5 Ways To Work Efficiently With Your Team

To run a business smoothly, you need to first take care of the well-being of your employees. It is important to create a positive environment for them so that they feel accepted, encouraged, and happy to be a part of your organization.

Leading a team that has people from diverse backgrounds can often be difficult. People with different temperaments come with diverse opinions which can often lead to miscommunication and clashes within the team. These roadblocks can create a negative impact on the productivity of the team and business.

Team efficiency depends largely on the bonding among the teammates as that makes the work process smooth and easy to handle. Creating efficiency in the team by removing any workplace friction can help you in building and encouraging a healthy team that can provide amazing work performance.

Top 5 Ways to Enhance Work Efficiency Within Your Team

A recent survey by Anatomy of Work mentions that corporate employees spend most of their work time on daily tasks and only 27% of their time in work that requires specific skill sets.

Then how would you drive efficiency within the team so that productivity doesn’t falter? Let’s find out with these top tips on team efficiency enhancement.

1. Design a precise project plan

You must have a clear and precise project plan before starting the task. Each team member must be confident about their role in the project. Finally, coordinate between the various tasks so that the project is completed well within the scheduled time.

What are the essentials of a project plan?

There are several essentials of a good project plan and they are:

Common project goals
Appropriate success metrics
Allocation of stakeholders and their roles
Budget of the project
Project milestones and the intermittent deliverables
Project schedules and timelines
Project communication plan

It is important to bring all the projects within one roof for your team. Invest in a real-time planning tool that is accessible by one and all. This will help you in coordinating all the project activities at one go with the help of a tool.

2. Connect with your team members regularly

Make an effort to connect with your team members regularly, as a team as well as individually. This will ensure that you care for your team members. Once you can establish a caring position within the team, the employees will automatically get motivated.

It is always better to communicate to your employees the expectation you have from them and also their roles and priorities in the project. Do explain to them the kind of quality that you are expecting from them. Make sure to also explain to them the result that you are trying to achieve as a team.

Give your employees all the freedom that they need to work in their best manner. Give them a positive environment, keep them happy and they will deliver without you having to worry about a thing.

It is a good idea to send short messages to all the team members once in while mentioning what you like about them and spread some positivity. Talk to your team members individually and find out about their career goals, immediate project interests, and anything else that they would like to share with you.

Remember, 1:1 communication can be one of the best ways to say “you matter” to an employee. They feel that they have a support system at work that will listen to them. It is imperative to say that this will boost the confidence of the employee to a sky-high level.

3. Always acknowledge and appreciate their efforts

Most employees complain that they do not feel appreciated enough. It is a well-known saying that an appreciated employee will walk the extra mile for you. Always show appreciation to your team members no matter how small a task he has accomplished.

Appreciation gives them a sense of purpose and they feel connected to the team and business. At least start with a “thank you for a job well done” line.

When you acknowledge a good job done, make sure that you mean every word that you say. Empty phrases will not please your team members for long. But when you praise the employees with an open heart, they would want to rise to the occasion even more and ensure that they do the job in an even better manner.

a) Pay attention to their ideas

Everyone has some idea about a work project and how to go about it? All the team members come with prior experience and different perspectives about how to handle a project. They might have a completely different approach to working on tasks. Encourage them to share their ideas and best practices and try and implement to see if that works for your team.

While it is rather tempting to stick to a fixed protocol that is tried and tested for success, you never know what could change unless you try new ways of working. The world is changing so fast, there is no point in holding on to a status quo. Instead, listen to your team members about what they could bring to the table. That way they feel valued and motivated to contribute to the success of the team and the organization.

One of the best ways to make use of good ideas from teammates is to design a project plan where everyone can contribute their ideas. You can also conduct retrospectives at the end of each project to understand what went well, what did not work well, and the potential action items.

4. Leverage their strengths

Not all employees are alike in personality or work. Each person comes with a set of strengths and weaknesses. Different people enjoy doing different types of work. For instance, one of your team members might enjoy doing research work related to a project while the other one might enjoy compiling varied data in an excel sheet.

Also, on any given day, an employee might have several small tasks to complete in different projects. Each of these tasks is important in its way and also urgent. They might get confused about where to start and how to prioritize the work?

Prioritize work: As a supervisor, it is your responsibility to divide the task according to their priorities. When you have a good plan with set objectives and goals for the project, setting up priority will not be much of a problem. When the employees have a clear vision about the project goals and their timelines, it empowers them to make decisions about the task. When you are setting goals for your team, do not forget to keep the objective attainable. Assigning a large task to be accomplished within a short time can make it overwhelming for the employees. Instead, you can break the large task into smaller chunks and delegate them among the team members according to business priorities and their skill sets.This will enhance the progress of the project and also keep the team members motivated.
Streamline projects and tasks: Try and allocate work that a team member excels at. If there isn’t such work within the team, find out ways in which the teammates can spend time on work that they enjoy doing. Take help of a documenting software that makes it easier to document tasks and other project details. Such activity will not only help you in streamlining your project but also enhance team efficiency.

Bring challenges in the work that you do within the team but also don’t forget to reward them when they accomplish a milestone.

5. Incorporate fun at work

Add a fun element to everyday work. It could be through different team building activities. This will add a fun element to work thereby increasing the overall efficiency within the team. Work is only enjoyable when people feel connected with the team. Only when there is open communication, mutual respect, and acceptance within the team, an employee feels comfortable to deliver at their best.

Also when the team members have too much to deliver within a short time, they often suffer from distractions and low motivation. Step in here and cut short on meeting times as they take up a lot of time and go for quick huddles to share feedback and receive updates. When workload management is systematic and well-designed, it can boost happiness at the workplace.

Conclusion

Remember, if you cannot measure how much you have done, you will never be able to improve it. Set up metrics for your team and analyze how it impacts your sales, revenue, or productivity.

Productivity can never be an accident. It is not about simple work proficiency or about perfectly managing your day. There can be several tools and tips to help you in enhancing the team efficiency, but at the end of the day, it is up to you to ensure that employees are excited about coming to work and delivering their best.

As Henry Ford said, “If everyone is moving forward together, success takes care of itself.”
Let us know in the Comments section below if you do anything different to drive efficiency within your team.