How to Increase Productivity At Every Level of Your Business

In the past I’ve talked a lot about productivity when it comes to your management team. Having a unified front on the things that matter most in your business and being able to help them focus their time and resources on those end goals can be a huge game-changer for many businesses. But what about the frontline workers? The people in your company who spend their days doing the day-to-day work your business depends on? These are the workers swinging hammers on the job site, the accountant turning off the lights, the account manager answering the phone. All of these employees play a huge role in the success of your business. So today I want to give you some tips on how to help them be more productive in the workplace.

It’s easy for a team member to take on a lot of work, but if it doesn’t add value to your business, it doesn’t really count. A sales rep can be really good at approaching customers. They can talk to a thousand customers a day and still struggle with productivity if they can’t close a single sale. The same applies to other positions in your company. Therefore, it is important to recognize the fact that the end goal is not to be “busy” but to create value.

Depending on your business, it can be difficult to get everyone in the same room at once, which is why I love morning get-togethers. It’s a quick ten or fifteen minute touch base to go through the most important things in your business. You can start by asking each team member what is the most important thing they have planned for the coming week. This will vary by position, but will spark the idea that the things they do during the week have different values ​​for the company. The accountant won’t say she’s going to “pay the bills,” but she can say she’s finally going to collect that customer who has a large overdue balance.

Huddles are also a great place to introduce KPIs to your team. What is the most important result you are looking for in your position? And what are the two most important leading indicators for this? Once they know what to look for and what to expect, they will be drawn to the tasks and projects that help move the needle.

For example, if you’re the receptionist at a doctor’s office, the number one result you can do is make sure you keep your schedule full, whether it’s for doctor visits or for procedure-related things. Holes in a schedule are incredibly expensive for a doctor’s office. So for this part you want to know what percentage of the schedule was full for the week. And if it wasn’t optimal, you would then find tasks to do that week to help book more patients.