Productivity is about output. Whether you’re focused on increasing workplace productivity or personal productivity, the goal is to get more done in the same amount of time.
It’s also essential to focus your labor effort on things that matter. Improving productivity is not the same as increasing busyness.
If the work you’re doing isn’t contributing to your company’s economic growth — or other business or personal goals — you’re just wasting time and energy.
This article will define what productivity is, highlight some challenges to productivity growth, and share how to overcome low productivity.
What exactly is productivity?
Productivity is a measure of production over time. Defining and fixing the time period is important for accurate productivity measurement.
For example, consider a business that manufactures shoes. The factory team can produce 20 pairs of shoes an hour. A rival business can produce 35 pairs of shoes an hour. The second factory is more productive.
Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, productivity is different from efficiency. Unlike productivity — which is just concerned with output — efficiency is a measure of output in comparison to input.Why is increasing productivity important?
There are several reasons why increasing workplace productivity is important. These include:
- Financial benefit. Increasing your total output provides an opportunity for financial gain. Higher production means you can make more sales and drive higher revenues.
- Better decision-making. Employee productivity levels are a metric against which you can assess team performance. Monitoring performance can inform investment decisions and may help identify processes that need to be optimized.
- Higher motivation. It’s much more motivating to be involved in a team that’s delivering for the business than it is to be stuck making a limited contribution. Watching your team’s productivity level grow — for example, through process improvement or team collaboration — can offer a significant boost to employee motivation.
Top productivity challenges and how to beat them
So now that we’re clear on why labor productivity is important, it’s worth discussing what can get in the way of productivity gains.
Here are our 5 top productivity improvement challenges and what to do about them:
1. Maintaining motivation
We’re all human, and it’s almost impossible to remain motivated 100% of the time. Motivation is highest when it’s clear how what we’re doing contributes to a goal that’s important to us.
Motivation is reduced when work feels mundane or when we can’t see how we’re making a difference.
It’s important for team leaders and managers to share the organizational vision with every worker. Make sure your team understands the ‘golden thread’ — that’s how their work directly contributes to the bigger picture.
Get to know your team and encourage them to use language that matches their values. For those with a competitive nature, encourage them to beat their productivity levels month on month.
2. Ignoring distractions
Productivity is about output over a period of time. If there’s less time, it’s going to be way harder to increase productivity.
Distractions eat into the time you have available to get work done. In fact, distractions — such as emails and phone calls — were stated as the top 3 things that get in the way of work.
And it’s not just social media scanning or office gossip that can prove distracting. As shown above, wasteful meetings can eat up precious work hours every day, making them a significant factor in labor productivity levels.
When you’re organizing a meeting, consider who really needs to be there, whether the meeting time could be reduced, or whether the issue could be solved outside of a formal meeting environment.
If a meeting is necessary, batch topics that need to be tackled together and keep a strict agenda so that you don’t waste time heading down the proverbial rabbit hole.
And don’t be too harsh on those caught having a giggle over the latest Tik Tok video. Scheduling breaks where team members can relax and refuel can boost productivity, enabling them to return to work refreshed.
3. Navigating inefficient processes
Like other distractions, fighting to understand an inefficient process can be a serious time suck. If processes are overly complex, obsolete, or don’t make sense, they can hamper even the most productive person.
33% of respondents in a recent study said better processes would be the single most effective way to improve overall productivity. For those nodding along while reading point 2, it’s worth sharing that over 20% wanted fewer meetings.
Inefficient processes are actually a 2-fold issue.
Firstly, time is wasted trying to understand how to navigate the process, who to speak to, what documentation is required, and what action needs to be taken, and when.
Secondly, banging your head against a bureaucratic brick wall is pretty demotivating. Which leads us back to point 1.
As a team leader, do what you can to review and simplify your processes. If process improvement is new to you, we’ve got a handy article that steps you right through it.
