4 tips to improve employee productivity

Bringing a new employee onto your team is a huge commitment, and something that represents your company’s largest outgoing expense. If you aren’t making the most of your employees’ time and effort, you’re letting that investment fly right out the window.

Keep your investment where it belongs—in house—with a few no-nonsense tips for increasing employee efficiency without making your office a miserable place to work.

1. Simplify time tracking

Every full-time team member should be tracking all of their time, as it happens. When you’re reliant on a tech’s memory, or a messy manual system, you leave a lot of room for tracking errors. Make sure you’ve got a tracking system in place that makes it simple for every employee to track every second of their billable time in real time. Not only will you see a potential boost in revenue when time is accurately tracked, but you’ll immediately see where your techs’ time could be better used.

2. Begin at the beginning

If you add it up, your techs are spending an awful lot of their time, and your money, just commuting to and from the office. By setting them up with the tools to access everything they need remotely, you can start their workday on-site at the first client, which saves you from paying for commute time, and gets your clients’ issues resolved faster.

3. Real-time documentation

Even if your techs would rather move right from one project to the next, you’ll avoid costly mistakes by making sure they finish job reports, make notes, and enter time before they leave the office or the client’s site. By immediately handling important documentation, you’ll be sure you have an accurate record of the work done, which will make it easier to provide clients with detailed billing statements that reinforce the value of your work.

4. Check in on the go

Once your techs are done with their jobs, have them check in with the office before getting back on the road. Your dispatchers will be able to quickly shuffle schedules to meet immediate client needs, and your techs won’t waste time coming back to the office just to leave again.

Remember that while your employees might be your biggest expense, they are also your biggest source of revenue, clients, and ultimately, success. With the right tools and processes in place, you’ll make their jobs easier and their days less hectic. In return, they’ll be working harder and feeling more fulfilled in their work.