Leveraging Technology to Improve Team Productivity and Efficiency
You can have the world’s best idea or service, but if you work with the wrong set of people, you will get nowhere.
That’s why team productivity is the key to a successful business and operations managers are the ones responsible for keeping the team members motivated. One of their tasks is monitoring and leading their team and implementing innovations that push the company forward.
However, this comes with its own set of challenges. Read on about the most common reasons for a drop in productivity and how the top operations managers handle them.
Productivity Challenges
It can be hard at times to measure knowledge-based employees just by productivity output. But it’s a fact that productivity brings prosperity, so a good operations manager needs to know how to promote quality work and allocate tasks with reason and efficiency.
But from time to time, challenges in teams arise. We were reminded of this fact, quite ungently, when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, and many companies moved to a remote or hybrid work model.
Lack of Clarity and Communication
Uncertain roles and duties can bring whole projects to a halt. And these often occur when there is a problem in the communication department.
Many companies got forced to step up their game when whole teams and sectors moved to a work-from-home model due to Covid-19. A 2020 report on remote work found communication and collaboration to be the biggest challenges of this work model.
Excessive Meetings
We often joke about this, and we make memes about Zoom meetings that easily could’ve been emails. But excessive meetings are a real thing and one of our culprits.
So, it turns out you can have too much of a good thing. But a good operations manager can analyze the situation well and assess if a meeting is in order or if that would further complicate an issue.
Disengagement
We’re living in the era of burnout. Even before the pandemic, it was easy to slip into a work-only mindset that can lead to burnout and disengagement. Thanks to many of us sitting at home and working, the line between free personal time and work has never been muddier.
In such scenarios, whole teams can become disengaged. And even before remote work became a standard, workers who failed to understand their role in the bigger picture fell prey to a lack of motivation. A strong vision and direction are needed to keep them in check and on their toes.
Tips on Improving Team Productivity
One of the main concerns of operations managers is team productivity. Deadlines, whole projects, and overall company growth depend on how efficiently teams work and if they’re in sync. Here are tips that will give you excellent results to present to the top management and clients.
Be Realistic About Deadlines and Goals
Time management is of the essence in this work-obsessed era. We cannot stress enough how important it is to prepare for assignments by setting realistic timeframes properly. Failing to do so leads to, well, failure.
Are your superiors pushing for unrealistic deadlines and goals? Stand your ground and explain how such a thing would not only hurt your team members’ efficiency and lead to burnout, but it would also lead to subpar results or no results at all! Let them know that a lack of well-defined goals is the culprit of 37% of failed projects.
Here is a blueprint for setting attainable goals. As an operations manager, ask yourself:
- Can we perform the task with the time, resources, and skills we have?
- Is the project or task brief clear?
- Can we measure the success of the goal with quantifiable indicators?
Monitor Progress
As an operations manager, you need to know how to properly oversee projects and keep an eye on the progress in each step. So, before starting the project, establish KPIs (key performance indicators) – the budget, project timeline, and the quality expectations.
As your project moves on, check in constantly with your indicators to have a clear picture of progress and issues that need to be dealt with. Besides soft skills that help you track the project, technology is on hand to help.
We moved to a more hybrid work model, and it’s only natural that our need for convenient and easy-to-use work platforms went up. Dedicated and optimized workspace software such as Focos made progress easier for teams and operations managers to oversee each project phase.
Seeing how 74% of employers plan to shift some workers to remote work permanently, you should get well-versed with work platforms and start by booking a free demo.
Give Your Team the Right Tools
Even the most committed team player won’t get far without the right toolkit. Whatmore, sometimes you can have all you need for success, but have it organized in such a confusing manner that you end up with a clutter of needless apps and underutilized valuable tools.
A dedicated work platform will let you improve engagement and collaboration by having your team operate in one place. And if you’re a startup that’s especially tight on money, such software will let you balance your budget better since you’d be saving money on apps you never actually use.
Organizing your tools in one place means that your team is free to focus on more pressing matters instead of dealing with the chaos of multiple tabs and apps.
And just as whole teams benefit from a tidy workplace (be it remote or not), so do individuals. Operations managers need to keep their analytical skills sharp to yield results. Remote-friendly tech such as Focos helps them take control of the data through the analytics feature and use it to make data-driven decisions.
Conclusion
We have moved to a different era of work. Sitting from the comfort of our homes, we face many challenges to operate efficiently, and our minds can wander more easily. Thankfully, we also have helpful tech that helps improve team productivity.
So as we fight to keep a clear line between our me-time and our work time, we should stick to the mantra “Work smarter, not harder,” and let the tech do some of the heavy lifting.