Five Things that Destroy Company Productivity

Everyone has the same number of hours in their day, but some seem to squeeze more out of their time than others. Chances are you can name the most productive people in your company or industry. Many of them have personal systems in place, but it’s possible for an organization to set their employees up for success – or failure.

How Is Your Company Destroying Productivity?

1. Lack of Direction. Leadership is critical to productivity. If you don’t let your employees know what you expect of them, you can hardly expect them to deliver. When putting systems or processes in place, assess whether they truly bring you closer to reaching your goals or just add roadblocks to productivity.
2. Poor fit employees. Hiring for fit is critical. People without the skills or experience they need to succeed in your organization will never be comfortable in the work environment and will not be at their most productive.
3. Stagnation in place. People need ongoing challenges. The temptation may be to hire a candidate who is just right for the job and consider your work to be done. However, it’s critical to develop career paths and training plans so that your best people grow within your organization.
4. Lateral hiring. Hiring managers commonly draft a job description, and then look for candidates performing those tasks in their current jobs. This could be a huge mistake. You are either taking on an employee who is completely without drive or risk that they will quickly grow bored and move on.
5. Distractions. From meetings to the Internet to multitasking, today’s typical office is full of distractions that take people off task and drop productivity.

Meetings. Employees can lose up to two hours per day to meetings. That doesn’t even include prep or follow-up time. You are essentially dropping your full-time people to part time if you leave them only four hours to do their jobs.

Multitasking. Many people pride themselves on their ability to multitask. Yet recent studies indicate that there is really no such thing. It’s actually a rapid transitioning between tasks, losing a step or two at each transition. Resolve one of the worst multitasking offenders – email notifications – by turning them off and setting aside blocks of time for processing.

Internet. It’s easy to get into an endless cycle of checking social media, or visiting one site after another. In today’s world, the Internet is a wonderful source of knowledge and social media is critical to building your brand. But closing your browsers or eliminating excess tabs is essential to productivity.

The first step in boosting productivity is having the right people in place. That’s where BrainWorks comes in. Partnering with a professional recruitment firm provides access to difficult-to-find talent and allows you to hire faster and more effectively. Contact BrainWorks today to learn more.