Many of the productivity improvement ideas you will read about tend to focus in on how the individual can improve their outputs. It is more beneficial however to consider how teams of people could work together better. Here I’ll show you what some of the techniques you could consider using for increasing production of an entire workforce.
The first idea is to take a leaf from the small business strategy of multitasking individuals. Larger firms tend to have people specialize in key activities which improves their effectiveness but does mean that you can experience bottlenecks (as only a handful of people can do specific tasks). Increase productivity outputs of entire groups of people by making sure their skilled in different activities and have the flexibility to move from activity to activity.
Productivity improvement gains can also be observed by having employees feeling more motivated and involved in their work. Principally this is done by involving staff in their own planning process. This increases their ownership of the work that is to be done and makes them more diligent about delivering on what they themselves have planned out.
Any activity within a company does not get produced in isolation. Employees need to work together to deliver any element of output. This requires effective communication. It is essential therefore to make sure you have good chains of command, and a culture that nurtures two-way feedback whether it is good or bad news. You will see productivity improvement gains rapidly once flaws in the system or operating procedures are being rapidly notified and rectified.
Lastly, all workers like to feel that their level of effort will be remunerated effectively when the performance reviews arrive. The key to this is making sure that performance standards are objective and applied evenly across all of the staff. This ensures that individuals are not singled out and actual work outputs are used as the metrics for promotions/bonuses.

