Fortunately, with some tips and tricks up your sleeve, your job can become much easier. What you need are five basic principles whose application tends to boost productivity, reduce distractions and establish a work-friendly environment.
1. Efficient communication system
The first thing you need to establish within your first office is the methods of conversation. The advantage of this traditional business model (as opposed to a virtual workplace) lies in the fact that you can just walk to a person’s desk and address them directly.
However, doing so for every single one of your employees might not be time-effective. Instead, what you might want to do is send out circular emails, start chatting with them via an IM service or write things down on a whiteboard.
2. Cutting down meetings to a minimum
The next thing worth keeping in mind is that while meetings are an invaluable factor in the business world, they can also become major time-wasters if you allow them to become so. In order to avoid this, you should cut down the number, volume and duration of these meetings to a minimum.
According to one survey, an average office worker attends about 62 meetings each month and wastes over 31 hours in them. Imagine what kind of productivity spike you would encounter if you just found a way to cut these down.
3. Outsourcing what you can
You don’t have to complete every single task in-house in order to say that you lead an efficient workplace. Instead, you can focus the majority of your resources, time and attention on core tasks and leave all the rest to specialized agencies that you decide to team up with.
In some fields, like customer support, it’s irrelevant where these companies are from, due to the fact that a customer support agency can do their job just as efficiently even when on a different continent. On the other hand, tasks like computer support have to be present locally. So, if you’re looking for partners while running an office based in Melbourne, you need to look for a computer support Melbourne agency.
4. Respecting employees vs. fraternizing with them
Your personal relationship with your employees is also a huge factor in the business world. Namely, you can respect your employees and show interest in them personally without fraternizing with them. The dangers of the latter are more than apparent.
First of all, they lead to unpleasant situations where you’re no longer an authority due to the fact that your employees see you as their buddy when you’re in fact their employer.
This is a common mistake with young entrepreneurs. Not to mention that this may lead to inappropriate situations (or at least be interpreted in this way). Finally, you might be accused of favoritism by those employees who feel like they’re not getting enough attention.
5. Eliminate distractions
The last thing you need to understand is the fact that distractions are by far the biggest productivity killer. These distractions come in various forms and formats. Visual distractions are a major issue for an open-space office, same as audio distractions.
While there’s not much you can do about the former, when it comes to the latter a couple of stern office policies and some high-end peripherals (noise-canceling headphones) can make a world of difference. A tidy office also has a lot fewer distractions than a messy one, which is why hygiene needs to take a high spot on your list of priorities.
other valuable tips:
Employee Mentoring and Your Small Business
How to Create a Happy Company Where Your Employees Love to Work
Conclusion
The best thing about running a small office is the fact that, as your business grows, your tasks grow only in scale but do not change in nature. This means that, in theory, techniques that you use to manage your 20-person staff, may be just as effective when managing 2,000 employees later on. In other words, skills you acquire now will remain universally useful and applicable for years to come.
Image Credit: Pixabay
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