6 Ways to Improve the Productivity of Your Team

Having a positive, driven and collaborative team is essential for a productive workplace. If there's constant miscommunication, low engagement and a lack of trust, deadlines will be missed and your business will suffer.

Building a strong team spirit will create an environment where everyone will not only want to work, but also strive for excellence. With this in mind, let's take a look at 6 simple and effective ways to improve your team's productivity.

Emphasize Your Mission

Being clear about your mission and why you do what you do is key to motivating your team. Reinforce the goals of each stage of your projects and what the reward will be upon the project's completion. It will not only keep everyone driven to perform, but it will also help clarify your process and ensure that you're on the right path.

Enable Strong Communication

A team that is able to communicate effectively will be able to share insightful ideas, use their collective thinking power to find better solutions to common problems, and provide useful feedback that can improve the workplace for everyone. While disagreements will inevitably arise, your team will be able to resolve the issues and continue moving forwards.

Start by setting grounds for when, where and how your team can communicate. For example, how often should meetings be held and how long can they be? Can employees communicate via text messages, or only emails? Answering these common questions will help get everyone on the same page and become more efficient.

Optimize the Workplace

As proven by research conducted by office equipment company Herman Miller, certain optimizations in the layout of a workplace can significantly boost productivity. Both open-office designs and closed cubicles have their benefits, but your best bet would be to discuss this with your team and come to a decision as to which type of layout they prefer.

Ideally, you would want to have a space where employees can come together to socialize and have productive discussions. Smaller improvements such as incorporating standing desks, ergonomic equipment and other products that make employees feel more comfortable can also boost productivity.

Organize Team Building Exercises

Team building not only helps everyone get to know each other better, but they will also form stronger relationships and add a bit of fun into the workplace. They don't have to impact your productivity either, as most exercises only take 2-4 hours.

These team building treasure hunts from Team Tactics are a great example. You can personalize the challenges to incorporate your company values and treat your team to a great time, which is something everyone can appreciate.

Offer Rewards and Recognition

Your team members will be much more driven to achieve if they know their hard work will be recognized or rewarded. It doesn't necessarily have to be a monetary reward; team-wide emails showing recognition to those who achieved, a personal showing of gratitude, extra vacation days, or a small gift all go a long way in motivating your team.

Create Social Time

Team building happens more during breaks than when everyone is working. It's been proven that taking breaks help workers stay focused, retain information better and re-evaluate goals. Organize a weekly get-together at the café where your team can take a few minutes off in the morning to get together and discuss the day ahead, for example.

Last but not least, saying "thank you" is more powerful than you might think. Even for smaller, seemingly less meaningful accomplishments, those two simple words will go a long way in motivating your team to keep pushing forward.

Correct utilization of these strategies can skyrocket your team's productivity and help you accomplish goals in record time, so get started today and you will quickly see the benefits.