Whether you work from home or in an office, the ability of being productive is an important skill and plays a defining role in your career growth. – Ways to Increase Your Productivity at Work

At workplace, finding the time to complete every task at hand and get everything done can be quite challenging, but only by making a few changes in your work style you’ll find yourself achieving more and spending less time trying to figure out what’s next on your to-do list.

Here are the top ten things you can do every day to increase your productivity at work. Before we move on, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why employees’ productivity usually suffers.

Reasons Why Employee Productivity Suffers

Lack of Employee Training

The most common cause for low productivity at work can be traced back to employees’ lack of proper training. When workers aren’t adequately trained, it will automatically hamper time management and resources. They will need supervisors to oversee whether their tasks are being completed, you will need other employers to correct and go over their work to check for mistakes.

Untrained workers will inevitably require more time and resources than is necessary and bring about a decrease in your productivity rates. Ensuring proper training of every employee is the key to eliminating this problem and increase productivity at work.

However, if in some cases, an employee fails to meet the standards even after training, you may need to consider a transfer of departments or even termination.

Lack of Sense of Belonging

An important reason for low employee productivity might be the fact that they do not feel that they belong with the company that they are part of. It is important for every CEO or senior manager to make sure that the environment in their business is welcoming to new hires and does not make them feel underappreciated.

Before hiring you should communicate the principles and values of your company first to make sure that everybody shares and will follow them in the future. Otherwise, the probability of your new workforce being less productive than the rest will increase, just because they will feel that they are not in the right place.

Lack of Employee Recognition

We all appreciate a “job well done” from someone we respect, but this could be a lot more important to a company’s overall health than you might think. When employees feel that their efforts aren’t acknowledged or valued, their motivation to perform at their best diminishes.

This work-related ennui can start to affect even your most productive employees, and over time the productivity of your organization drops with your employees’ morale. Training your management to incorporate praise and recognition into their employee feedback can be essential for keeping the organization running at its most efficient.

The relationship between management and your team can also degrade productivity if it isn’t handled properly. Micromanagement, a lack of clear communication, and a lack of verbalized respect can undermine an otherwise healthy working environment. By setting clear expectations for your employees and giving them the necessary space to perform their work, you can avoid this kind of chafing between management and your team.

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Damaged Organizational Structure

Another major reason for your employees’ low productivity could be the bad organizational structure within your company. This might take many forms but usually happens when you fail to optimize your workflow in the best possible way.

Very often, there are situations, especially in bigger organizations, where there is a lack of coherence between departments which is also a critical challenge for creating a true Agile work environment.

All of the individual parts of one company must work towards the achievement of the same goal. Even if there is a small confusion regarding who is responsible for what, then the probability of having low productivity in the workplace will increase significantly.

A solution to this problem lies in the form of synchronization. Everybody on your team should know what the others are working on and what is the progress on the tasks at hand. This can be done with the help of a visual management board that will allow every single member of your team to move tasks from “Ready to Get Started” through “In Progress” to “Done”.

This strategy will align your team efforts and provide you with a structure that creates productivity and efficiency throughout the entire business organization.

Too Many Tasks At Hand – Ways To Increase Your Productivity at Work

If you search whether multitasking is beneficial or detrimental online, you will undoubtedly come across a wide range of sources, each of which will have a different opinion.

If you are the CEO or senior manager of a company, you probably want to assign as many tasks to your employees as possible, believing that this will ensure that they never have anything to do.

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Consider that two projects (A and B) must be done, and it will take a week to finish each. Now imagine that your coworkers begin juggling the two projects without paying particular attention to either. After two weeks, both projects will be completed, but attempting to complete as much work as possible will cause Project A to be delayed by an entire week, with no advantages to Project B.

Instead, they will be able to complete Project A in one week and Project B in two weeks if they focus on one project at a time. Time management can play a key role while enhancing productivity at work.

Now let’s talk about 10 Ways In Increase Your Productivity at Work – Ways To Increase Your Productivity at Work

1. Plan Ahead

We all know the stress that can come with a busy work week. Especially when you’re laying bed on a Sunday night thinking of everything you’ve got on in the coming week.

However, if you were to plan ahead…whether it be daily, weekly or monthly – you’d feel more in control of your day-to-day life. Planning ahead has lots of benefits as you’ll spend less time worrying about what will happen and more time in the moment, not to mention how missed meetings and forgetting to send emails will become a thing of the past. This is because when you create an effective plan you’ll be able to stay accountable.

