A Manager’s Guide to Maintaining Productivity in Small Teams

Every business owner wants to maximize the productivity of their workforce, no matter how small, so that each and every team member is working to capacity and giving of their best. After all, improving productivity is the key to unlocking your enterprise’s full potential and adding value to the goods or services you produce. Here are a couple of key factors that may have an adverse impact on productivity and some tips and hints on what you can do to mitigate them.

Personal welfare
A well and happy workforce is a productive one. When employee problems surface, however, it can disrupt not only an individual’s job performance but also that of the whole team. In a small business especially, this can have disastrous consequences. A responsible employer will probably already have clear policies in place to deal with issues such as workplace bullying, drug and alcohol abuse as well as rules about time off when a team member is unwell, bereaved or caring for a dependent. Having these policies and rules is one thing, enforcing and policing them quite another.

Touching base regularly with employees about their life outside of work is a good thing to do, as long as it’s not intrusive. A caring employer will most likely be aware of issues that arise and take steps to deal with them. For example, if a team member is exhibiting signs of substance abuse, you may decide to have everyone on the team tested, using an oral fluid lab test perhaps, which is simple to carry out and will give you a speedy result. With scientifically verified evidence in place, you can then take appropriate action.

Increased mobility
Increased worker mobility is an inevitable result of the increased use of technological devices, including portable computers, tablets and smartphones. Some employers worry that if employees are spending more time away from base, unsupervised, they may not be delivering at optimum level and will be less accountable. To a certain extent this can be true, and it’s a big ask to expect you simply to trust your team members to be doing a good job while away from base; however, there are ways you can use technology to your advantage to deal with this.

Small business collaboration software is just right for these occasions – a suite of applications can help you stay in touch, share documents, provide resources and hold virtual meetings. Dropbox enables you to share a file with team members in a single online location, rather than you having to send endless emails to everyone and getting endless replies as a result. As business owner, you can moderate individual input and restrict editing capabilities according to your requirements.

Basecamp functions in a similar way with the added advantage of a discussion feature that can be linked to email, a calendar for scheduling and a web portal for those employees whose smartphones don’t support the App. Finally, GoToMeeting gives your business an edge on normal video conferencing and is ideal for brainstorming sessions because participants can share their screens with other attendees, making it a powerful tool that outclasses PowerPoint presentations or slide shows.

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