The success of running an operation, whatever size that may be, ultimately boils down to two defining factors:

1. Maximising productivity
2. Minimising costs

You and your team should always aim to identify how to increase productivity and enhance efficiency in your specific workplace, but there are some overarching strategies that apply to almost all industries and businesses.

Productivity refers to working smarter; making better use of labour, materials and capital for a stronger output of goods or services.

Start with the following 3 strategies to increase labour productivity in any workplace, to cope with increasing customer demands and outperform your competitors.

3 Key Strategies to Improve Labour Productivity

Improve your Operations with Technology

How can technology improve productivity? Production management tools are designed to help you streamline your processes, stay ahead of technological innovations and free up time for workers to focus their attention appropriately.

Make use of inventory control systems to increase profits, keep inventory levels down and improve customer service. Using online systems can keep processes organised and integrate multiple parts of the business, including purchasing and inventory information. This way, you can easily monitor the movement of products, track peak periods and adjust your orders appropriately.

Review your Current Processes

It falls down to you and your staff to identify how employees can improve productivity in the workplace. Critical reviews should occur on an ongoing basis, rather than at set intervals throughout the year.

Do your current processes meet the company’s goals and vision as well as they could? If you’re not sure, try drawing out the flow of information and processes. That way, you can understand the parts of each part of production that need some attention, so that you can eliminate wastage of time, money and energy.

Implement Ongoing Improvement Strategies

It’s important that you develop an improvement plan that’s unique to your business - rather than trying to replicate one you’ve seen elsewhere.

Start by identifying your workplace’s strengths and weaknesses; you can use an external party that specialises in workplace productivity to help. Select your priorities and work on those first, trying to tackle everything at once will result in information overload and you won’t get anything done any faster.

Open up avenues for your team to make suggestions at all times, assign specific teams to particular problems in their domain, and always measure results over time.

The secret to a leaner, more productive workplace is the ability to make small changes on an ongoing basis.

Get advice on labour productivity and how to achieve “best practice” for your organisation. An unbiased, expert view on your business can identify your key constraints and show you how to make improvements across your critical business processes.