words Al Woods
Increasing productivity makes your business more effective, efficient and profitable. By improving the performances of your employees, you can finish tasks faster and make your customers more satisfied. Here are some ways to make your workforce more productive without raising costs.
Streamline Communications With Customers
You can help customers and employees save time by assisting people with contacting the correct department and taking care of routine tasks quickly and easily. Most businesses should have multiple e-mail addresses and phone numbers to help customers reach workers who can help them with minimal or no waiting. Call center software allows people to pay their bills, get updates about their accounts and more without waiting to speak to a representative.
People who need to talk to a person can select the department they need and avoid being transferred. For example, a customer at a bank who wants to open an account will need to speak to a different employee than an account holder who’s worried about identity theft. Workers will be able to resolve problems for more callers per hour, and they won’t have to spend time apologizing for long hold times or multiple transfers.
Give Workers More Freedom
Micromanaging by constantly giving new instructions or correcting your employees can keep people from concentrating on doing their jobs well. You should let experienced individuals make their own decisions when possible. If you don’t agree with some of those decisions, tell the members of your workforce how they can improve during performance reviews instead of interrupting them while they’re taking care of important tasks. This gives people a chance to learn new skills, gain leadership experience and observe the consequences of their actions. Additional autonomy also saves time for managers and allows people to find ways to innovate and increase efficiency without violating company rules.
Set Clear Goals
Workers have a hard time performing well when they’re not sure what managers want. You should let people know what they’re expected to accomplish every day. For example, salespeople should have a goal to sell a certain number of products per week. Call center workers should take care of as many customers per hour as possible by following the best call handling behaviors. You can base your company’s goals on what top performers can accomplish.
Those goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. For example, instead of telling people to be more courteous to customers, you can let each worker know that you want a particular number of favorable online reviews as well as a higher average rating. As you streamline procedures and make your company more efficient, you can continue to increase goals and improve performance.
Recognize Top Performers
Without some recognition, your employees won’t have a reason to meet your performance goals. You can give the best performers framed certificates that they can display on their desks or take photos of them and place them on your website or a bulletin board in the workplace. Some companies allow top performers to choose their own schedules as long as their total hours stay the same. This is especially helpful for people who need to pick their kids up from school. It lets workers save money on child care without increasing your expenses.
You can motivate your workers and increase performance by measuring productivity accurately and fairly, making their jobs as easy as possible and minimizing stress caused by dissatisfied customers or micromanaging managers. Along with increasing profits, happy workers will also stay at your company longer, reducing recruiting and training costs.
