How to Increase Team Efficiency: 15 Tips to Optimize Productivity
Efficiency: It’s a buzzword you hear quite a bit. But what does it actually mean? And how can you actually push your team to excellence in less time? These are fair questions – the balance between productivity and efficiency can put a lot of pressure on your team. Worse yet, misguided ideas for improving team efficiency have the nasty habit of slowing things down when they intend to do quite the opposite. To that end, here are 15 reliable tips on how to increase team efficiency.
What Is Team Efficiency?
Team efficiency is basically a ratio of how much your team produces to how much they use – time, energy, money. Efficiency is about being strategic with your resources, so your team spends its time wisely.
How To Increase Team Efficiency
Every team has strengths and weaknesses. Efficiency focuses on improving team performance by developing each team member’s skills and strengths. But it’s also about removing any obstacles to high-performance work. The bottom line is: We’ve all spent too much time on certain tasks before, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The below tips will help you and your team get on the right track.
1. Encourage Collaboration
Everyone on the same team – or within the same company, even if they’re on different teams – is working toward a common goal: company improvement. And for your team members to be on the same page, collaboration is key. That means gathering your sharpest minds to solve your toughest problems. After all, there’s a reason the saying goes, “two heads are better than one.”
Your organization can be especially efficient with something called “cross-functional collaboration.” Sounds intense, right? It’s not. It’s just a formal term for getting people with related but different skill sets to solve problems together. This way, you’ll spend less time hunting down resources and more time delivering results. Try pointing your employees to other departments with the knowledge to point them in the right direction more quickly.
2. Perfect Your Time Management Skills
Proper time management is essential for efficiency, and if you want your team to have good time management skills, you’ll need to lead by example. However, if time management isn’t your strong suit, you can do small things to address this challenge. Consider implementing some of the below tactics for yourself and your team:
- Block off time on your schedule, which you can dedicate to specific tasks or projects.
- Hold weekly meetings to prioritize tasks and plan your schedule.
- Implement “no call” or “no meeting” days, so team members can work uninterrupted.
3. Optimize Workflows
Streamlining daily operations helps your team get through their to-do lists faster – that’s efficiency. A good workflow cuts out any redundant or tedious tasks that impact productivity, like routine paperwork or answering emails. To get your team out of their inboxes and into full-on work mode, Text Blaze can help.
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Text Blaze’s free browser extension allows you to create all kinds of keyboard shortcuts and then use them anywhere in Chrome. Text Blaze creates shortcuts of your most frequently-typed text and shortens them to a quick command, cutting down on the hours your team spends each day on some of these rote tasks.
For example, if customer service emails are key to your workflow, just create a template, then drop a slash command in Gmail. Voila – what used to take minutes now takes seconds. In the long haul, that’s tons of time back, all but ensuring improved efficiency in your workflow.
4. Prioritize Employee Well-Being
It’s no secret that employee burnout is a huge issue in the United States. It’s inspired a shift in how your team members approach work and what their managers offer to help in turn.
Workplace health programs may not be anything new, for example, but candidates value them more than ever. Your program can include small things like team lunches to get everyone chatting and in a good mood. You can also offer discounted gym memberships or work in an office space (if you’re an in-person or hybrid team) that has a gym in the building. No matter how you approach it, a less-stressed workforce is a more productive and efficient one.
Another key to stress management is a healthy work-life balance. Give some of these approaches a try:
- Give yourself and your team a cut-off time for emailing – say, nothing before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m.
- Remind your team to use all their vacation time, especially when more than half of American workers leave time behind.
- Check in with your team regularly to see what you can do as a manager to help their mental health or stress levels.
5. Diversify Your Team
Diversity goes along with the two-heads-are-better-than-one mentality. After all, a team comprising different backgrounds brings all kinds of unique perspectives to the table. That means you’ll have pretty much endless possibilities for problem-solving and creative thinking. Surely, some of these solutions will save you money and time.
Think about it like this: If everyone on your team has a similar background, that does little for collaboration. How can you solve problems when everyone approaches them from the same mindset? Diversity increases team efficiency because you have more players at the table with different thought processes. That’s the core of great collaboration.
6. Practice Gratitude
If working remotely has taught people anything, it’s that a team works best when everyone is supported and celebrated, even from afar. People are social creatures, and we crave human interaction, even at work. A team only focused on the numbers, and not the people behind them, just won’t be successful or efficient in the long run.
To motivate your team, try uplifting them and cultivating a positive environment where you lead with gratitude. You should encourage your team members to show their appreciation for one another and, of course, lead by example. Try expressing your appreciation with weekly shout-outs, words of encouragement, or quarterly gifts (if appropriate).
