Boosting productivity is one of the most important factors in staying ahead of your competition. However, determining the best ways to do this can be more difficult than you think. Because there are only so many hours in a workday, companies attempt to look for ways that not only increase employee productivity, but do so by letting employees work smarter rather than harder.
If you’re in charge of improving performance but need some new and innovative ideas, here are four ways to boost productivity in the workplace.
1. Add room dividers and glass doors
If you really want to maximize your efficiency while modernizing the pace of your business, consider using office room dividers, modern barn doors, and sliding glass doors. Instead of keeping your employees stuck in ’80s-style cubicles that keep their workplace dreary and isolated, install office room dividers that allow for privacy on demand.
Along with this, the room dividers will allow for much more natural light to shine in each day, making the workplace look and feel more modern. Or if you prefer, you can add sliding glass doors or modern barn doors to your office, giving it the look and feel of a stylish and elegant work atmosphere.
And remember, study after study shows that people who work in offices with sleek designs perform better and have much greater productivity than those stuck in cubicles or other dreary office settings. If the thought of having greater productivity while giving your office a touch of class appeals to you, contact the specialists.
2. Hire an executive coach
While you’re having plenty of glass doors and room dividers installed in your office, it may also be a good idea to hire an executive coach to work with the company management team. Acting not as a consultant but rather as a coach, their goal is to help executives think through and tackle whatever problems may arise, allowing them to learn additional self-reliance skills that can be used on the job.
Done as an effort to promote growth and change within a company, hiring an executive coach works best when those being coached are open to new ideas and approaches to such important areas as customer service, technology, and, of course, productivity. By helping key people within an organization grow as leaders, you’re more likely to see productivity grow by leaps and bounds.
3. Create the ultimate break room
As we all know, all work and no play guarantees your company will have employees whose morale is not only very low, but also have productivity levels that are even lower. To remedy this situation and rescue your company’s productivity, create an amazing break room that other companies will envy.
While this may sound like a ticket to having employees who want to do nothing but sit around and goof off, the opposite is actually true. By creating a break room than contains such exciting and unusual items as video games, recliners that provide a massage, snow cone machines that offer tasty treats, climbing walls that provide a challenging workout, or simply a hammock or two for taking a quick nap, there’s a good chance that a break room containing any or all of these items will help keep employee productivity at an all-time high.
4. Have standing meetings
If there’s one thing that often brings employee productivity to a halt, it’s having to sit through a long, boring meeting that accomplishes little if anything of a positive nature. However, since workplace meetings are a must from time to time, it’s important to make sure they don’t halt the productivity and efficiency of your employees.
To help accomplish this, more and more companies are now having what’s known as a standing meeting. Even though this may sound very unusual, the fact is businesses around the world are beginning to use this tactic as a way to keep productivity levels high. While there’s not much data available regarding standing meetings, some studies have suggested standing meetings result in increased group engagement, decreased territoriality, and improved group performance. So, if you’re tired of having the same old meeting over and over, consider standing meetings to keep everyone on their toes.
While companies continually try to find new and exciting ways to keep their employees motivated and productive, those mentioned here have been found to be some of the best. Whether it’s having sliding glass doors or office room dividers installed, hiring an executive coach to teach management some new tricks, creating a break room that will have everyone looking forward to lunchtime, or hiding the chairs during a meeting, productivity could be enhanced in ways never imagined.
Michael Zhou is Senior VP of Business Intelligence Development and has assisted his Fortune 1000 company with expertise in the web as a whole, including ground-zero marketing efforts that benefit both consumer and vendor.
