However large or small, businesses have to be driven by efficiency. Work output should manifest itself in the form of profit. But productivity should not always mean employees working harder, because it’s all too easy to work long hours, creating workplace stress, without being all that effective.

1. How to Increase
Productivity
in your Business
Brought to you by
Staff.com

2. Productivity Secrets
Is it enough to continue running a business with substandard profitability
knowing it can do better?
Not anymore.
Maximizing employee productivity is important in any businesses, but more so
in small and medium-sized businesses where survival usually depends on its
profitability.
However large or small, businesses have to be driven by efficiency. Work
output should manifest itself in the form of profit. But productivity should not
always mean employees working harder, because it’s all too easy to work long
hours, creating workplace stress, without being all that effective.

3. Productivity Secrets
So, how do you keep your business truly productive?
According to Rob Rawson, founder of the Time Doctor software and a regular
blogger of biz.3.0, real productivity has a lot to do with:
•the work environment
•the leadership
•and the tools being used.

4. The Work Environment
It is common in the modern society for employees to overextend work hours
beyond what is expected of them and even carry work over the weekends.
When a human body is under great stress, it causes nervousness, tension, strain
and other health conditions which in turn make people unable to consistently
produce high quality of work and sustain a high level of productivity.
Stress, therefore, is a huge blow to workplace productivity and imposes a direct
economic cost on the employers.

5. The Work Environment
So how can stress be removed or reduced in the workplace? According to Robert
Karasek’s job-demand-control model, demanding jobs that have low control
will result to high stress, but when combined with high control, result to higher
levels of motivation and productivity.
Therefore, it is okay for jobs to be demanding, i.e. lots of tasks and lots of
responsibilities, as long as it is matched with high control i.e. supervision, set
deadlines and milestones, etc.
Low demand High demand
Active
High control Low strain
(High motivation and
productivity)
Passive High strain
Low control
(Wasted time at work) (High stress levels)

6. Getting Good Managers
It is common knowledge that having good managers can bring success to a
business. Unfortunately, this is often overlooked because there is just no
yardstick to what makes a good manager. Sometimes, you think you’ve hired a
good manager then it turns out that he is not that good after all.
Here are a couple of things to take note of when hiring managers. Although
most successful managers have a strong educational foundation, previous
experience, especially an exceptional performance that benefited a previous
employer, counts a lot more.
Good management skill is a commodity, that’s why good managers are
expensive. So for small businesses the process of hiring usually involves
persuading the candidate that the company is solvent and offers many
opportunities for career advancement.

7. Finding Staff at staff.com
Finding a good manager, or a good staff for that matter, is always a problem,
but there are ways to make this process easier. One way is through staff.com,
an online site specifically designed for telecommuting jobs, such as accounting,
management consulting, project management, IT and a lot more.
Finding staff at staff.com is easy. Employers just have to browse a categorized
list of staff profiles to look for potential candidates. Every relevant information
about a staff that an employer will want to check is laid out, from experience
history to top skills to job availability and asking salary.
You can start browsing for potential staff here: https://www.staff.com/browse/

8. Having the Right Tools
There are lots of tools that can be used to increase productivity. For example,
using a cloud-based project management software can make the complicated
processes of project planning, collaboration and delegation easier to achieve.
Same goes with using a time tracking software to help track work hours as well
as make sure each team member are spending time on the tasks they are
assigned to.
Here are some recommendations:
• Time Doctor – a time keeping and productivity monitoring tool. It
features project/task time keeping, live productivity monitoring and daily,
weekly and monthly reports. Highly recommended for its productivity
monitoring features that ensure your staff is working and productive.

9. Having the Right Tools
• Basecamp – makes project management, collaboration and planning very
easy among team members. It is accessible from anywhere where there is
internet. It has features to set calendars, milestones and to-do lists.
• Skype – instant messaging. Beats having to go down several floors just to
talk to a coworker regarding a report. It has features to create group
conversation rooms which is excellent for collaboration and planning. Best
of all, it is free.