Burnout. Disengagement. Quiet quitting. These are more than just buzzwords— they’re serious challenges that threaten to hinder workplace productivity.
However, there is a way to reverse them. In fact, with a strong productivity plan, you can prevent many of these issues from taking hold in the first place. It’ll help you identify what your team needs to accomplish, along with the roadblocks they face, and map out a strategy to achieve goals as efficiently as possible.
Let’s look at productivity planning — what it is, why you need it and what steps you can take to easily develop a productivity plan today.
What is a productivity plan?
A productivity plan is exactly what it sounds like — a detailed plan for improving business productivity levels. It includes both short and long-term goals for entire teams as well as individual employees, and outlines steps to help reach them.
While a workforce plan looks at larger issues like staffing needs and overall capacity, a productivity plan focuses on ways to boost efficiency among your existing employees. It incorporates time management techniques and strategies to keep people on task and make sure you achieve your goals.
Why is it important to create a productivity improvement plan?
Business leaders create productivity plans for a range of reasons. To improve morale. To prioritize projects. To keep teams on track. But most importantly, creating a productivity plan leads to high-value benefits. Higher productivity means lower employee stress, greater customer satisfaction and a better company reputation.
Most importantly, productive companies perform better. They grow faster, innovate more and experience 30-50% higher operating margins. But what, exactly, makes for an effective productivity plan? And how do you build one? Let’s take a look.
7-step action plan to improve productivity at work
Whether you need to address disengagement or want to make an already high-performing team even more efficient, productivity planning is a great way to get team members on the right track. Here’s a step-by-step process that works well for organizations of all sizes.
1. List all tasks and projects
Before you set productivity goals or outline steps, you need a strong understanding of what people are working on — and what they should be working on. Start by listing all assignments and tasks, either by individual or team. If you use project management software, make sure it’s up-to-date through a thorough review and audit. If you do this step manually, coordinate with employees to ensure you capture everything.
2. Prioritize tasks by importance
Once your list is ready, the next step is to classify everything based on priority. What projects will take you closer to your goals for the year? Which individual tasks help move them forward and are worth the time? One way to do this is with the Eisenhower Matrix, a time management technique that brings clarity to a long list of tasks. To use it, simply divide assignments into four quadrants:
- Important and urgent (big, looming deadlines)
- Important but not urgent (unclear deadlines that must done)
- Unimportant but urgent (“must dos” that don’t require special skills)
- Unimportant and not urgent (distractions that waste time)
3. Identify current or potential obstacles
After you break down your list, it’s time to identify possible setbacks. Do employees face a lot of looming deadlines? Look at calendars to see if excessive meetings are taking away from important focus time. Is necessary-but-unurgent busywork getting in the way of important tasks? Talk to team members to determine what you should automate or contract out. This is also the time to ensure workloads are properly distributed and no one’s overwhelmed or underutilized. (If they are, take steps to correct the imbalances.)
4. Choose a productivity strategy
Once you’ve identified and addressed obstacles, the next step is to determine what type of productivity strategy is best for your people based on team dynamics and working styles. Do team members spend too much time on group collaboration and struggle to stay on task? In addition to cutting back on unnecessary meetings, try the Pomodoro Technique — break down the work day into a series of focused work with short breaks to help the brain reset and refocus. Another strategy is the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of results come from 20% of activities. You can apply it to your productivity improvement plan by finding ways to prioritize the most important, urgent tasks.
5. Execute your plan
As soon as you select a strategy, set it in motion — no need to wait. And make sure employees understand what you expect of them by setting productivity benchmarks. One way to achieve this is by determining a goal for each employee. This can be as simple as spending less time in non-critical meetings and group chats to stay focused, and prioritizing time sensitive tasks.
6. Assess the results of your plan using data
You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and productivity is no different. Use productivity management software to track how, when and where team members are most productive — and see how those trends change over time. If you prefer to measure manually, choose a productivity calculation method you can stick with. Then review your data at regular intervals to see if your improvement plan is working.
7. Implement changes to make further improvements
It's important to note that no productivity improvement plan is a one-and-done experience. As you review your results, look for areas that still need adjusting. For example, if productivity starts to dip after trying out a new strategy, switch to a different one. Continue trying different methods until you find the one that works best for your people. Be consistent and keep reevaluating until you find the mix that best meets the needs of your unique workforce.
Use ActivTrak to create an action plan to improve productivity
As a manager, it’s your job to ensure employees are performing as efficiently as possible. Following the steps above allows you to set a strong foundation so you can create an action plan that will improve productivity for years to come. Clear goals, effective communication and continual evaluation are all key.
If that sounds overwhelming, we have good news. Many business leaders use ActivTrak’s productivity management software to simplify the process — and there’s no cost to sign up. You can use it to:
- Check progress toward daily productivity goals
- Balance workloads across team members
- Compare current progress to past productivity trends
Sign up for your free account today. Or, if you’d like to learn more about enhanced monitoring and management options, get in touch to discuss your needs and options.
