Don’t Work Harder Work Smarter: Business Tools to Manage Productivity

Employers are always looking for ways to up and manage productivity, but have a habit of missing the key to getting more work done. Don't work harder work smarter.

In an age of mass resignations, burnout, and stress going through the roof, perhaps it’s an idea we should pursue. Read on to find our ideas for helping your employees work smarter, not harder.

Project management platforms can help manage productivity

Project management platforms eliminate the need for micromanaging. Everything is there in writing to be referred to. Workloads can be assigned, and stuck to, while being evenly distributed. They can also keep track of any overtime being done so you can distribute the correct salaries.

The point of project management platforms, like Trello or Asana, is that you can assign tasks to every member of your team. They will have a checklist that they can run through as the day, week, month, or even project progresses. You can be sure everyone is assigned equal weight and your team will feel the benefits of a list of goals.

There is just something about the psychology of to-do lists that makes you work through them faster. They give us structure to our work and a good dose of happy chemicals when we get to tick something off.

By signing your team up for a project management platform, you can oversee all the work without physically breathing down any necks.

Good training will make employees more productive

You can’t expect a team to work smarter without being smarter, so training is definitely on the table. You can expand skill sets that range from the small and simple designed to make everyday operations easier to adding new skills.

Not only are you creating more knowledgeable team members that can use their new skills all over the business, but you are creating happier, more fulfilled employees, which, as we go into in-depth, is vital to manage productivity properly.

You can do some in-office training, covering specialized software or hands-on training. Or, you can outsource your training to a remote learning platform like LinkedIn Learning, which offers lots of courses on a subscription basis. Train your employees on everything from leadership skills to graphic design to spruce up your company website or marketing.

Automation systems

If you can automate something within the business operations, why wouldn’t you? There are a lot of areas across the business where you can implement this. For example, there is HR automation.

HR automation doesn’t mean eliminating the role of the HR representative, but it will help you save time and money. You can automate concepts like distributing benefits and bonuses. Itself a great way to boost and manage productivity in the workplace. Also, onboarding processes like confidentiality agreements and NDAs, and leave of absence requests can be automated.

There are lots of areas that you can outright automate. This includes the small tedious things that will take a weight off the back of your employees, to the bigger things that you can save an entire salary on.

And the best part is that a lot of these automated systems are very affordable, or even free, like Trello.

Marketing research

A lot of companies either assign marketing to one specialized team or else have the intern handle it. He’s been on the Book of Face, he knows how to Instagram, and that’ll do. There is no in-between.

If you need your marketing done, there is a lot you can do to elevate the intern to doing his best. There is a middle ground here.

That middle ground is marketing research. Understanding consumer and user habits, what makes for quality content, the concept of affiliate marketing, and behind it all: data.

Now, the intern might switch off when they hear that word, but if their content isn’t getting any engagement, it's necessary. Data is marketing for marketing content. It’s what puts your content in front of the eyes that are going to engage with it most.

Timmy can spend all day editing that TikTok, but if he doesn’t know how to get it out there, you are simply spending a salary on a social media addict.

Good company culture

A lot of higher-ups have different opinions on what makes for good company culture. You might think that yoga balls for chairs make for happy employees, but we’re a lot more basic than that. A lot of managers are missing out on the basic things that make for a good working environment.

We’re more like dogs than you’d think. As long as we feel safe and respected, we’ll settle in well. Feeling safe and respected is the foundation of business operations. Otherwise, without it, there’s no point in the free donuts on Fridays.

This starts with systemic processes. You have to make sure that your policies are in place that protect the vulnerable, whether it’s due to race, gender, sexuality, ability, religion, nationality, etc. Not least for the sake of your company, which will see regulation fines if it’s found to not be following these compliance issues.

However, creating a safe environment for your employees is also going to make sure they keep their mind on their work. If they are being harassed and there are not sufficient operations in place to support them, they’re obviously going to be distracted by it. A happy team is a more productive team.

What tools help you boost and manage productivity the best?