To be high performing, you need to establish a way to be productive and efficient. The struggle? For one, productivity and efficiency are continuously treated as synonyms. While similar, you can be productive without necessarily being efficient. Think of a situation where you have two people working on a similar task. Eventually, both of them will deliver, yet one of them might take more time to do the same thing. While both of them are productive, only one of them is working with high efficiency.

Thus, productivity means doing more with the same and adding new value to your work hours. Efficiency, on the other hand, means doing the same process with less amount of energy, time and money. But how to find the right balance between these two, and as a result, improve your current situation at work?

Often, it is not the unwillingness to change and improve the way we work, but rather the lack of data that is holding us back. Luckily, data is no longer the prerogative of a few, and we all have access to some data. Even better – productivity and efficiency are concrete metrics that can be measured. And definitely should be measured.

Measuring Productivity

There are several ways to measure your team’s performance. Many articles offer insight into different formulas and list many variables that could affect productivity and efficiency. The most commonly used equation is the labor productivity equation, which simply divides total output with total input. However, in some businesses, this might be a grossly oversimplified way to measure performance.

Another great way to have an overview of your team’s performance is to use a time tracker or project management software. These options are especially relevant to the team’s working remotely, as you get a much more accurate overview of the company as a whole. It is also the best way to assure that your team is working closely together and are on the same page at all times.

Helping people and teams work more efficiently together has also been something that Scoro stands for. For this reason, we have worked on developing a tool that would enable any team to get an instant overview of their current processes. And with our Productivity Calculator, we are hoping to push more teams to discover their time-saving superpowers and ultimately become high performing.

Try our productivity calculator and see how much time and money you could be saving.

We believe it is necessary for people to be able to measure how productive they are in their daily work. Why? Because having this kind of knowledge is the first step of improving the way their teams work. We also have first-hand knowledge and experience on how project management software will improve your business workflow and make your life easier – especially for businesses that have offices in different locations and time zones.

5 tips on how to boost your team’s efficiency

1. Boost your own productivity

To boost team productivity, there is a need for the promotion of personal productivity. Only if people in your team work productively as well as efficiently can we start talking about improving team workflow. According to Slaughter, the best way to encourage productivity is to help individuals take ownership over how they manage their own time and resources. Time and energy management are a big step in that.

2. Use your meeting time wisely

These days, meetings appear to have a bad reputation. The verdict is clear: we should work towards eliminating meetings altogether. However, the culprit might not be the meeting itself but the way we are used to running them. Thus, instead of trying to move away from meetings, improve them.

For one, have a clear agenda and invite only those people who need to be involved. Another good way to improve your meetings is to have everyone share their talking points before the meeting even starts. This way, you can immediately focus on the most critical topics.

3. Make decisions based on data

If you don’t measure anything, you can’t improve anything. Furthermore, companies making decisions based on data rather than based on intuition or past examples are said to outperform their competitors. However, the key is to focus on the meaningful data and find the KPI’s that will help your team specifically.

Also, data can be a significant driver of individual and team performance. It can help employees be more aware of their current habits and guide management on their strategies concerning the team’s productivity. Data can quickly help identify productivity peaks and change work schedule in accordance.

4. Work in asynchronous teams

Every business needs to establish a great team dynamics and communication etiquette that allows everyone to work with higher efficiency and productivity. One way to work and communicate with higher agility is asynchronous communication. It eliminates the pressure to always be “on” and respond within minutes. And it is a great way to respect your team member’s time and focus.

While asynchronous communication has many benefits, there can be some drawbacks. To truly take advantage of this type of communication, there are some main things to keep in mind:

1. Over-communicate if necessary, but cover all the information needed so the other person can immediately get the full picture.
2. Add a deadline and share as much support material as necessary.
3. Be clear in what you expect from the other person.

5. Invest in good business management software

A tool that enables you to collaborate, track project progress, and manage tasks in real-time will improve your overall efficiency and productivity. For remote teams, it is often the only viable option. Naturally, they can’t all be online and working at the same time. Thus, having a single source of truth that allows everyone to be on the same page at all times will guarantee better workflow and higher performance.