Are you looking for the best productivity hacks for small businesses? Then you are on the right page. Small enterprises usually struggle a lot with boosting their productivity and eventually end up either failing or being saved by a miracle. However, you can’t rely on luck if you own a small organization. That’s why you need to master strategies to improve the efficiency and productivity of your employees.
Did you know that 72% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years? That’s because they don’t know the right way to boost efficiency and stay productive. You focus on increasing productivity. However, without knowing the proper techniques to do so, you will fail to achieve your goals.
So in this blog, we will take a look at why small business owners aren’t productive enough. Plus, we will give you 8 of the best productivity hacks for small businesses, which you can implement straight away. So let’s get started.
Reasons Why Small Businesses Aren’t Productive
As we mentioned before, most of the new small businesses and startups fail within the first 5 years. Either they don’t have the right tools and technologies or they don’t know the proper strategies to boost productivity. Moreover, here are 5 reasons we think why small business owners’ employees don’t stay productive.
1. Dysfunctional Management
One of the reasons business owners need productivity hacks for small businesses is because of dysfunctional management. What small enterprises do is cut a lot of budgets they think are not necessary. As a result, they end up in a situation where one person has to do almost everything themselves, leading to burnout, quitting, and stress. Here, you can:
- Distribute tasks.
- Have ample time for yourself to perform all the work that only you can do.
- Have a budget for hiring new staff.
- Don’t cut too many budgets.
- If you have to reduce expenses, ensure that they don’t affect your business functioning.
2. Poor Time Management
Time is the most important asset for everyone including small businesses. Every business and employee has limited work hours for the day. Moreover, no one wants to do overtime unless necessary. On the other hand, small businesses fail to understand proper time and resource management and incur losses in the form of:
- Too much expenses
- Incomplete projects
- Lost clients
- Employee burnout, stress, and inefficiency.
3. Too Many Meetings
Meetings are good. However, too many of them can reduce productivity as they take most of your workday, leaving fewer work hours for other important tasks. The result is forced overtime and thus more and more employees resign, which is never good for productivity. The reasons for multiple meetings and why you need productivity hacks for small businesses can be.
- Some of the teams are not available at the meeting time.
- Multiple points or agendas of concern.
- Too complex a task/event to understand in a single meeting.
Overall, it’s up to the management to understand this and calculate the no. of meetings required.
Read Also: Best 5 Ways to Calculate Employee Productivity in 2024-25
4. Poor Workload Management
Another reason why small enterprise owners fail to stay productive is poor workload management. The rule of thumb is that any employee should neither be overworked nor underutilized. In both cases, productivity will decrease. Here’s why?
- In case of employee underutilization:
- Employees will get bored and waste time.
- Employees will procrastinate thinking about why isn’t he/she getting any more tasks.
- The employee will finish their tasks on or before time and would want to go home. Keeping him/her any longer will result in resignation.
- It results in poor resource management.
- In the case of an overworked employee:
- Your employee will quit due to burnout and stress.
- It will result in poor work-life balance.
- It will affect your employee’s mental health.
- Your employee will begin multitasking, which will lead to incomplete tasks and projects. Overall, meeting the deadline will become impossible.
5. Too Many Distractions
Too many distractions in the workplace including office gossip, meeting interruptions, outside window noise, and noise from snacking colleagues can also decrease employee productivity. Overall, avoiding these distractions is a challenge, and that’s why you need productivity hacks for small businesses for a distraction-free workplace.
The Best 8 Productivity Tips for Small Business Owners
So now we know why small enterprises fail to stay productive. However, what are the ways for them to stay on track and keep boosting productivity and profitability? Well, no need to worry as we shortlisted the 8 best practical strategies that you can implement right away for success.
1. Write On Physical Matters
Productivity monitoring software is an effective way to identify and boost productivity levels. However, it’s limited to a digital solution. Instead, a better alternative is to write on physical surfaces while using your productivity tracker tool such as:
- Walls of your office.
- Post its
- A big piece of paper.
The point behind this productivity hack for small businesses is to give your teams and employees a broader way of how tasks look. This in return results in:
- Streamlined workflows
- Increased efficiency
- Increased productivity
2. Minimize Meetings
As we mentioned before, meetings take up most of your time, leaving fewer work hours for the tasks that matter. Meetings divide your workday and make you lose focus on on-hand tasks. Overall, it becomes hard to focus on work and increase workplace productivity. So the strategy here is to minimize meetings. Here’s how.
- Try to take meetings when every team is available.
- Try to simplify each point of concern, task, or event, making it easier to resolve in fewer meetings.
3. Use Time Management Techniques
One of the most commonly used productivity hacks for small businesses is improving time management. Remember that time management is not all about crossing things off checklists. Rather, it’s the way to get quality work done within the limited time you have. In short, properly managing your time is the core of boosting productivity. However, how can we improve time management? Below, we have shortlisted 2 tried and tested strategies.