If you don’t own the process and those who do aren’t receptive to changing it, don’t make people battle it alone. Get more experienced team members to support those who are newer to the process, saving time and increasing employee collaboration while you’re at it.
4. Poor collaboration between teams
While we’re on the subject of collaboration, when done poorly, it can have a significant effect on productivity levels.
Perhaps while you’ve been despairing over a nonsensical process, you realize that part of the issue is that teams aren’t working effectively together.
This could be for a number of reasons.
Maybe the ways of working or cultures don’t match, and the team leaders are always butting heads over how something is done.
Maybe the business performance metrics encourage team competition rather than collaboration.
Encouraging cross-functional collaboration is vital for increasing productivity. Not only does it improve processes and help maintain motivation, but it can also build organizational learning. Higher productivity teams and individuals can support or mentor others to improve.
5. Doing the wrong things
Putting effort into the wrong things isn’t strictly a productivity challenge. But, it’s worth mentioning as it can seriously affect the bottom line.
Successful businesses are good at 2 things: doing the right things and doing things right.
And, while doing things right will certainly improve your productivity, it’s all for naught if you’re not doing the things that matter to your mission, your stakeholders, and your customers.
As we said at the beginning, productivity is not the same as busyness. Everything being done should align with your business goals and either add value or clearly support something that does.
At the team level, get really clear on what your key performance indicators are and why.
If it’s not obvious how they contribute to the wider business, share that with senior management so they can take steps to address it.
Productivity FAQs
Let’s now take a look at a few of the most frequently asked questions about productivity.
- How should I measure productivity at a corporate level?
You need to make sure your productivity measure is comparing apples with apples. Tracking productivity trends, such as the change in a team’s total output over time, is the best way to judge if their productivity’s improving.
- Who’s responsible for productivity in an organization?
At a senior management level, someone like the Director of Operations will be responsible for managing and monitoring the overall economic output of the business.
Of course, to maximize productivity, the responsibility also needs to sit at a team and individual level with all employees engaged and striving to improve.
- Which is more important — productivity or efficiency?
Both increased productivity and improved efficiency are valuable measures that provide insight into your business operations. Just be clear about which you’re measuring and why to ensure you get the data you need to drive decision-making.
How monday.com keeps you and your team productive
As a Work OS, monday.com can help you manage your entire business operation. So, if you’re facing one of the productivity challenges we’ve highlighted, monday.com is guaranteed to be able to help.
Consider motivation. monday.com’s comprehensive reporting capabilities offer your team all the transparency they need for measuring productivity and understanding how their output contributes to wider organizational goals.
Which is also a great mechanism to check that you’re doing the right things.
Plus, for those who are motivated by a little healthy competition, it’s easy to compare productive factors and overall productivity across teams and individuals.
And, we have 1,000s of automation recipes that reduce the mundane, repetitive work that can be frustrating and demotivating for your team — leaving them free to contemplate how to maximize their output and boost their productivity levels.
monday.com is also amazing in supporting effective collaboration. It’s simple to view, share, and annotate documents or @tag colleagues for their input.
Plus, you can connect with colleagues either in-platform or through integrations with tools you probably already use, such as Slack or Zoom.
And, with such easy and effective ways to communicate, you might find your need for formal meetings reduces, which is key for helping your team minimize distractions.
On days when meetings really are necessary, monday.com’s colorful and intuitive dashboards make it easy to plan work around them. Check deadlines, flag priorities using status columns, and assign resources to tasks with a single click.
Plus, like pretty much everything in monday.com, our dashboards are fully customizable, and our drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to build a workflow that suits how you like to work. This means efficient processes really are in your future.
Stay productive
Keeping an eye on your productivity levels is important for maximizing your business operations. Knowing which teams are most productive and why can help with investment decisions and identify opportunities for process improvement.
In this article, we’ve discussed what productivity is, 5 challenges you might face when trying to increase productivity, and shown how monday.com helps you overcome them.
Why not get started today with our fully customizable work calendar?
Get started