Small businesses generally have limited staff and a smaller pool of resources to draw from, especially in their nascent stages. This is why they need to maximize their productivity and efficiency. Certain tried and tested productivity hacks can ensure small businesses achieve more work in less time, enabling them to compete with larger rival companies and, eventually, grow and develop to become large enterprises themselves. Such hacks are simple and yet quite effective.
1. Delegating less critical tasks
An entrepreneur cannot execute and manage multiple business tasks on their own. This is why delegating specific, non-critical work to a team of employees can help entrepreneurs focus on their various core business activities. Delegating work to employees enables them to work in tandem to complete tasks. Additionally, outsourcing specialized tasks to subject matter experts helps complete operations with greater finesse and effectiveness.
Simpler tasks that can be delegated include writing blog posts, creating white papers for the company website, or designing/redesigning email templates. Delegation raises an organization’s productivity and helps less experienced team employees gain an in-depth understanding of novel responsibilities and roles.
2. Automating processes
Many organizational tasks tend to be repetitive and fairly easy to complete. Such tasks do not even require delegation for completion. Rather than giving them to employees, businesses can invest in specialized software to automate them. Automation software can save several hours of an entrepreneur’s invaluable time for tasks such as sending scheduled emails and other aspects of email marketing.
Besides email automation, small businesses can use apps to schedule social media posts days, weeks, or months in advance. Employees can save time using these apps, which offer post templates for various social media platforms, instead of manually posting digital marketing campaigns across social media.
Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) automation tools can integrate well with a company’s existing technology architecture and assist with task automation. Opting for SaaS solutions reduces implementation expenses and facilitates the automation of repetitive business activities like routing a call or having a voice response menu, managing payroll, invoicing, calculating tax, automating sales, and carrying out data center backups.
3. Combining different work apps to reduce toggling
According to a study, employees toggle between multiple apps more than 30 times daily. These apps may include email accounts, team messaging tools, and video chat portals. Business owners may not realize it, but much work time is spent daily on toggling between such apps. To reduce toggling time, businesses can invest in technology that includes all their apps in a unified, all-encompassing portal.
One way to achieve this objective is by using all-in-one cloud communications tools that collapse all the communications channels and apps into a single, easy-to-use app. This app will include everything from internal team messaging, video conferencing, and business-to-client phone service. Another pathway to the same solution is using a centralized CRM to track all customer data. Today, centralized CRM software seamlessly integrates with most business apps. Both of these methods are equally effective in reducing daily toggling time.
4. Working with intermittent breaks
Exhaustion and procrastination are the main reasons for the loss of productivity in business tasks. To ensure that employees remain fresh and focused throughout a workday, small businesses can break down the daily schedule into 1.5-hour, high-energy work sessions punctuated by breaks of 30 minutes or an hour for the workers to rejuvenate and revitalize.
Many successful organizations implement the strategy of intermittent breaks and short, high-intensity work cycles to maintain high productivity levels while also preventing employee burnout. Addressing fatigue and procrastination are key ways to improve time management for small businesses and enhance resource efficiency.
5. Keeping mornings meeting-free
Some business owners may not realize it, but meetings can sometimes eat into the day without establishing much. Meetings tend to break up a workday and make it challenging to focus on core business work that can facilitate the growth of a nascent organization. Additionally, most meetings do not add significant value to a workday. For these reasons, one effective productivity tip for small businesses is to minimize the number of meetings.
Mornings are when employees are at their freshest and mentally alert, so business owners should avoid scheduling meetings during this time. Implementing “no meeting days” can also help reduce time wastage. Alternatively, scheduling meetings in the afternoons or evenings can free up more time for ideation and client work.
6. Encouraging time-blocking
A common misconception in workplaces is that multitasking enhances productivity in small businesses. That said, multitasking often prevents employees from fully focusing on their tasks, leading to a lack of quality and necessary competence in their work.
Time blocking is a technique that encourages employees to dedicate a specific period to focus intensely on a single task. During this time, they can ignore emails, decline meetings, and overlook non-urgent notifications while using a “do-not-disturb” sign at their workstations.
Some other productivity tips for small businesses include incorporating productivity tools into daily operations, enabling self-service options for customers, and tracking key performance metrics after implementing these strategies.