Approximately three hours of every eight-hour workday is wasted on unnecessary or personal tasks. This equates to 15 hours every week doing tasks that do not promote workflow efficiency. While you can’t cut down on every timewaster, you can take steps to manage and improve workflow efficiency procedures. This will cut down on employer-created workflow issues. How can you make these changes on the job? There are nine ways you can improve workflow management and increase productivity.
Workflow Efficiency Tips #
Some of the biggest timewasters on the job include unclear assignment tasks, assigning unnecessary tasks, and spending time in overlong meetings. With the proper tools in place, you can reduce these timewasters. Improving your workflow procedures is a long process. Taking the time will save you time and money in the long run, though.
1. Analyze Your Current Processes #
Before you can do anything else, you need to analyze the workflow processes you already have in place. This includes seeking feedback from your employees on how procedures work as they are. The point is to determine what is and isn’t working with the way you do things now. You need to analyze your current workflow based on the different roles. This will help you determine how to optimize these procedures to work better.
2. Prioritize Projects Based on Importance #
Once you understand your current processes, you need to rank them based on their importance to your overall plans. This requires breaking down each project to schedule the different tasks necessary. The idea is to schedule each task in a project based on how important it is to complete each project. This requires the correct tools to track the projects your employees are working on.
3. Implement Proper Training #
It’s essential to have the proper training processes to ensure that employees do their job effectively. To do this correctly, track and schedule training for your employees. This also includes optimizing the training procedures so that employees get only the training they need. Ensuring your workers know how to do their job well and understand all safety procedures provides a good start for success.
4. Organize Efficiently #
By keeping workflows efficient means organizing projects and schedules, so everyone knows what’s required. You need to have processes in place to track employee’s productivity. You also need to have schedules in place to follow employee’s time spent on projects. Having good timekeeping processes is essential to organizing time efficiently.
5. Schedule People to Specific Tasks #
Part of scheduling your employee’s time is to assign people to specific tasks. Studies show employees are productive about 60% of the time. Interruptions can occur every 3 minutes during work and an overabundance of scheduled meetings can contribute to employees’ unproductivity. When employees do not have specified assignments to challenge them it’s more likely they will not put in the effort. It’s important to assign tasks to specific individuals to cut down on spending time inefficiently. This requires understanding the capabilities of each employee so you can assign tasks effectively.
6. Minimize Unnecessary Interruptions #
To get the most out of your employees’ time, you have to cut down on unnecessary interruptions. This includes cutting down on unnecessary communications, including time-wasting meetings. You also need to cut down on unnecessary tasks or tasks going to the wrong people. This also includes placing time limits on each project. It’s essential to optimize everyone’s time.
7. Optimize Communications #
Optimizing communications is more than cutting down on time-wasting meetings. You also need to have proper methods in place to let people know what’s expected of them.
It’s important to make it easy to track employees’ projects and their progress on these projects. You also need efficient ways to organize and assign tasks, with proper methods to inform every one of their assignments.
8. Put Effective Budgets in Place #
It is important to pay attention to the budgets in place to manage workflows. You may not think that budgets are essential to workflows, but they have an important place in workflow efficiency. You need to place realistic budgets in place for each project to help keep things moving along. This includes tracking both money spent, and profits made from each project.
9. Automate Processes #
Finding automation tools that can work together will help processes run smoothly. You likely have ERP processes in place but will need tools that can integrate to make the information accessible. There are many aspects of the workflow process that you can automate. Timekeeping and payroll are vital aspects you may not have thought about automating. Report and tracking processes are also areas you can automate.
Useful Automation Tools #
There are many ways to automate all the workflow processes. The best way to automate is to find tools that work for the projects you need the most help with. Getting a platform that can optimize all your processes is the best way to improve workflow efficiency. You can automate basic operations such as time clocks and payroll information. For more help, you can add tools to track productivity and create needed reports.
With the right tools, you can customize the workflow management you need, including schedule customization. The important thing is to find tools that will integrate with the automation tools you already have in place. Most workflow management tools will integrate with CRMs or ERPs you already have in place. With mobile integration, you can even take all the information you need with you wherever you go. This is useful for foremen to keep up with employees and projects. You can even put systems in place to track profits and budgets. You can also put web apps in place for managers in the home office to keep up with everything.