3.1 Prioritization
It’s very simple. All you have to do is prioritize tasks to focus on what matters the most. One way is to use the Eisenhower Matrix, which divides tasks as per urgency and importance. Another technique is the Pareto Principle, which claims that 80% of outcomes are achieved from 20% of performed actions. Again, this strategy helps you concentrate on higher-priority tasks.
3.2 Time-Blocking
This productivity hack for small businesses involves allocating specific parts of your workday to particular tasks. Overall, it helps you stay on track while prioritizing the most important work. To optimize time-blocking, we recommend using employee monitoring software and calendars.
4. Embrace Technology
Of course, we are living in a technology-oriented and data-driven work world. Thus, you can’t avoid using technology in one way or another. What we recommend here is to use tools to improve productivity and enhance efficiency. For instance:
- Online scheduling software, tools, and/or assistants help you automate schedules for your employees. Overall, this reduces administrative burden.
- Communication tools help your diverse remote, in-office, and on-site teams stay connected.
- Chatbots provide solutions to problems. For example, removing errors and bugs for programmers.
Read Also: How to Improve Workplace Productivity?
5. Implement SMART Goals
The next productivity hack for small businesses on our list is the standard of goal setting. It defines how your objectives must be for your employees. However, what does SMART mean here? Let’s get right into it.
- S stands for specific. It means that the objectives must be clear to your employees.
- M stands for measurable. It means that the task must have some level of accomplishment. It is so that you can measure the expected vs achieved outcome.
- A is achievable. It means that your expected results must be practical. For example, you can’t expect your coding team to code an entire software in a single workday.
- R is realistic, which is exactly as it sounds. For example, you can’t expect your content writer to also design web pages.
- T is timely. It means that your objectives must have a definite hour limit. All your goals must be completed within this time.
6. Delegation and Outsourcing
Remember, you can’t do every task yourself. That’s why there are teams. Now, you might consider delegation as a way to offload work. However, it’s one of the best strategies to increase efficiency and productivity.
Here, the idea is to multiply the work you can achieve while having time for the activities, which only you can do. Overall, delegation by hiring or outsourcing helps you expand your capabilities and increase productivity without overtime. As per this productivity hack for small businesses, you must delegate time-intensive, out-of-your-capabilities, and repetitive tasks. For instance:
- Administrative tasks:
- Email management
- Scheduling and calendar management
- Data entry and report generation
- Marketing and sales tasks:
- Social media management
- Content creation and blogging
- SEO and PPC management
- Operational tasks:
- Inventory management
- Order processing and fulfillment
- Bookkeeping and accounting
- Customer service:
- Handling customer questions and complaints
- Managing returns and exchanges
- Follow-up calls and satisfaction surveys
7. Handle Distractions
As we mentioned before, workplace distractions hinder productivity a lot. In the case of small businesses, distractions are inevitable. Especially because resources are limited and every second is essential. You can’t eliminate them, so avoiding them is the best alternative. Likewise, procrastination also decreases productivity. Fortunately, you can eliminate procrastination by using these tips.
- Break down big projects.
- Set clear deadlines.
- Use time blocks.
- Eliminate distractions.
- Identify peak time.
- Implement accountability.
- Reward progress, which keeps the momentum going and optimizes workflow.
8. Learn from Your Team
The last productivity hack for small businesses on our list involves interacting with your team often. In short, gathering and working on employee feedback increases productivity as you identify and fix work gaps.
Furthermore, it creates a more harmonious work environment because of increased trust. Overall, it shows that you are committed to improving staff welfare and growth.
Conclusion
We hope that now you are clear about productivity hacks for small businesses. To conclude, small enterprises often struggle to stay productive because they don’t know the proper way to. However, if they want to eliminate low productivity factors such as poor time management, poor workload management, and dysfunctional management, their best solution is to use expert strategies and tips. These also include using tools such as productivity monitoring software. DeskTrack is the best all-things employee monitoring software. With its diverse range of intuitive features, it helps you monitor and boost the productivity of your employees in the simplest way possible.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q. Why Do Small Enterprises Fail to Stay Productive?
Ans. Here are the reasons we think small businesses fail to stay productive.
- Dysfunctional Management
- Poor Time Management
- Too Many Meetings
- Poor Workload Management
- Too Many Distractions
However, using productivity hacks for small businesses will ensure that small enterprises boost efficiency and profitability.
Q. What is a Productivity Hack?
Ans. A productivity hack is a simple and easy-to-apply trick to improve productivity. In the case of small businesses, these are simple strategies that help them stay efficient and profitable.
Q. How will you Ensure that your Small Business is Productive?
Ans. Here are some productivity hacks for small businesses, which you can implement straight away.
- Write On Physical Matters
- Minimize Meetings
- Use Time Management Techniques
- Embrace Technology
- Implement SMART Goals
- Delegation and Outsourcing
- Handle Distractions
- Learn from Your Team
Q. What are the 5 Most Commonly Used Productivity Tools?
Ans. Commonly, businesses worldwide use these 5 productivity tools.
- Calendar apps
- AI scheduling apps
- Note-taking apps
- To-do list apps
- Habit tracker apps
