5 Ways To Deal With An Unproductive Team And Turn Things Around Quickly
When you own a business, it’s important to keep your employees and colleagues on track so you can hit your goals. Of course, this is sometimes easier said than done, but there are some steps you can take to turn sluggish employees into a productive workforce.
So, in this article, we will dive into five ways you can deal with a lazy or unproductive team and fix the problem quickly.
1. Help everyone stay organized with a project management tool
It’s a good idea to use a project management program to track various areas of your business, as this will help you stay on top of things. When you use work management software for your projects, it lets you set deadlines and makes it easier to collaborate with other team members.
It also allows you to keep all your relevant documents in one place, which means you’ll feel more in control and be able to see all of the tasks people need to complete and when.
When you introduce your team to a project management tool, make sure you don’t rush it. Instead, explain the benefits of the tool you’re introducing and how it can help make work better and easier.
Then, ensure that each member uses tutorial videos or guides that will help them understand the tool better. You can also give out small tasks to test how they use the tool before moving on to more significant work.
2. Ensure everyone has a productive working environment
The last year has turned most of our working lives upside-down — people who had only ever worked in offices began working from home, and a lot of business owners and employees found themselves in a whole new working environment.
Now that new working possibilities have opened up, it’s important that you try to make an effort to work out where and when your staff will be the most efficient. And this does not have to be the office alone. Covid-19 opened our eyes to working remotely, but what happens after Covid-19 ends? Will it be the end of remote work as well? You, as a business owner, will need to make this decision for your workforce.
Regardless of where and when your employees are logging in each day, you should still find ways to ensure that the workplace is efficient and comfortable for your staff. This can mean implementing daily or weekly check-ins where the team gets together to talk about any challenges they might be having — work-related or personal. This improves communication and lets employees know they are in a safe space.
You could also set clear goals and key performance indicators (KPI), so you can track your team’s progress and provide feedback when necessary.
3. Take steps to streamline your teams’ tasks
Streamlining work processes for your team can significantly speed things up and improve the company’s workflow. Even the smallest tweaks can add up to save everyone a lot of time. For example, you could use one communication tool like Slack to keep track of all messages or Dropbox if you want to have all your documents in one place.
Also, many people often misplace passwords or forget the login details for different accounts, but you could invest in Single Sign-on technology (SSO), so your team members can access all of their tools quickly and easily with one click. With the use of SSO, you’ll be saving your company so much time and be able to make the workplace even more efficient.
Try organizing your work processes with many workflow templates to choose from. Try ProofHub today.
You could also provide templates for common jobs, so people don’t always need to start tasks from scratch. For example, if you regularly send invoices to different clients, you can streamline this task by using invoice templates. FreshBooks offers free invoice templates that can be customized to suit each of your clients and jobs.
There are several useful SEO templates that can help your company with keyword research, content strategy, and the creation of content briefs. And, if your marketing team needs help with creating attractive and high-quality social media content quickly, you can use tools like Removal.AI, a tool that can easily remove background from images online or you can check out the millions of social media templates and graphics available on Canva.
To ensure your staff are making the most of these resources, try to train everyone on how to use your chosen tools or templates designed to streamline their workflow. You can even hire specialists to come in and teach your team all about the features and benefits of the tools and the best ways to use them.
4. Make sure you always hire the right people for the job
One big reason why some people might not perform well in a particular job is that they aren’t fully equipped for it. So, if you want to ensure your team is as productive as possible, you need to hire the right people.
There are a lot of things you can do to ensure you hire the right people for the job. One, you need to make sure you put together an accurate job description that describes who will make the best addition to your team.
Also, when screening candidates for a job, try to create short tasks that mirror the work they will be doing when they join your company. This will allow you to see firsthand how they think and the methods they use in solving problems. It’s also fair to pay candidates for these tasks since they’ll be taking time out of their schedule to complete them.
When it comes to hiring the key members of your team, there are some skills you need to look out for. Some of these skills are:
- Project management skills to ensure they can handle large-scale projects
- Problem-solving skills to make sure they have innovative ideas
- Emotional intelligence in knowing how to manage people
- Communication skills
- Attention to detail
- Leadership skills
If you place emphasis on hiring people with these types of skills, you’ll be able to secure efficient staff members that will make your team a lot more productive. Utilizing tools, such as performance analytics tools, can help you benchmark top qualities for the position you’re looking to hire for and help you compare the qualities with potential candidates through different processes and assessments. You have to invest in your employees if you want to grow your business, too, so it’s also worth providing your staff with professional training that will help them fully develop and make the most of their roles.
5. Encourage staff to give you honest feedback
Sometimes, your staff might not be doing their best work because they need more support or better tools. So, you should regularly encourage your team to give feedback so you can find out if there are any roadblocks you could remove to increase their productivity.
This means you need to build better relationships with your employees and create an environment where people feel safe enough to give you honest feedback on the work that they’re doing.
You can also create an anonymous feedback system where people can leave comments and feedback concerning certain company policies that they don’t feel comfortable speaking about in person.
Give informative and instant feedback with ProofHub’s real-time proofing feature. Sign up for a FREE trial.
Summary
Having an unproductive team can cause a lot of delays in your business’s growth, and that’s something you want to avoid. In this article, we looked at some of the ways you can make things better. Here’s a recap:
- Help everyone stay organized with a project management tool
- Make sure everyone has a productive working environment
- Streamline your teams’ tasks
- Ensure you’re hiring the right people for the job
- Encourage your staff to give you honest feedback
Now you can get started on implementing these tips and, if you need more, feel free to follow ProofHub’s blog for ideas and tips on management and work culture.
Author Bio
Adam Steele is COO and co-founder of Loganix, which is an SEO fulfillment partner for digital marketing agencies and professionals. The company provides the SEO services that businesses need to grow and achieve their goals. If you enjoyed this article, you can find more SEO guides and templates on the Loganix blog.
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