An unfortunate thing about being a business owner sometimes is that you are at the crosshairs of the changing winds of the culture. And these past ten years, the very polarized political environment has put some pressures on businesses to align with different political leanings.
While some have capitalized on that and seen some gains (examples: Jeremy’s Razors and Ben & Jerry’s), backing certain ideals can put business owners like you in a precarious position.
The good news on this front is it looks like those sentiments are changing.
Now, while you don’t have to conduct your Atlanta, GA business around the ever-shifting sentiments of the culture, you do need to be one who’s paying attention to what your customers are interested in. You want to make sure that what you’re selling is what they’re buying these days.
And though it doesn’t mean you need to completely change what you’re offering, sometimes you need to make tweaks to what you do offer. Frame your business’s goods or services in new ways, offer new deals, and figure out how to stay relevant to your customer’s needs.
That’s the way of capitalism, and it’s how your business continues to thrive in it.
And behind the scenes, you always want to be fine-tuning how it operates. I’ve got ideas for that.
In fact, I always have my ears tuned for productivity hacks for the business world, particularly the ones proven for workplace and worker efficiency.
So when I compile enough ideas to report on, I like to share them with my readers. That’s the agenda for today’s note.
Keys to Worker Efficiency for Western North Carolina Small Business Owners
“Small things done are better than great deeds planned.” – Peter Marshall
I’m all about the macro gains in business that I get to see in my regular reporting tools and planning sessions with clients. The big wins are fun.
But the small gains can be equally satisfying. Don’t neglect to pay attention to small details to harvest improvements in team morale and your bottom line.
So here are my ideas for you today to improve worker efficiency and productivity.
Get Unstuck
Anyone doing creative work knows it’s harder to go from 0 to 10 than it is to go from 10 to 100. This is an area where I think AI offers a huge timesaver in a scenario where it assists – not replaces – your creativity process. Get ideas rolling to solve problems and start projects faster.
So explore those AI tools for content generation, brainstorming, or even graphic design.
Workplace application: A marketing team can leverage free AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini to generate headlines, product descriptions, or even social media post ideas. This then frees them up to focus on the strategic aspects of a campaign, like target audience analysis or creative direction.
Automate Microtasks
This is what it sounds like – using technology to automate small, repetitive tasks to free up human energy for more strategic work and productivity. Data entry, scheduling, and transactional communications can easily be managed by the many microtask platforms or workflow automation tools out there.
Workplace application: Check out apps like Zapier and IFTTT to see what automations you can set up to save you and your team time. (There are undoubtedly applications for your home life to discover there as well.)
Keep It Down
The stats on this one will probably confirm what you’ve suspected for a long time: a University of California, Irvine study found that background noise at work significantly reduces productivity. Even low-level noise can reduce worker efficiency performance by up to 66 percent.
So it would be worthwhile to take steps to block that noise out in a manner appropriate to your work environment. You could make worker productivity and efficiency gains even by reducing background noise to some degree.
Workplace application: Consider purchasing noise-canceling headphones for employees or designating quiet zones in your office. Soundproofing materials for conference rooms might also be useful for workers in the nearby vicinity and for those working inside the conference room as well.
Work In Batches
A recent study found that constant context switching reduces worker efficiency by up to 40 percent. So workers who are changing from one task to a completely different type of task, by choice or because of interruptions, are not working as efficiently as they could be.
Workplace application: Implement “do not disturb” protocols as a resource for employees needing uninterrupted work time. Also, encourage employees to batch similar tasks together in structured blocks of time during the day instead of whacking moles at will.
Get Visual
Kanban project management tools are not new, but they remain a trusted tool for many businesses. In this visual workflow management system, tasks are represented by cards on a physical or digital board and move through different stages (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Done).
The obvious advantages here are increased visibility, collaboration, communication, and efficiency for your workers and team.
Workplace application: Some well-known Kanban tools on the market are Asana, Trello, Jira, Notion, and Monday.com, but there are plenty of other options with various specialties and pricing options.
What productivity hacks have you found useful in your Western North Carolina business? I’m always interested in hearing what’s working for others.
Helping you work smarter,
Alan Barber