There are many ways to help make your business run more smoothly, whether in a conventional building or, as most companies seem to be doing nowadays, remotely from employees’ homes. Keeping track of your workers, their work time, and getting the best productivity from them is not always easy, but here are just five ideas that could be beneficial.
Create a Staff Calendar
Having a wall chart or office wall calendar can be very helpful, and even more so if some or all of your staff happen to be working remotely. Keeping track of who is working, sick, or on holiday can be a significant aid to planning, scheduling, and highlighting any workload shortfall for completion dates and times and seeing at a glance when you may need to pull others in to help with person-hours for completion.
Use Gantt Charts
Using Gantt charts is amazingly beneficial while organizing employee’s workloads and looking at scheduling and planning. They can also be changed as required, and updating in real-time scenarios can help managers and their team members with a visual, movable to-do list to keep motivated to complete their own specific tasks. Doing this stops workers from feeling overly pressured as they can see the workload ahead of them and pace themselves accordingly.
Use the 5S Rule
To aid with procrastination, distractions, workloads, and performance, keeping to the 5 s rule is a real benefit in any working environment. The 5S rule consists of:
Sort – Remove all unnecessary items to aid with procrastination and distractions.
Set in Order – Organize, keep all equipment and tools in designated areas, and ensure the ones used most are kept in areas close to hand.
Shine (Clean) – keep work areas, tools, desks, and technology clean and well maintained.
Standardize – set up procedures for jobs and workloads, so employees know routines and do not lose person-hours between simple tasks.
Sustain – performing all the above regularly so that they become habit-forming and second nature to all employees.
Hold Regular Meetings
Having regular face-to-face communication with all staff members, whether it be manager meetings and handed on to team meetings or full-on all employee meetings, are greatly beneficial to every workforce.
It keeps all the workforce feeling involved, working toward a singular goal and everyone knowing what is expected of them and helping with company morale and performance; it also helps quell unwanted rumors and gossip, which can damage performance.
Relaxed, Comfortable, Happy Atmosphere
Having a calm feel to a workplace helps with morale; fewer mistakes are made when people do not feel rushed or heavily pressured. Comfortable office furniture – adjustable chairs and tables at the correct height can aid with lousy posture and employee wellbeing. Having good ventilation and light is a must, and it can help eliminate the ‘sick building syndrome,’ which can cause a lot of employee sickness and downtime, leading to loss of person-hours and removes profit margins from completed contracts.