7 Simple Ways to Increase Team Efficiency and Productivity

What is a team? A team is a group of professionals who complement each other with their skills, knowledge, and expertise and are united by one goal: solving common tasks.  At the same time, they also bear personal responsibility for the outcome of the tasks.

Only by working in a team can you solve issues which are overwhelming for one person. Each team member makes a unique and valuable contribution to the common cause.

In this article, we will share some simple tips on how to organize your employees’ work, which will help you increase your team efficiency as a whole.

Set Clear Goals

Goal-setting is the first and most important step in the process of working on any project.  It is necessary to work on a daily basis to improve your goal-setting system.

In this context, one of the key problems for a team occurs when the final goals which the team has to work to achieve are uncertain and vague. This situation makes each person understand goals in their own way, causing controversy during discussions and leading to errors.

Therefore, it is necessary to clearly describe the overall goal, the tools to be used, and the criteria for employees’ performance evaluations.

Prioritize Tasks

Trivial matters like email reviews, unplanned workshops, office conversations, and daily proceedings take away the bulk of the working day. The worst thing is that we like this state of affairs because we take little effort to do insignificant tasks.

Parkinson’s Law says, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” That is why it is necessary to prioritize tasks and start work with the most important things.

Make Sure Your Team Members Understand Everything

Explain the goals of the company to each employee in relation to his or her profile. When it comes to a small team, you cannot just set a goal right in front of everyone and wait for each team member to guess his or her role.

This approach will provide you with an opportunity which large teams cannot have — not just to voice the tasks but also to explain personally to each teammate where and why these tasks appeared and why things need to be done.

In that personal conversation, you can discuss all the nuances in detail and get the employee to completely understand the work that lies ahead.

Appoint a Responsible Person

To avoid conflicts (whether a workplace or an interpersonal conflict), it is necessary to immediately delimit powers and appoint a team leader who will become a sole possessor of ultimate truth (in a good sense) for employees.

Even if such a leader has two or three subordinates, this approach will still help you keep processes stable, at least within the scope of the team’s work.

Systematize Knowledge and Experience

It would be an excellent decision to systematize accumulated experience by creating instructions and regulations. Such instructions should contain a step-by-step scenario and description of all stages of work, as well as specified deadlines for their implementation.

It is best to document best practices in the format of regulations and instructions, which will allow your employees to follow a well-worn path. These documents will become a good learning tool for beginners, though experienced employees will be able to use them as well if necessary.

It would be a mistake to consider standardization to be the enemy of flexibility and creativity. On the contrary, by documenting simple repetitive processes, we free up resources for creativity.  (proofreader note: instead of “creative search”)

Eliminate responsibility intersection

Teamwork also runs into difficulties when team members duplicate their duties. The overall efficiency of the entire team decreases because people with the same functions do not entirely comprehend the meaning of their participation in the teamwork.

If you see a situation like this, you will need to eliminate the intersection and duplication of responsibilities, because sooner or later the performance of both individual employees and the team as a whole will be affected.

Stay in Touch

Staying regularly in touch with your team for constructive and meaningful discussions forms a culture of trust among its participants. For instance, you can ask your employees about their problems and offer to help find solutions, as well as verify whether they need additional resources, and so on.

People shape their behavior based on their view of the world and often do not know what it means to “work well” the way their leader sees it. Such a misconception will eventually cause dissatisfaction on the part of the executive management, and then will also demotivate people.

The easiest way to ensure people’s correct behavior is to maintain quality interrelations.

Summary

Some methods of increasing performance have explicit costs, but some of them just take some time to be implemented. In any case, such efforts eventually pay off, benefiting all team members and the company as a whole.

It is important not to rest on your oars when you see the first results. A small team’s success depends on its continuous progress: develop good practices, get rid of bad ones, and improve your methods on the go if necessary.