4 Unique Productivity Tips for Small Business
In this thriving era of startups, we are collectively witnessing home-grown businesses where there are no more than 2 persons or solopreneurs looking after the business. No wonder, the trend appears to be widespread and the reason for more and more people turning towards nurturing small business needs a mention here.
According to The State of Small Business Growth in 2016, an overwhelming number of business owners plan on growing in 2016. The industry survey was conducted on 1306 entrepreneurs and some stunning facts and figures were brought in limelight.
That said, small business is referred to be small just to say. When it comes to implementing strategies and most importantly keeping up with the productivity, things get even more serious here considering fewer people coming up with ample of work. In fact, there’s so much to do as a small business that many at times it gets difficult to keep a track of the long to-do lists.
As a small business owner, productivity and efficiency are the most thriving topics of conversation for businesses, and being able to master them means able to witness increased revenue.
While it’s easy to say, getting to that ideal level of productivity and efficiency is tricky. Below, we have listed 4 unique tips to help you boost productivity:
1. Group similar tasks together.
Keeping a tab on your emails and replying to important mails all day round doesn’t really help. It is very important to group your similar tasks together to be done on a specific day or time. Simply grouping your similar tasks will keep you away from unwanted distractions and thereby focus on things that need your attention at a given time.
2. Get control of your meetings.
Long, never-ending sessions of discussions are usually labelled as meetings. However, when these meetings are revamped to quick sharing of thoughts, and putting across the doubts to briefly come up with solutions can not only help small businesses to boost their productivity, but it also brings better results in terms of performance. To have a better understanding of controlling your meetings, here are few quick takeaways:
- Keep them brief, to the point.
- A standing posture helps you wind up quickly and efficiently. Avoid sitting.
- Stay focused on not more than couple of goals per meeting.
- Keep account of the people you are calling in. Only call in relevant employees.
- Make sure your meetings are all about two-way discussions. Speak as well as hear.
- The meeting will prove to me more efficient when conducted later during the day and not first in the morning as your team’s most productive time is in the morning.
The most critical aspects of conducting meetings is to make sure your small team is colliding together in the same direction as well as keeping them aware of what’s happening and what needs to be done.
3. Give easy access to your team to vital information.
Your team might be small, but there are things that need instant access of information which if provided in time can simply help speed up work. Let your team workers have all the necessary information in hand. Doing so will help you to avoid unnecessary calls, running to the managers, and save time as all the information will be available at their fingertips. This will make you provide a reliable phone and computer network, as well as continually updated software and hardware, as per your business requirements. A not-so-updated software or a half-working hardware system can only prove to be a turnoff for your employees or team workers. Hence, make sure you are providing all the amenities in up-to-date condition which will sincerely have a positive effect on your team’s performance, and thereby the businesses’.
4. Count on the cloud.
Keep in mind that using cloud-based apps like Skyward ERP, Slack can vitally improve efficiency. Team members who are on the go or working from home for various reasons can still avail all the information and can choose to work. You should consider getting the following in the cloud:
- Have someone build a cloud-based app for your custom databases. This will let you manage your sales and inventory in the cloud. Tools like Skyward ERP, SAP could help you.
- Put your documents (and documentation) in the cloud so your team can read, edit, and share them easily and as and when required.
Certainly, not all your tasks can be put to pushed to the cloud, but allowing your team to work from any location can simply take the productivity to the next level.
Closing
From bringing in the always-possible work approach, scheduling similar tasks together to making most out of the meeting and making vital things easily accessible, bringing up the level of productivity requires much more than these vital aspects. However, working around even after a single factor can turn things around for your business.
