There are lots of ways to improve efficiency in the workplace, with some strategies proving more effective than others. Now that Millennials make up the majority of employees worldwide, managers who want to squeeze the best out of their staff need to tweak their tactics accordingly. Here are just some options to make achieving this easier.
Harness project management tools
Being well organized is key to efficiency in the workplace, and Millennials grew up in an era when every aspect of life could be digitized and managed more efficiently via computer, so it makes sense to take advantage of the various tools that have been created specifically for this purpose.
Of course there are a lot of competing solutions to consider, so take a look at this list of project management tools from SnackNation and you can compare the top contenders including Monday.com, Shift, Hive and more.
Master communications
Employee productivity is tied to efficient communication capabilities, yet relying on established options like face-to-face meetings or email chains could mean that you are actually slowing your Millennial workforce down. Studies have shown that there is a lot to gain from embracing cutting edge social solutions to streamline communications and leverage the innate skills that employees already possess.
The rise of instant messaging in the office is an example of how this plays out, since services like Slack and Discord mean that team members can stay in touch with one another and collaborate on projects effectively through short-form communication. This also introduces an element of immediacy to the ebb and flow of work-related conversations, meaning that people do not need to wait hours or even days for a response to a mission-critical query.
Provide incentives
Millennials are better educated than their precursors and have been brought up to expect a degree of recognition for their work which may not have been present in earlier generations. This means that they respond especially well to praise and are more likely to be productive if there is a clear incentive in sight.
Incentives do not need to be purely financial; indeed you can see just as much of a benefit from simply taking the time to show your approval for a job well done in an email, especially if you copy in senior members of the organization so that the employee can see how much you appreciate their efforts.
There are lots of other ways to incentivize efficiency if you have a Millennial workforce to captain. You might instigate Casual Fridays, Lazy Mondays, fun teambuilding exercises and paid time off on top of existing vacation days.
Offer training
Sometimes the best way to improve efficiency is to make the people who work for you more proficient in their roles.
Booking employees onto training courses that will compliment their current skills and most importantly build in new abilities that they can bring back to the team will benefit the individual as well as the business as a whole.
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