Do you think your practice is as efficient as it could be? If not, you may be thinking you need to boost morale, hire a stronger team, or even spend more of your own time in the office. That isn’t always the remedy, however. In some cases, you simply need to improve staff productivity, but you just aren’t sure how.
Check these five tips that can help you boost staff productivity, which will then lead to better performance and stronger efficiency.
1. Master Time Management Skills
Every practice manager knows that time is your most precious resource. And if you aren’t managing this resource appropriately, you could be working extremely inefficiently.
The goal for management should be to spend 80% of your day doing only what you can do uniquely. The other 20% should be ensuring that other people are doing their jobs properly, so you don’t have to spend additional time doing their work for them or getting involved. That may sound harsh, but if you’re being paid $50 per hour and you end up doing a $20 per hour task because the person who should be doing it is ineffective, that’s an expensive and troubling waste of time.
Consider keeping a timesheet for a few days to ensure you are managing your time well and that you’re spending at least 80% of your time doing responsibilities that only you can uniquely handle.
2. Discover Delegation
If you’ve created a process at your office that’s documented, you can train your team on how to execute it, saving you time and ensuring that things run smoothly. If you don’t have a standard operating procedure documented, there’s no way you can efficiently delegate, because your team will be flying by the seats of their pants.
Delegation requires documentation, training, shadowing, frequent check-ins and an open door policy so the person you’re delegating to feels supported and doesn’t get frustrated or overwhelmed.
3. Avoid Micromanaging
New managers are notorious for micromanaging, because they’re so worried that their direct reports will do something wrong, or will deviate from how they used to do it. But by trusting your team to follow your standard operating procedure and to check in any time they have questions, you won’t need to micromanage, freeing up your time and giving your reports more independence.
4. Allow Mistakes
If you don’t micromanage, your reports are bound to make mistakes — and there’s nothing wrong with that. Mistakes are how we learn, and if you deprive someone of that, they won’t learn from those issues and discover how to do better. Most people don’t make the same mistake twice, so if they create an error once, they’re likely to make sure they don’t do it again.
5. Show That You Care
If you talk to any team, there are going to be people who say they don’t feel appreciated. And if you ask a large group to talk about the last time they cared about a staff member, most people will cite a time that involved something going wrong, and how they reassured that person. However, you shouldn’t have to experience a calamity for team members to know you care.
Leaders should show their reports that they care about them, they want them to succeed, and they are supporting them every step of the way. This will then become part of the fabric of your organization and spread throughout the business, so a culture of caring expands and staff productivity improves.
One of the best ways to boost your team’s performance is to ensure you have the right managers in place. Let attorney Don Phin, Esq., provide you with the tools you need to succeed during his FREE online training event, Prevent New Manager Mistakes to Avoid Practice Disasters. Register today!
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