How to Boost Your Team’s Productivity: Advice for Leaders
Productivity, motivation, and team morale can all ebb and flow. Not every member of your team will be able to operate at 100% all the time, which is why a great leader must be empathetic to the unique problems that each team member faces, using their own experience to offer guidance.
It takes time and effort, but there are plenty of effective strategies you can use to increase productivity across your team and create a positive, motivated workforce in the process. Below, we’ll walk you through the best of them so that you can learn how to improve productivity in a team in a way that’ll benefit everyone.
Quick links:
- Understand what impacts productivity
- Create a productive work environment
- Celebrate your team’s successes
- Lead with flexibility and empathy to build trust
- Encourage collaboration and autonomy
- Next steps for leaders
Understand what impacts productivity
Naturally, productivity will peak and trough over the course of a year, but by being aware of what affects productivity, managers can stay ahead of the curve.
Different work styles and personality types
No matter the size of your team, it’s incredibly unlikely that your entire team works in exactly the same way and they’re all best friends. They will likely have slightly different ways they’d like to be assigned work, how they like to receive feedback, and what their plans for the future are.
By treating your team as individuals as well as a collective, managers can get the most from their team. Flexibility in your management style will ultimately lead to better results in the long term and also a happier team.
Flexibility in terms of working styles is also important. If a colleague works best from home, then it’s worth considering hybrid or remote working for that colleague. Conversely, some colleagues might prefer to be in the office, so ensuring contact days is also important.
Create a productive work environment
The environment in which your team works is incredibly important. Here are a couple of tips to ensure that your work environment complements the team’s output.
Prioritise physical comfort to reduce distractions
Proper lighting, ergonomic chairs, and adequate desk space make a world of difference in terms of productivity. Even if your team are working remotely, you should ensure that they have adequate equipment to do their job.
Foster mental comfort and engagement
Improper mental health support can lead to burnout. The mental health of team members can be supported by:
- Including regular check-ins with feedback
- Foster an inclusive environment
- Reward hard work
- Manage your team’s workload effectively.
Celebrate your team’s successes
If an employee feels appreciated, they’re more likely to feel motivated and appreciated, leading to a happier, better-performing team. Recognition, however, can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach.
Celebrate team achievements regularly
If you only celebrate results, instead of the work needed to get there, you might find your team experiences burnout before the project is finished. Gentle signs of appreciation that could be as simple as a message or a shoutout at company meetings make all the difference, with bigger rewards for completing a larger project.
Personalise how you give recognition
It’s also worth paying attention to how your team respond to different types of feedback. Some colleagues may like public praise, while others might prefer a private thank-you note. For larger projects, small gifts might be appropriate, but consider personalising the gift choices to suit each member of your team to demonstrate your appreciation on a personal level.
Lead with flexibility and empathy to build trust
Flexibility and empathy are incredible characteristics to demonstrate to your team. They provide a stable base for trust to develop, leading to greater outcomes and a happier working environment.
Build trust with your team
Managers are human just like everyone else on the team, and showing vulnerability and authenticity is a great way to create trust amongst your employees.
If you need someone’s expertise, ask them for help. If you made a mistake, hold your hands up and take responsibility. If a project didn’t turn out as you hoped, use it as a learning opportunity. Being vulnerable lets others on your team know that honesty and openness have their part to play on your team, creating a more positive and productive team, one that won’t be afraid to take risks – and mistakes – from now on.
Group of people on a business meeting late in the evening
Prioritise employee wellbeing
Poor mental health can have a disastrous effect on productivity, especially if it leads to increased sick leave. With the greater awareness of mental illness as of late, there’s a good chance your company has support and services that help employees deal with any stresses they may be feeling the effects of. If so, make sure your team are aware of any counselling or employee assistance programmes they can make use of.
If that’s not possible, there are still other ways your team can decompress, and they can be as basic as reminding them to use their annual leave. Implementing a work/life balance by setting hard-and-fast boundaries can go a long way towards avoiding the “always-on” culture – something that has become particularly damaging to morale and wellbeing of late. If you’ve noticed people struggling, then it’s always worth checking in to see how they’re doing.
Prioritise work/life balance
Despite spending a good chunk of our lives at work, life outside of work is just as important. Striking the right balance can not only make work more enjoyable, but also allow your team to enjoy their life outside of work better.
You can remind colleagues to take all of their annual leave to take a break from work. As well as this, general chat about things outside of work can help to humanise team members and create a culture of people who are hardworking but aren’t robots.
Avoid micromanaging
It’s easy, particularly as a new manager, to struggle to relinquish control of all the little details, but by clinging on, you could be damaging your team’s wellbeing and productivity.
Allowing your team to work independently and as part of a wider team will have knock-on benefits that also allow you, as a manager, to relax and focus on your job.
That isn’t to say that your team should be allowed to do their own thing 100% of the time. Regular check-ins can be a nice middle ground between micromanaging and complete anarchy.
Tailor motivation techniques
Team spirit isn’t tangible, but you can make it more concrete when the things your team hold dear are properly defined. Try creating a written, shared vision that aligns business goals with everyone’s values. Before you do, sit down with everyone to discuss how you want to be perceived, how everyone should be treated, and the things that keep you motivated.
When you can define the core of your team, everyone can then practice what they preach more readily, providing a vision that you can remind the team of should things start flagging.
Encourage collaboration and autonomy
Productivity can be boosted using various communication tools to help teams stay in touch at all the right times.
Use the right tools and metrics
Once you know what the team is working towards, giving your team the processes, tools, and technology they need to help them get there is going to be key.
Employing tools like Basecamp, Trello, and Slack to communicate and keep tasks updated will allow your team to manage themselves. However, an open-door policy will help your team to feel open enough to approach you if they’re struggling with a task.
For big projects, shared docs, spreadsheets and Wikis also keep everyone on the same page, ensuring no team members are left in the dark about key milestones and targets.
Encourage individual growth
A team that’s given room to grow is more likely to put in the work. How can you do that? Through good old-fashioned inspiration. You can do this by identifying what gets them going and what they’d rather do less of. Nothing lets team spirit go to waste like grunt work.
Instead, find tasks and projects that appeal to their strengths, but will let them learn something new, too. Things like leading meetings can take a team member out of their comfort zone, but in the long run, it will pay dividends when the manager isn’t the only person who can head a meeting.
Next steps for leaders
The next step is to put it all into action. Team productivity is a long-term effort that is rooted in empathy, structure, and trust, and so those qualities must be embodied on a daily basis.
Through the incorporation of the tips above, you can ensure that your management style fits with the team you manage to produce the best results possible.
For even more resources on management, take a look at the other blogs in our series on management.
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