Whether large or small scale, lean principles have been applied to nearly every industry. If you’re someone working towards building your business around “lean” principles, you may already be trying to run smooth processes, reduce costs and improve both productivity and quality.
Here are three simple, proven ways to boost your team’s productivity and efficiency:
1. Identify Tasks That Can Be Automated
With a small team, you want to make sure you make the most of your limited resources. As a leader it falls upon you to ensure your coworkers use their time and skills on the most important tasks and get more done. However, sometimes even with a dynamic team of problem solvers, a lot of time is squandered on the routine tasks, such as manually compiling reports, sending paperwork for signatures, etc.
In fact, according to a McKinsey study, 28 percent of the average workweek is spent answering emails. Similarly, a further 19 percent is spent collecting information and data and 14 percent on communication and collaboration, leaving only 39 percent actually spent on role-specific tasks.
This is where automation steps in. Automating the most mundane tasks frees up time and attention, so employees could innovate and imagine more creative approaches to business problems. Additionally, it cannot only improve your team’s workflows and boost productivity but also remove human error from the equation.
2. Evaluate the Cost of a Meeting
“Meetings should be like salt—a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish,” says Basecamp founder and CEO, Jason Fried. “Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.”
Companies that are at the nascent stage especially have many demands on an employee’s time. Whether it is about getting the product built or marketing for clients, your team members have to manage to fit everything in a limited amount of time.
Most often, a tight schedule of too many meetings gets in the way of employees, squeezing their productivity and preventing them from doing their best work.
The average employee attends eight meetings per week, with more senior employees attending up to 17 meetings. But it’s not just the time wasted on meetings that impact productivity, poor scheduling also damages your team’s ability to engage in work on a deeper level. No wonder why some of the very smart people come up with tactics to avoid wasteful meetings.
This is why, I advise scheduling fewer meetings and inviting only those who must attend. It’s also a good idea to set a clear agenda ahead of time and keep meetings half an hour long or so unless required otherwise.
3. Allow Employees a Flexible Schedule
As a leader you might feel like the only way to ensure your team is unleashing its full potential is to be able to see it with your own eyes. That’s understandable. After all, if even one team member isn’t pulling their own weight, your company’s bottom line could suffer.
However, if you’re truly committed to ‘lean principles’, you need to hold your team members accountable to results, not hours. This means encouraging flexibility and adopting a make-your-own-hours policy, giving them the freedom to design and configure their own workday.
Besides, some people work most effectively after midnight. Some prefer working from office only a few days a week. As a matter of fact, research reveals that employees who have the freedom to set their own schedule put in an additional 7.4 hours per week. Moreover, 73% of people who engage in “windowed work” report increased productivity.
In essence, these people split up their days into ‘windows’ of work time and personal life, and accordingly accommodate meetings, errands and childcare.
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Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.