Image source“Always be the hardest working guy in the room,” that is one of the greatest pieces of advice anyone could hope to hear and adhere to. But it isn’t just about working harder, or longer hours; it is about being smart with your work. By being smart you are maximising your productivity, your effectiveness, your efficiency. The problem we all face is, how can we work smarter? How can we make our working days more productive without putting extra hours in?
Below we have compiled a list of ways you can make your office a more productive place to work.
- Streamline Your Meetings
The most effective way you can prevent an internal meeting or brainstorm from crossing the two hour mark when the same outcome could have been achieved in 45-minutes is to have an agenda. This will allow all those in attendance to see what matters need to be addressed without going off topic. You don’t want to go to a meeting about marketing strategies and find yourselves an hour into a conversation about whether or not your office needs a fish tank. But why stop at just a simple agenda, why not have someone compile the list of topics in priority order, and give them a rough time frame that you can all work too. This would be beneficial to all those in attendance and save a lot of resource hours.
- Outsource Time Consuming Tasks
In every office, there are tasks that consume way too much of people’s time when they should be focussing on something else, say the job they were hired to do in the first place. These can be menial tasks like ensuring you desk is well-organised, or they could be more major tasks such as the day-to-day management of all IT functions. It could even be HR support you require . So, if you have noticed a specific area where time is being wasted, do something about it. If it is organising your desk, invest in some filing cabinets and colour-coded boxes and desk tidies. If it is managing your IT needs, bring in additional IT support. Whatever problem has been identified, the next step is to address it.
- Digital Learning
Training employees can be a long and arduous task, especially if you’re a national company, and especially if it is a mandatory subject, like compliance or code of conduct. It is a necessity that eats into valuable time. There is the time it takes to organise,the transport time and the duration of the training; all of which steals resource hours. As an alternative, and one that has proven to be more effective in the training of individuals, try moving all your training online by enlisting the help of a digital learning company. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or costly, but it will definitely prevent your company from wasting unnecessary time. What’s more, as a little tip on how you can save money, look at learning companies that do off-the-shelf products, or put your requirement out to tender.