7. Set Clear Goals and Deadlines
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If you can be anything in the workplace, be clear, especially when assigning tasks. You should explicitly state responsibilities, milestones, and deadlines for each project. Create a space where team members can ask questions. Answering outstanding inquiries now prevents issues from occurring down the line. And those issues, of course, cause delays that directly impact your team’s ability to be as efficient as possible.
8. Clarify Everyone's Role
When your whole team is tackling an important task, be clear about everyone’s role and make each person’s goals realistic. Make sure that each person knows who’s responsible for which part of the project, which makes collaboration easier. Set fair deadlines and avoid assigning tasks without explaining why you’ve assigned them. You should also regularly meet with each team member one-on-one to see how they’re faring. This guidance can be just what your team needs to run at peak efficiency.
9. Eliminate Distractions
Removing workplace obstacles – as in, the things that get in the way of efficiency – can mean eliminating distractions too. Sure, people are bound to chat about non-work related matters at the water cooler or over Slack. In fact, this is a healthy part of workplace culture! But here, we’re referring to frustrating distractions that can take someone out of their workflow. This can include too many unnecessary meetings, sending excessive emails, or pestering someone for an answer to a question that can wait until tomorrow.
Minimizing distractions is an especially great way to lead by example. When you block off space on your calendar for deep dives into research or projects, you show your team that it’s okay to mute notifications. You can also decline meetings that don’t require your attendance, so your team also feels safe doing so. Of course, you should always give a kind, level-headed reason for declining – just saying no can lead to conflicts that decrease efficiency.
10. Rank Your Tasks by Priority
We all know that feeling of drowning in work. Often, this need to do everything at once can result in nothing (or very little) getting done. This cycle causes more panic and another day of feeling stressed about work. You might start to feel like you’re always trying to catch up – always pushing items on your task list to the next day. It might help to remember that not every task is a number-one priority.
To start your day, look at your tasks and organize them in order of importance. Keep in mind that things change – you might have to pivot and rearrange things as the day progresses. You should encourage your team to take this approach too, but there’s one exception. If something pops up, and you need team members to rearrange their priorities to handle something now, don’t be afraid to say so. Since you’re leading them, they might need to listen to you here.
11. Don't Multitask
Focus is a huge part of efficiency. Though the temptation to multitask is strong, keep yourself tuned into one task at a time. It may seem like working on several things at once means you get more done, but that’s just not true. Science backs this notion: Several studies have found that multitasking decreases efficiency.
By contrast, when you give something your complete, undivided attention, you’re more likely to catch mistakes and do things right the first time. Error-riddled work derails efficiency. You should set a good example for your team and leave the bad habit of multitasking at the door when you start your day.
12. Use The Right Technology
With project management tools, your team can always be in the know about deadlines, meetings, and everything else. But like most things in life, there can be too much of a good thing. You should find the tools that work for your team and limit it to those – don’t overwhelm them with platforms to check. Doing so is inefficient – jumping among a bunch of tools just to get the basics puts everyone behind.
When choosing the right tools for your team, look to Text Blaze to speed up your typing. Text Blaze keeps your writing and messages on point and error-free with dynamic, highly customizable shortcuts and templates. Plus, you can try it for free, which works wonders for limiting your use of resources. You’ll also save more than 28 hours per month typing, giving you productivity improvements that amount to an incredible $10,000 saved per year!
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13. Keep All Your Files Organized
File management is important for getting your work organized, which increases efficiency because you’ll spend less time searching for what you need. Plus, with a highly organized system, you can store work into folders and easily share documents. That’s how you optimize your workflows and reduce the likelihood of misplacing critical files – or redoing work that’s already happened.
14. Celebrate Team Wins
When your team wins, everyone wins. Yes, hard work is indispensable, but work without any reward or acknowledgment increases the possibility of burnout. Your praise should be meaningful and well-thought-out – ditch generic compliments for specific ones. Doing so can fuel creativity and inspire a collaborative, engaging work environment. It can have a domino effect on efficiency and the quality of your team’s work.
15. Evaluate and Improve Your Processes Regularly
Strive for improvement, even after you’ve put a system in place. New tools and team feedback can introduce new ways of approaching team efficiency that didn’t come up in your initial plans. Don’t be afraid to shake things up a bit in the name of progress. Your team might thank you for the changes.
To Wrap up
From a marketing team facing the holiday rush to a non-profit organization in the throes of fundraising season, every company deals with efficiency challenges. Striving for the most work with less spending is a part of business that’s here to stay. Since it’s inevitable, tools that increase your efficiency and save money, such as Text Blaze, are a great way to streamline your workflows.
With Text Blaze’s snippets and dynamic templates, you can shave off hours of valuable time sending emails or other messages. Start eliminating repetitive typing and mistakes – and saving your team time and money – right now with the Text Blaze browser extension tool.
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