Productivity at the office can be difficult to establish and maintain as there are many factors that contributor to it. Whether it’s struggling to motivate employees or relying on the outdated tech that makes everything much slower than it should be, managers can struggle to overcome several common workplace issues. 

Often, these issues arise because things are too complicated. While it might seem that the longer things take to complete, the more professional and official it will seem, this is rarely the case. If anything, it causes numerous issues that can affect your business, employees, and customers. So how can you simplify your processes? 

Evaluate Your Current Setup 

While your current setup may not be working as you hoped, there could still be some aspects that are useful for your business. It can be intimidating to tear everything up and start over, so use your evaluations to identify what you need to get rid of and what you will keep. 

This will give you an excellent foundation to build upon. It will not be as intimidating, and you already have something to use to establish new and improved processes around the office. You don’t need to get rid of everything at once, either, especially considering the disruption this could cause. Instead, adjust processes piece by piece to make effective and comfortable changes for your employees and customers. 

Consider Your Goals 

You will also need to consider your goals to identify where you want to be and how will you get there. Do you need the company to grow? Do you want to attract more customers? Are you planning on expanding your business to new markets, or adding new services? 

Once you identify these goals, you can work out how to get there without making things too complicated. Instead of opening a brand new office in another city, consider whether you can market your business digitally. Doing this, rather than going through the hassle of finding (and paying for) a new office will make things simpler but can still provide the same benefits.  

Make Sure Everyone Knows Their Role 

Some offices are poorly organized, which contributes to complications and an environment where no one truly knows what they are doing. By giving everyone a clearly defined role, you can avoid common problems that will affect productivity and complicate daily duties. 

It prevents people from stepping on each other’s toes or waiting around for someone to tell them what to do. This will reduce downtime and also keep your team motivated. Depending on what they do or achieve, they can leave the office when they finish, providing incentive for sticking to their role. 

Keep Communication Straightforward 

However, there will still need to be some collaboration even with these defined roles. Whether your team works in the office or operates from home, you must make sure this collaboration and communication are straightforward to avoid problems that often arise with clashing personalities on projects. 

Separating your team into departments or combining complementing skills into a new group chat app will give your employees an easy way to communicate away from the bustle of the office or their remote working environment. Like similar chat apps, it provides instant responses, yet the separate rooms will not cause ideas or questions to get lost in a sea of responses. 

Trim the Fat 

There will be plenty of processes leftover from previous management administrations or even approaches that you have established because you know it works, even if it is not efficient. These time-wasting processes can cause significant problems around the office, though. It could be something as simple as slow technology that causes frustration and makes it difficult for your team to complete projects, but it could also be something more. You could consider NetSuite implementation to keep things running efficiently, this is used for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and to manage inventory, track financials, host e-commerce stores and maintain customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Have a look at this NetSuite implementation checklist to find out more. Knowing what is slowing down your team will allow you to pick out the areas for change.

Simple 

Most of the time, simplicity is the best way for businesses to thrive. There is no benefit of being complicated for the sake of it. If you can establish effective processes and procedures through simplicity, you can start to think about how to improve them later on. For now, though, try to make things as straightforward as possible and reap the benefits of motivation, satisfaction, and productivity.