Office Productivity Improvements from the Top Down

Listen up managers, employers or any others who have people working under you. Does your office productivity level have room for improvement? The answer is probably yes. There is almost always room for improvement in office productivity. Now, did you realize that your employees are not solely responsible for work productivity? You probably do, or you wouldn’t be in a position of leadership to begin with. Take a minute to look at a few of these tips to help improve your workplace from the top down. Setting a good example is important, but there is far more to it than that.

Your To Do List Never Ends

Priorities and Goals

Good time management is essential in the best of offices. Setting priorities and letting your employees know the importance of tasks as they are given out can keep them focused on what is expected of them on a daily basis. Go even further and make a list of what tasks are most urgent and you will empower them to get those things done without micromanaging them. Google Tasks provides some excellent tools for making and sharing lists with your employees. These tools are accessible even while they are on the go or while you are also out of the office. Besides that, who doesn’t feel a sense of value and accomplishment in crossing off items on a list as they are completed?

Setting feasible goals is another way to keep employees motivated. Setting goals with deadlines is even better. Some of the tasks on the to-do lists you create should take more than a day, a week or even a month to complete. With long-term goals, your employees will have more of a tendency to be satisfied than those who have lower expectations placed on them to begin with.

Breaks and Distractions

Frequent times away from computer screens or desks can improve productivity more than you might imagine. Simply walking to the water cooler can get the blood flowing, get eyes rested and encourage collaboration if break times are shared with other employees. Returning to the tasks (or problems) at hand with fresh eyes and a cleared mind can make those tasks seem easier thus get done more quickly.

Social media sites take up a collective 12.2 billion hours of time in the course of a day. Add email checks and Wikipedia look-ups into that and the average person is checking one of these sites every 5 minutes. Get unplugged! Encourage set times for checking emails so that this task doesn’t lead to other social sites and eat up all of your employees time.

Good leadership starts with setting a good example. If you are already doing that, what are some other tips you have found helpful to improve your office’s productivity levels?