How to Improve Business Productivity From Scratch
Small companies are the backbone of the UK economy, accounting for 99.3 percent of all private sector firms. They employ over 16.3 million people and generate £2 trillion in annual revenue in the United Kingdom.
All of this is to argue that improving small company productivity in the UK would have far-reaching consequences. Not just for businesses and employees, but for society as a whole. It implies greater tax revenue for the government, more compensation for employees, and more money in circulation. Overall, increasing productivity by small enterprises is excellent news for everyone.
According to the same article referenced above, there are two major impediments to SME productivity: lack of access to capital and inadequate management practices.
Improve Business Productivity by Becoming a Learning Organisation
While most articles on small company efficiency will focus on basics like organization and delegating (which we will discuss), we believe it should be considered in a broader sense.
So many firms are still caught in the past. It's an odd concept that management should do the thinking and employees should perform the work. It is profit-driven, and while many pretend to be customer-centric, the truth is that it is profit-driven.
For years, this has been the prevalent thinking among SMEs and bigger corporations. Despite this, the UK's productivity continues to fall below that of the G7 nations.
Obviously, something has to give.
This is where the idea of a learning organisation comes in. It’s by no means a new concept, in fact, it’s been around for decades.
In simple terms, a learning organisation is a company that continuously facilitates the learning of its employees and transforms itself accordingly. It’s a hard concept to get your head around if you’ve not seen it first hand, so we’ll use some examples, albeit from larger companies.
Business Productivity Examples to Inspire You
When it comes to corporate efficiency, Adobe is at the top of their game, and it all stems from the fact that they're a self-proclaimed learning organization. Fortune Magazine consistently names them as one of the finest places to work because of their dedication to their employees.
They do everything you'd expect from a great IT firm. They provide fantastic perks to their employees, focus on openness and communication, and hire from underrepresented groups.
But they've also developed their award-winning Kickbox curriculum. Whatever the outcome, this curriculum fosters creativity and risk-taking. Any member of the team can request it, and they will be handed a package containing a $1000 prepaid credit card to experiment with.
No questions asked. It’s an incredible amount of trust and faith in your employees that inspires and engages them to bring their best ideas to the table.
Next up, another tech company that should be no surprise, Google. Google is a model for corporate learning culture. Employees set their own schedules and collaborate as they see fit across departments.
Similar to the above, they’ve gone beyond the expectations of leading tech company benefits with their management research. Google wanted to find out what made a great manager. So they found the data through reviewing performance ratings and employee surveys to find a pattern in what made them great. All said, they found 10 behaviours that consistently made for great managers.
The behaviours themselves are all the things you’d expect to find in a great manager; good communication skills, inclusivity, vision, technical skills and more. The important thing is they then took this information and applied it to their recruitment processes. So they’d only get the very best for their employees and their business.
There are plenty more examples, often from tech companies. But the takeaway shouldn’t be that tech companies have a commonality in their benefits and work culture. They’re not succeeding solely because they’re in the tech industry, they're succeeding because of the work culture they create.
The takeaway should be that all businesses, regardless of industry, should be striving to create the same culture so they might also be as successful.
How to Improve Business Productivity
We’ve explained the overall concept of a learning organisation, and we’ve given examples. But how do you realistically implement it in your own small business?
It’s a good question. You haven’t got the resources that the market leaders above do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make changes to your organisational structure to transform your business into a productivity powerhouse.
Know Your Team
This could be differently phrased as delegation, but we hate the terminology. The reality is you’ve hired certain individuals because they’re great at what they do. So why are you still so involved?
Trust your staff to do the job you hired them to do. This means knowing your team members and their strengths and delegating to them wherever possible. Don’t demand constant updates or always need to be involved in a project. Ask for periodic reports and ensure if your staff need support or have queries, they can come to you anytime.
Hire Well
Hiring is a tricky business. It’s why recruitment agencies do so well, there’s almost an art to it.
Hiring the person who will work for the least amount of money isn’t always your best option. Hiring the manager with great corporate experience doesn’t mean they have the best people skills. Hiring the person bursting with ideas doesn’t mean they’ll be able to strategise.
Hiring requires a certain balance of the right skill and the right person to fit into existing teams. They need to match your company values and ethos. Advertise in the kind of areas you would want your potential employees to be searching, such as LinkedIn or other social media. Use personality tests to better understand yourself and your employees.
Motivate Your Staff
A happy, engaged employee is every businesses’ dream. They’re more productive, creative and innovative. All that energy is given back into your business.
Much of staff motivation revolves around empowerment and incentive. But overall, it means looking beyond the bottom line to figure out where you can improve your employees well-being.
Let employees work remotely and flexibly wherever possible. Invest in automation to free up staff time so they can focus on more creative and interesting activities. Recognise great work every time you see it, instead of only at annual reviews. Settle for nothing less than open communication, both positive and negative, but then actually implement solutions and ideas.
Make Your Work Space Beautiful
Businesses have too often been focused on only improving office spaces due to client visits. It shouldn’t be the case.
Imagine you’re stuck in a windowless room. There’s no decoration, one fluorescent light, the walls are beige and the floor is grey. Imagine how quickly your creativity would be sapped out of you.
This is the bleak reality many office workers face. The environment is drab, stale and uninspiring. The bare essentials like a desk and a computer are provided, but there’s little else to inspire them.
This is why market leaders are investing in their office space. By making it somewhere people love to be, they’re not just impressing clients, they’re looking after their employees.
If your employees are remote full-time, you can even consider offering a bonus to help fund their home office space.
Learn From Your Team
As we said above, it’s great to know your team and it’s great to communicate with them. But even if you’re listening to concerns, you need to learn from them.
Your employees are on the frontline of your business. They go through the same processes every day. They are the best-placed people to think of new opportunities, resolve bottlenecks and suggest new practices.
Listening to and learning about the daily challenges your employees have is what drives your company to the next level. Processes become more streamlined, customers receive a better service, your employees are happier. Overall, your company is more productive.
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