Standing still in a continually evolving world means that you will soon be left far behind. If you want your organization to stay relevant and beat the competition, you must continuously find ways to improve and offer your clients more in less time. If you feel that you are currently using too many resources to achieve simple objectives, then you need to hack your organization’s efficiency. Below are eight proven steps to doing this.
1. Create Clear Goals
An efficient organization is one that achieves its goals and objectives quickly while simultaneously yielding quality results. It makes sense then that the first step in improving your organization’s efficiency would be to create those goals in a clear and effectively communicated manner.
At every level, an organization must have clear goals and objectives. These serve as a road map for your staff and will provide a sense of direction. Many organizations do have such goals and objectives; however, a frequently observed mistake is that these are often too ambiguous or broad, and frankly unattainable. When setting goals, keep in mind the acronym, SMART, which stands for:
· Specific
· Measurable
· Achievable
· Relevant
· Timely
Every time you create a goal, make sure that it ticks all of the above boxes. This will ensure that you are providing your employees and your organization as a whole with a clear sense of direction. Also, organization-level goals may differ from unit-level goals but must be aligned.
2. Offer Rewards
Individual employees are the basic functional units in any organization. To improve your business or organization’s overall efficiency, you must make sure that each individual is at their most efficient as much as possible. Creating clear goals for individuals, as just pointed out, is an excellent first step. The next would be offering some rewards to those who achieve their efficiency KPIs. According to one study, offering rewards quickly and frequently for completing small tasks is way more effective than offering rewards only after the completion of long projects. For some employees, a simple “thank you” is enough of an incentive and a reward. Other incentives you can provide are bonuses, a raise, recognition in the form of a token award like “employee of the month”, etc.
3. Encourage Seamless Communication
So much of resource wastage at the organizational level comes from communication failures, which lead to duplication of efforts and other similar inefficiencies. To prevent this, you must ensure that there is clear communication among members of your staff. Tools like Slack provide an easy avenue for this. According to one study, the use of such collaborative communication tools could improve workers’ productivity by up to 25 percent.
Effective communication can also be undermined by a work culture that suppresses the views of junior staff. Often, these staff members are on the front line of operations and may possess valuable insights to promote efficiency, even the feeling of being heard can make your staff feel like they are valued and work harder.
4. Prioritize Training and Education
When you take in new employees, it can be tempting to rush through the onboarding process so that you can get your new staff up and running as quickly as possible. Yet a rushed onboarding means that these staff will inevitably make costly errors that waste resources unnecessarily. The better the training new employees receive, the less likely they are to waste resources.
Training, however, should not start and end with new employees. Provide opportunities for your staff to continuously develop themselves through learning and development programs. Creating such avenues for employee development will help you build up a more skilled workforce, which will eventually improve your organization’s efficiency and productivity.
5. Take Individuality into Consideration
One of the best ways to increase organizational efficiency is to harness your employees’ unique strengths effectively. Every staff member is different and has a unique set of skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Make an effort to identify these unique traits in your employees and then match them up with tasks suited to their abilities.
You should also use this knowledge when building teams. Whenever you need to form a team for a specific project, think about the individuals’ traits, and create teams in which the skills and strengths of the individuals complement each other.
6. Conduct Regular Statistical Analyses
To figure out how to improve your organization’s efficiency, you must first evaluate your organization’s current efficiency levels. You can do this by gathering data such as measurements of employee output and time utilization to gauge your employees’ overall efficiency. Analysis of this data could help you come up with ways to improve and do things more efficiently.
There are also several other ways in which business statistical analyses could help you improve your organization’s efficiency. You can learn more about doing this by clicking here.
7. Use Technology
Technological tools might seem like a costly investment, but the right tools could exponentially increase your company’s productivity. Providing your staff with smartphones, for instance, allows them to quickly and effectively communicate via phone calls and emails. Also, using software that automates certain tasks could save you a whole lot of time and allow your employees to concentrate on other important aspects of your business.
8. Outsource Tasks
Specific tasks that fall outside your employees’ range of expertise can be outsourced to freelancers or consultants. Forcing your staff to complete tasks that they are not trained for may lead to subpar work full of errors while the core tasks they are good at lie unattended to. Outsourcing, on the other hand, grants you access to the services of experts without you having to employ them permanently. This allows your in-house staff to spend their time more efficiently.
9. Create a More Efficient and Productive Workforce
The importance of efficiency cannot be overemphasized, and its benefits are many and far-reaching. By putting these eight tips into practice, you can improve your products’ quality and quantity, build a happier workforce, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately boost your bottom line.