Two of the best professional skills you can learn is effectiveness and efficiency in the workplace. Knowing how to make your time more efficient, and how to effectively schedule and delegate tasks, is something that can make you more productive at work, and increase employee productivity in your workplace.
Increasing effectiveness at work and improving your efficiency with tasks will make you feel like you have more control over your workload and can even help reduce stress levels too. Improving these skills is all about improving the way you work, and how you prioritise different tasks and projects.
Here are 4 key tips on how you can start making small changes to improve your effectiveness and efficiency around the office:
Tip 1: Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks
A lot of people get self-conscious about delegating tasks – especially people in junior roles, or people who are new to a company. The truth is, all great time-managers know how to effectively delegate tasks to help them work smarter. Passing a task to someone else isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign that you know the strength of other team members, and you know the importance of company time.
Take time to assess what skills your colleagues have and how you can effectively use them. Delegating is about saving time, so you don’t want to delegate a task to someone who doesn’t have the required skill set. Once you’ve familiarised yourself with your colleagues and employees, delegating tasks should become much easier and will save you a lot of time. Your managers will also see that you are improving cost effectiveness.
Tip 2: Make sure you communicate effectively
A lot of people waste time communicating in ways that aren’t efficient or effective. Learning how best to communicate with people in different contexts and situations is crucial. When you’re given a new task or a new brief, think about how the best way to share the information would be… Is it best to go over to someone’s desk and talk to them in person? Or would it be quicker to send them an email with the relevant points? These little things matter, because the better you communicate initially, the less time you’ll spend explaining things again later on.
Tip 3: Cut out unnecessary tasks
If you find that you waste a lot of your working hours on tasks you don’t have a big impact on – you could be doing a lot of unnecessary activities that are decreasing your efficiency levels. Think about things like reporting, phone calls, and big group meetings.
A lot of people find themselves ‘ticking off’ these as habit rather than necessity, and it really hinders productivity in the working environment . Once you free up that time, you can start spending it doing things that matter, or things that will genuinely make a difference to your workload and help you to stay focused.
You may also be spending a lot of time doing things like cleaning the office, or keeping the office tidy. This is a task you can easily get help with (we offer cleaning services in London for offices) and saving time on these day-to-day tasks can help free up time for other things.
Tip 4: Keep a tidy workspace
A tidy office encourages people to be more productive and have a clearer mindset when working. Studies have shown that keeping your workplace and desk area free from mess, actually helps people focus more on their tasks  – in turn, increasing productivity. We offer cleaning services in London offices, helping you maintain a healthy working atmosphere.
