the time to implement these practices would be a surefire way to improve productivity amongst your team. The more time you take to motivate employees, touch base with customers, spend the time to train new hires and work towards the same goals you will be one step closer to improving productivity of employees.
Incorporating a sound communication method will be absolutely essential for aligning your team, keeping them on-task and improve productivity in the workplace.
