Business Process
Automation Consultants
5 Brilliant Tips to get Productive
The latest figures from the ONS indicate that UK economic growth continues to be slow. Improving the nation’s productivity remains a hot topic as the UK tries to catch up with France, Germany and the US.
At Smarter Business Processes, productivity has always been a key focus for our clients. We know that common unproductive tasks can lead workers to spend less than half of their time on their main jobs and research suggests that in an eight-hour day, the average worker is only productive for around four hours.
Here’s a look at five time-wasters that are draining your team’s productivity and taking time away from creative and innovative work, and what you can do to help them get more high-value work done.
Constantly checking email
Is your team spending more time than you think on email? Harvard Business Review reports that the average professional spends 28% of their workday reading and answering email, with the average full-time worker spending 2.6 hours and receiving 120 messages per day.
Still, email doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. According to the State of Enterprise Collaboration report, despite the rapid adoption of collaboration tools, 58% of IT decision makers have seen increased email usage at their companies.
It’s unlikely your team is trying to waste their time in email. Maybe they’re worried that someone might need something from them and they don’t want to leave anyone in the lurch. Or they are waiting for information from someone else, so they keep checking back. Or perhaps you’ve set the expectation that you can immediately get a hold of them through email. Fretting about email isn’t always a productive business.
We can resolve this issue by building you a collaborative workspace. It makes for more productive employees. We can either create this for you using Smartsheet’s PMO template, or we can work with you on a productive, customised solution. Either way, reduce reliance on email, and manage projects by giving teams a space to organize and manage their work outside of their inbox.
Unproductive meetings
How much time does your team spend in ineffective meetings? You know the kind. Everyone gets into a room to discuss what they’ve been working on, where they are on a project, and what they’re going to work on next, while taking time away from actually doing the work. Too many meetings can make you less productive in the workplace.
If you’re having your team spend an hour getting updates on things that may or may not be relevant to the work they’re doing, it’s time to reconsider your approach. A work execution platform like our Smarter Dashboards tool can help show the status of every element of the project in one place, without gathering everyone for a stand up. You can also use this tool to automate status updates, and create reports to show stakeholders that your projects are on track.
Chasing deadlines
Are you or your team members spending time reminding people of upcoming deadlines? Do you keep checking in to make sure work is on track? Not only does this contribute to the volume of email, but it’s also not a very productive use of your time. In fact it reduces a team’s productive capacity if chasing becomes a major activity.
There is a way to help your team and cross-functional collaborators stay on top of their deadlines. With automated workflows you can create automated reminders based on the milestones or due dates laid out in your project plan. For example, you can have Smartsheet automatically send a reminder to those responsible and accountable for a task three days before it’s due, and another on the day it’s due. It makes for more productive days all round.
Searching for information
Searching for the information they need to get their work done can be a significant time-waster for your team. Workers on average spend 36% of their day looking for and consolidating information, according to CMS Wire. But 44% of the time, they can’t find the information.
There is a way to get all of the information everyone needs to complete a project or manage a process in one place. Simply synch your cloud storage with your Smart sheet data. It can make you very productive. We can work with you to connect to Google Drive or Dropbox cloud storage and sync Excel files or Google sheets to and from your Smartsheet environment. This will allow you to automatically integrate supplier price lists, customer event schedules, logistics, anything that can be saved in a spreadsheet and accessed by cloud storage. It also further helps to reduce time wasted searching for attachments in email.
Reacting to interruptions
According to the American Psychological Association, “even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40% of someone’s productive time.” Some of these interruptions might be of a more social nature, but they often take place in the form of a search for information, project status update request, or an attempt to track down approvals to keep a project moving forward.
By automating repetitive, manual tasks such as approvals, status updates, and reminders, your team can become more productive by cutting out unproductive interruptions. People can respond when they have a moment, without being actively interrupted. You may also want to establish and communicate “interruption-free” blocks of time with your team so they can have some time that’s free from interruptions for deep work.
Create more time for high-value work
We can improve your team productivity today. Talk to us about your Smartsheet Workflows, Tracking, Automation and Integration. Arrange a free consultation – we’d love to hear from you!
Further Reading
You might be interested in our recent blog about the challenge of Low Productivity in the UK.
You can also read about some of the ways you can boost your working practises while remote working here.