Start planning your days in advance, even the night before and you’ll see how you’ll not only get more done in less time, you’ll also experience an easier flow to life full of useful work that adds value to your life. So make sure you start scheduling your day at least the night before to get the most out of it.

2. Identify your most productive work time

People vary in terms of when they are most productive. For example, are you a morning person or a night owl? It’s important to identify which hours of the day you feel most alert and attentive, and then dedicate those hours to your most important tasks. This is especially useful if you work remotely and can determine your schedule.

If you can’t create a schedule around your most productive work time, consider organizing your priorities in your current schedule based on which hours of your workday you feel most alert. Your productivity peaks are often in 90- to 120-minute intervals.

3. Focus on one task at a time

While you ultimately may be able to get things done when you juggle projects or tasks, focusing on one at a time may help you be more productive. When we concentrate on more than one activity at a time, we tend to use more of that time just for transitioning between tasks. This can result in some of the tasks remaining incomplete or being done at a lower quality than if each task had been a sole focus.

Additionally, concentrating on one task at a time until it is complete can help you increase your productivity because when you focus on one project at a time, you are setting a single objective at once instead of many.

This is likely to motivate you to complete one task before moving on to your next assignment. If you are dedicated to multitasking, but you see that you start more tasks than you can finish, consider prioritizing your tasks in order of importance so you can start on your most demanding assignments and finish your day with lighter and less time-consuming tasks.

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4. Prioritize healthy habits

It’s not just the stuff you do during the workday that impacts your productivity—the things you do outside of work carry a lot of weight too. Maintaining healthy habits is a lot easier said than done, but even seemingly small changes can have a big impact on your energy levels, focus, and overall mood. Here are a few quick things to try:

• Drink an entire glass of water first in the morning
• Set a timer every hour to get up from your desk and stretch
• Move your bedtime up (even a half hour helps) to get a little more sleep

5. Set realistic goals

You, your team, your whole company you all need good team goals that are understandable and attainable. Lack of well-defined goals and measures is a major contributor to project failure, accounting for 37% of failed projects according to one Project Management Institute survey.

Good goals are realistic, clear, and measurable. You can assess whether your goals are good by asking the following questions:

Can we accomplish this goal with the time, resources, and project management skills we currently have? (Is it realistic?)
Do we know exactly what is being asked of us? (Is it clear?)
Are there quantifiable indicators with which we can judge our success around each goal? (Is it measurable?)

The goals you set for your team will be different from your individual goals of course. During the project plan, don’t forget to get your team’s input on what their goals should be as a group and as individuals.

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6. Take care of the biggest tasks when you’re most alert

We all sometimes push aside big goals because we’re not confident we’ll accomplish them… And by the time we get to them, we’re too burned out from our day to give it the attention it needs. That’s how projects end up bleeding into additional days, and making it feel like productivity has disappeared.

Understanding when and how you work best is key to getting those big projects done on time. There’s no set schedule that works for everyone. If you’re a morning person, tackle the big tasks first thing in your day.

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7. Delegate Tasks – Ways To Increase Your Productivity at Work

If you work as part of a team, look at your daily tasks and consider if any can be delegated to other team members. Often, we take on work that is outside our remit or can be done far quicker by others.

Delegation isn’t about offloading work you don’t want to do. Instead, it’s about ensuring everyone is working on the tasks best suited to their skills and availability. Entrepreneurs tend to try and juggle all of their business tasks. Delegating to new employees or using freelancers for things like social media content can mean more time is available for higher priority tasks.

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8. Reward Yourself on Completion of a Task

One of the most effective ways to stay productive at work is using a reward system. To use a reward system effectively, you need to create an incentive that will motivate you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary; it can simply be something you enjoy, like treating yourself with a coffee or ordering your favorite food, basically anything that gets you pumped up and working. It is important to set a task before assigning yourself a reward in order for it to increase your productivity while completing your daily tasks or during work hours.

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9. Turn Off Unnecessary Notifications – Ways To Increase Your Productivity at Work

Instead of reading each message and e-mail you receive as it comes in, turn off notifications when you’re focusing on a task. Constant alerts popping up on your phone or desktop can break your focus, even if they aren’t urgent. If you’re worried about missing an important message or call, many platforms (like Teams and Slack) allow you to mute and un-mute notifications based on the channel, team, or person involved.

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