5 Ways To Increase Business Productivity and Build a High-Performing Organization

Business productivity goes way beyond cramming more into less time: It's using brains, not brawn. Yet, most organizations seem riddled with inefficiencies.

At the end of the day, these inefficiencies are often the result of a handful of chronic problems, such as unclear goals, outdated processes, low employee engagement, or improper use of technology. All of this adds up to wasted time, low morale, and missed opportunities for growth. 

So, we considered all possible ways of increasing workforce productivity and chose the top five that can truly leave a lasting impact. Read more about them here.

What is business productivity?

Business productivity measures how a company converts inputs, such as time, talent, and resources, into outputs: products, services, and revenues. Higher productivity benefits mean greater profitability, increased competitive advantage, and improved employee satisfaction. 

But what else can you expect?

Why is business productivity important?

Low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion, which is 9% of global GDP. 

When businesses focus on workforce productivity, they create a positive cycle whereby employees feel valued, perform better, and contribute to the overall success of the organization. In fact, the same Gallup study reveals that employees who are actively disengaged report 30% more stress than those who are engaged.

Let’s explore five tried-and-tested ways to enhance business productivity.

5 ways to increase business productivity

Remember some techniques might not work for your exact workflows. So for each of the methods for improving business productivity below, we’ve covered some alternative examples of ensuring you can apply them at least partially with your own employees.

1. Use data to understand the current state of business productivity

Before you jump in to make major changes, you should determine where your business stands in terms of foundational people analytics. This is an essential first step as it will allow you to see what trends in the workforce, skills gaps, and engagement levels you can spot. 

Visier People® gives your organization the tools needed to monitor an employee or team for performance, track disengaged teams in its workforce, and help mitigate those issues. By applying these insights in real-time, businesses can make choices that improve productivity without forgetting about the human factor. 

But say you run a chain of retail stores with hundreds of employees and you've just noticed that sales productivity has dropped. People data analysis is a must if you want to find out exactly which locations did poorly around engagement scores. 

A global retailer significantly improved workforce productivity with Visier by using real-time insights, predictive modeling, and AI-driven analytics. 

This data-driven approach gave the retailer the exact insights they needed to enhance conversion rates, even in stores with lower foot traffic, while reducing inefficiencies in workforce planning. Additionally, Visier's gave them more visibility into why employee turnover was happening and how this impacted sales. Predictive capabilities enabled the team to anticipate workforce challenges before they hit the profit line.

2. Analyze and optimize current processes

Organizations need to understand their people’s impact on work by integrating work data with people data, uncovering how tasks, collaboration, and workflows influence productivity. 

Visier People® Extend shows how tasks, meetings, and projects have an impact on overall productivity. This matrix allows the company to minimize workdays spent on manual processes so removal of the bottlenecks that slow down operations is efficiently done.

Marketing agencies, for instance, are constantly moving fast between projects. So there's lots that can go wrong—from excessive internal meetings slowing down project completion to misaligned workflows that cause delays in campaign launch, and so on. Without clear visibility into how people do their work, your teams will end up focusing more on coordination than actual execution, thus missing deadline after deadline and disappointing clients thereafter. 

Through the capabilities of Visier People Extend, agencies can analyze their task distribution and current collaboration methods, tracking how much time is spent on each to identify barriers to productivity. For example, if data indicates your creative teams are spending more hours in meetings than creating content, you can set up new meeting policies or synchronous alternatives to free up time.

3. Leverage AI, technology, and automation

AI enables organizations to elevate workforce productivity, automating insights and decision-making to drive measurable business impact.

Visier Vee, in particular, can democratize insights through real-time workforce analytics, allowing HR and business leaders to make quicker, data-driven decisions. Other tools such as Zapier (for workflow automation) and Slack (for team collaboration) further increase efficiencies.

A mid-sized marketing agency might struggle to scale operations when lots of manual processes come into the picture, slowing down decision-making and increasing inefficiency. The firm can use Vee to get real-time workforce analytics to make quick and data-driven decisions in staffing levels and resource allocation. 

But remember AI doesn't stand alone. In this scenario, creating a culture of continuous improvement by reviewing and refining internal processes is a bonus to add on top of AI and automation. 

In other words, human-backed process optimization is another essential element companies can use to ramp up efficiency and scale operations without sacrificing employee happiness.

4. Put emphasis on talent development

According to McKinsey, employees who feel they are growing in their careers are 33% more engaged. Hence, businesses must prioritize talent development to continuously adapt and optimize through workforce planning, ensuring they have the right people in the right roles at the right time.

In particular, employees prioritize factors such as meaningful work, opportunities for growth, and the ability to make impactful contributions—elements that directly influence their performance. 

The way you approach talent development though differs based on general career path and skill development within an industry or role.

For startups, you'll want employees who can adapt, have diverse skill sets, and quickly go through promotions as the company expands. A combination of targeted talent development programs, mentorships, and cross-training can capture those skill gaps while preparing its people for the challenges ahead. 

Things are a bit different in the ever-changing market dynamics of the healthcare sector though. Faced with evergrowing challenges in satisfying patients' ever-growing demands, the right development strategy will first address common skill gaps and support people as they prepare for the leadership roles of the future. Think of a mix of training initiatives, mentorship programs, and succession planning to keep staff engaged, reduce attrition, and ensure your teams are in sync with the organization's mission of providing quality care.

5. Set clear, meaningful goals to track and measure progress

To improve business productivity, start by setting clear goals that will let you track progress and make continuous improvements based on that. You can choose (or mix) from three widely used frameworks for goal-setting including SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) goals, KPIs, and OKRs.

This might be a bit more complicated for businesses where the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factor plays a huge part in how you track and report on data. 

Let's see an example. While setting goals focused on profitability, the sustainable fashion brand that wants to revolutionize the industry, takes a rather monumental approach in which environmental and social impact matters. Rather than relying on traditional business growth metrics, they connect SMART goals, KPIs, and OKRs to reflect their sustainability.

Where to next?

You should never delay increasing workforce productivity. If you don't know where to start, consider gathering data-driven insights and combining them with new methods for optimizing your workflows, adopting AI, and simply investing in people.

See how you can achieve that with Visier's Workforce AI Edge with a 2-minute self-guided tour.

Read more about workforce productivity

• Employee productivity is critical to a business's success. When your employees don’t work as well as they used to, the entire organization suffers. Learn how to measure employee productivity here.

• Traditional productivity strategies are no longer enough. Business leaders need a smarter, data-driven approach to workforce performance. Download the playbook to find out how.

• New research confirms traditional employee engagement surveys fall short in measuring worker well-being, harming productivity. Read more here.