Workplace efficiency is not a revolutionary concept. Ever since there has been industry, businesses have been seeking ways to improve office efficiency. While there have been some huge leaps of progress—such as the invention on the computer or the advent of fax machine—there have also been periods of slow growth. When it comes to office efficiency, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, simply harness some time-honored customs and apply them to today’s workforce.
- Change Your Mindset: Anyone who has ever held a job has come up against the "that’s the way we have always done it" mentality. This mindset is a productivity killer. While businesses can learn from past practices, that does not mean those methods are still practical. Honor the past, but innovate for the future.
- SWOT: SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and this technique is more than a cool acronym. Conducting a SWOT assessment on specific areas or departments of your business can be an illuminating practice that paves the way to increased productivity. Look for the weak links and identify ways to improve them.
- Map It Out: Once you have identified workflow problems, get visual and map them out. Creating a flowchart can be a creative way to see issues from a different perspective and help you pinpoint ways to reduce the slowdowns. The idea is to look at workflows from a big-picture perspective so you can imagine the overall process as well as specific pieces of the puzzle. Don’t worry if you are not the artistic type—you can use software to complete this task if drawing it out is not your style.
- Communicate: Now, you may be thinking this is something you already do on a daily basis; however, we encourage you to take a fresh look. We live in a virtual world where more of our communication is done through a screen. To improve office efficiency, promote a culture of collaboration. Workflows should eliminate communication blocks and increase teamwork.
- Centralize Processes: Create cross-functional teams to develop processes and procedures rather than letting individual departments create their own. While this may not be received well in the beginning, it will lead to the overall improvement of office policies. Again, think collaboration—develop a team with members from all key departments so that the needs of all areas of your business are being met. Look at digitizing paper processes and developing a centralized database to store important files.
When it comes to cultivating office efficiency, a few small changes can make a big difference. Remember, you don’t have to start from scratch—take a look at some historical examples of workplace improvements and update them to work for your modern business.