When it comes to the task of helping your project, the majority of people imagine some major reform that just instantly makes your team work better. The truth is that the approach needed is far simpler. You need to understand that your project consists of individuals and that improving the productivity of these individuals can help boost the efficiency of the project as a whole.
Here are some platforms that you should use and equipment you should either buy your team or encourage them to buy (if they’re remote workers) to improve your overall productivity.
- Get a second (and a third) monitor
According to some surveys, a second monitor boosts your performance by 46%. While a third monitor may not give you that big of a productivity boost compared to the cost and the fact that most GPUs now support multiple-monitor setups, there’s no reason to avoid doing this.
The number of tasks this second monitor helps you with is simply staggering. If you’re writing, you can have the sources and the statistics on one monitor and the document you’re writing on the second. This way, you don’t have to switch between tabs. The same goes for coding, where you can have all your resources on alternative monitors.
Remember that you’re also active in communication, so why not have Skype, Slack, Messenger, etc., open on a second/third monitor to keep up? This would improve collaboration on documents that are already cloud-based and in which you and your team are working in real time.
- Noise-cancelling headset
Noise is incredibly distracting, but it’s sometimes out of your control. Even if you’re working from home, you can’t force your family to tiptoe around you. However, if you’re in an office, it’s even more difficult to handle this. There are so many people, and you can’t affect the acoustics.
What you can do is get a noise-canceling headset.
This is a brilliant idea because it gives you a chance to be fully in control over what you hear. Just think about it. You can’t change the layout or seating order as an individual employee. You can’t get an above-head acoustic cloud or install sound panels on the walls.
However, you can just put your headphones on and enjoy a quieter office. This works great at home, as well. Also, since there’s no security breach, this type of hardware (peripherals) can be exempt from the BYOD policy.
- Start using a collaboration tool
You would be surprised to learn how many companies, even major ones, run projects without a clear structure. They write agendas on the board, send tasks via email, and often even verbally communicate what’s to be done.
A collaboration tool is the best solution for large enterprises and teams, as well as for smaller firms and agencies. The thing is that the method is incredibly scalable. Your team is never too small for it, but you can never out-scale platforms like Monday, Basecamp, and Trello. This is especially the case since they have separate projects. This means you can give one project per team and be done with it.
They’re also a great graphical representation of what’s happening while maintaining the notification system. Sure, your team members will still get an email whenever they’re tagged, but they’ll also get app notifications and be able to see it presented far more clearly.
- Consider standing desks
While this might sound shocking, standing desks can drastically drive productivity up and increase the performance of your teams by quite a margin.
A part of the reason why this is the case is that standing desks heavily encourage the concept of interval working. This means that your team members work for a while (let’s say 25 minutes) and then rest for a while (let’s say five minutes). This way, you get much more active work while losing ten minutes every hour.
Another thing you should bear in mind is the fact that you’re probably not buying standing desks. What you’re buying are adjustable-height desks, which means that if you don’t like how this works in practice, you can just turn them into regular desks. Also, the interval working requires that they have somewhere to sit while not working, so go for some sofas, too.
- Avoid overworking them
If your team can’t finish all the work on their plates, they need better deadlines, not more working hours. It’s a really simple concept that a lot of employers underestimate.
Remember that there’s also social pressure on your employees, even if they want to endure this higher workload. Imagine an employee standing up to their friends or partners for you 2-3 times in a row. How long will it take until these people (who have a lot of social credit with them) start persuading them to change jobs? Are you 100% sure that they’ll endure this pressure?
Work-life balance is one of the most important indicators that someone will stay in your employ for a long time.
- Improve responsibility delegation
While cross-training your team is a great idea, you still want to know your team member’s strengths and give them tasks that align with this. It’s not just about getting better results. It’s not just about saving time. It’s also about causing less frustration and facilitating the workflow.
You must give your team autonomy. Micromanaging everything is incredibly taxing, but it’s also damaging in more ways than you think. First, it will make people feel like you don’t trust them. This will deteriorate their motivation by quite a margin. Also, if they’re accustomed to you doing some of their work, they might grow lazy.
- Smarter meeting management
In the past, there was a statistic that enterprises wasted 31 hours on unnecessary meetings each month. The problem was never the fact that there were so many meetings. So many meetings could have easily been replaced via a circular email.
Prioritize. Put all your ten meetings on the board and ask yourself, how would I do it if I had to cut one of these meetings? What would I do instead, send an email? Then, ponder on whether that’s actually a better, more time-saving idea.
- Leverage AI
Generally speaking, AI can save your team so much work and drastically improve productivity. For instance, when you need to break something down, the simplest way to do it is by writing and explaining software like Code Llama.
Now, there’s a lot of fearmongering regarding AI tools and how they will destroy so many industries, but the truth is, and the majority of specialists agree, that AI might end up creating more jobs than it destroys.
It can help smaller teams outcompete their larger counterparts if they’re running a tight enough ship.
You don’t have to rely completely on AI, even with content creation. Instead, you can use it for outlines, breaking down terms and concepts, etc.
Then, there’s the competitive aspect of it. Just because you’re refusing to dip into this AI pool doesn’t mean your competitors will do so.
Each project consists of individuals, and by boosting their processes, you’re bolstering the entirety of the project
Ultimately, everything you do needs to be in service of long-term productivity. Driving your team harder will make them perform better tomorrow, but what about their performance after a week? On the other hand, setting more sensible deadlines, adding another monitor, and having a reliable collaboration platform make a difference in productivity in the long run. Most importantly, they don’t drain resources/energy and always boost productivity. This kind of consistency is the foundation that you build your future success on.