As a leader or manager, you know how important it is to keep productivity and efficiency high. But how do you make that happen with a growing workload and too few team members?
Hiring isn’t always an option, but there are ways to streamline your processes and align your team to get the job done without spending 80 hours a week in the office.
Here are five tips for being more efficient with less headcount.
1. Delegate Tasks Evenly
Delegating sounds simple enough, but leaders and managers often fall into the routine of only delegating tasks to their top-performing team members. This habit will leave you and a handful of your team feeling overwhelmed. Instead, focus on spreading out tasks among your team to avoid bogging down your upper-level performers and give your other team members a chance to grow in the process.
2. Match Tasks to Skills
In addition to delegating tasks evenly among your team, be sure to appropriately match tasks to each team members’ skills. Mismatched responsibilities like assigning wordy reports to a more tactile team member will slow down productivity and negatively impact efficiency. Monitor your team to ensure tasks are appropriately matched and be willing to make a change, if needed. If someone is struggling to keep up with their assigned duty, it’s ok to offer support or re-assign a task.
3. Clearly Communicate Goals
Delegating wisely is a great start, but will only get you so far if your team members don’t fully understand the goals they’re working toward. Make sure your goals are “SMART”—specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely– and double check that each task you assign to an employee fits within each of these requirements. Then, communicate the big picture to your team. Clearly explain how each task comes together to reach company goals.
4. Offer Incentives
Does your team need a little extra motivation to improve efficiency? Give them a reason to do so by offering incentives. When your team members feel recognized and appreciated, they’ll be motivated to continue increasing productivity and efficiency. Depending on the size of your team, you can customize incentives to individual preferences. For example, some employees might prefer public recognition while others might appreciate a more subtle thank you. Examples of incentives include additional paid time off, a team meal or happy hour outing, tickets to a sporting event, or even a hand-written note.
5. Automate or Outsource Inefficient Processes
Even after proper delegation, communication, and incentivisation, some processes just need to change. Choosing to automate or outsource a specific aspect of your business could free up your team members to focus on more meaningful tasks and increase overall efficiency.
That’s where Acciòn Performance comes in. Our performance-based model is designed around output and deliverables rather than headcount and billable hours. By combining additional manpower with experienced project managers and LEAN-trained team leads, we’re able to deliver customized solutions that can be applied to any labor-intensive process within your supply chain or back office.