How to be more productive with your team: 5 easy ways

How to be more productive is a key objective for many that means something different to every single individual. When working in teams, however, you need to know how to encourage your team to give 100% of their full potential and avoid at all costs the damaging aspects of burnout – everything at the same time. Crazy, right?

Well, not so much. Some of the latest studies on the market show that there are some main pillars on how to be more productive that need to be taken into consideration so that your team will kick off every quarter with tremendous results – because they’re motivated enough to want to do so, not only because they juts want to keep their job.

A Gallup survey concluded that 23% of workers say they feel burned out more often than not, while 44% reported feeling burnt out sometimes.

Here’s what you can do to boost your team productivity to unbelievable heights.

1. Transfer the workload

Yes, you got that right. Offering a sense of belonging to the members of your team means more than just having the annual Christmas party where you wear funny hats and exchange gifts.

It means to offer them your trust by engaging them in more serious tasks, trusting them with more responsibility and letting them make their own decisions. The company itself will benefit from both happy employees and satisfied clients that find their own ways on how to be more productive.

Transferring the workload on some members of your team will make them feel important and realize they are capable of handling a specific task.

You can begin by asking for their opinion on a certain topic or giving them ownership on a harder task or project.

2. Ease task dependencies

Your workflow will always be crowded if your team needs to wait after a client’s response, feedback or any aspect that would take forever to get the process going.
To overcome the exhausting waiting process and all the dead time gaps when working with another party, you absolutely need to account your task dependencies.

Save a lot of time by automating workflows such as in approval processes or in customer support.

One way of efficiently doing so is having a useful tool such as Allegra’s Gantt Chart.

The integration supports the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). This way, you can use agile methods even in big projects when working in larger teams.

3. Distribute your time and effort

Monitoring your team’s time represents a crucial aspect on how to be more productive that would eventually increase the growth and development of the company.

But before that, you need to understand where this time is going and if it’s directioned through the right path.

Think of your time as a priceless resource that cannot be restored once lost. You can only use different tools to get a look on where you better invest it.

With Allegra’s task management software, you can automate workflows without having to program anything.

Automatic answering of emails, resubmissions, escalations and approval procedures: the graphic workflow editor and the task engine make it easy for you to automate even complex tasks.

Plus, you will maximize your time by doing less for more.

4 Always communicate

Communication is key – but how exactly can we use it in our best benefit? Most of the employees feel like their superiors do not communicate sufficiently and they get confused on what to do first and how to manage their tasks.

This aspect can ultimately lead to lost hours with weak results and a loss of the overall team productivity.

Besides, they don’t have time to answer all their questions so a lot of confusion might occur. Luckily, the best way to maintain a direct message with all of your coworkers and stay up to date on the deadlines is to employ a task management tool.

For instance, Allegra’s GTD method allows everybody to always be informed in real time and has an identical view. You can control access to all information in detail.

This way, you can avoid bothering your team with messages that do not interest them. You can automate a lot with workflows. You achieve pleasant transparency and faster processes.

5 Ask and give feedback

Ensuring you’re on the same page with your team can be a risky business without trying to improve your work-related aspects as well as the overall work attitude.

Asking for feedback or giving it after completing a task, finishing a tough project or even taking the initiative on an internal incentive can be a game changer on how to be more productive and will most likely increase team productivity.

It will encourage the employees to open up more and be transparent whenever they encounter an issue or simply want to show gratitude and congratulate a job well done.

Plus, you can easily find out if they need extended assistance on a certain task or if they would appreciate more to have enough space on their own for a creativity boost.

Last but not least: don’t put too much pressure on people!

At the end of the day, all you need to make sure is that everyone did the best they could and are willingly to be consistent and improve every day.

The working culture needs to let room for personal development as well as teamwork and daily duties.

Allow people to embrace their individuality and work as a team at the same time by focusing on solutions rather than problems. Help, overcome, adapt, be yourself. This is what makes an ordinary team the ultimate dream team.