Posts Tagged ‘improve productivity’

How NOT to Increase Productivity

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

The common adage of “No pain, no gain” certainly rings true, even in the business sector. And this is precisely why there is a need to increase productivity, so that success can be achieved by any business. However, you should also keep in mind that when you are trying to increase the productivity of your workforce, there should still be some sort of balance maintained. After all, it is not every single day that all of your workers would be at their most productive. There will certainly be off-days for your employees, and even for you, as the proprietor here. And this is just one aspect you have to keep in mind here.

Our work pace has definitely been increasing lately. Technological advancements that have been springing about, for the purpose of making our professional lives easier, are not quite successful in certain areas. Well, they have certainly made work a whole lot easier. For instance, gone are the days when you would have to literally wipe out mistakes on your typed documents with what is known as a liquid eraser. By hitting the backspace key of your keyboard, you can now make the necessary changes on your documents before you set out to printing them.

However, you just cannot say that technological advancements have your work cut out for you already. Because technology has certainly made work easier for employees, then there would inevitably more tasks to be finished in a single workday. Work becomes more demanding because employers would come to expect more from their employees, since these advancements have features that make work easier. Thus, speed would definitely be picking up.

Technological advancements actually make us readily available for any sort of task in any location at any given time. Let us take the professional life of a web content writer that is home-based. Instant messenger applications make the web content writer available for any given task. Just by pinging the writer, instant communication is established. Your work hours just might even go beyond the usual 8-5 work schedule. And because you are required to work more and more hours, multitasking becomes inevitable as well.

At first bat, multitasking can actually make any employee feel productive. This is because it gives the notion of being able to achieve so many tasks of various natures within the same period of time. But then again, if you think about it, multitasking would just make you feel all the more pressured and drained at the end of the workday. But because we have this notion of achieving more in a shorter period of time, we cannot help but be attracted to do multitasking. In the end, there will definitely come a time when your body would demand you to slow down. Not just because of physical reasons here, but also because we become less and less efficient in the end. Remember the faster we run, the harder we work, the farther we drop as well. In short, increasing productivity would just be a short-term goal here.

If you want to increase productivity in your employees, do not pressure them to do tasks that would take their toll in the long run. Just group your activities and tasks accordingly, and you will definitely help your employees in terms of making them more productive in the end.

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Tips to effectively measure and increase secretary productivity

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Bosses can take these steps to measure and increase secretary productivity. Not only can secretaries benefit from it, but also the bosses themselves, too. 

Measuring and increasing secretary productivity should be a two-way street between the boss and the secretary. No two parties should be different from each other if the said objective is meant to be achieved. Picture out a professional boss-secretary relationship. One is making an outline of the agenda for a meeting while the other is taking care of the logistics. The past decade has brought about a lot of changes to the conventional boss-secretary relationship.

At present, authority and major responsibilities are assigned to secretaries, whose tasks were then limited to the boss about a decade ago. Moreover, there has been a noted rise in the influence and prestige of secretaries who are chosen to fill executive positions, with fewer women willing to take on the role as career secretaries. Simply put, when measuring and increasing secretary productivity, it has to be noted that relationships between the boss and the secretary can change over time to meet certain demands in the business.

Moreover, measuring and boosting secretary productivity also have something to do with a secretary’s qualifications. Secretaries who really fit the bill are hard to find nowadays and may even be harder to become satisfied with their position for a given period of time. Like any other employee, secretaries also want to know whether they can grow and advance in their career. Current secretaries are motivated by, and take inspiration from success stories of former secretaries who are now holding top management positions. There are some companies, however, who do not recognize their need for advancement from their clerical posts and only provide low incentive for them, which could lead to lower productivity in secretaries.

The secretary should ideally be recognized as an important part of the management. For instance, when the boss writes a letter, it is the secretary that checks for grammar, punctuation and spelling and types it up well and neatly in order to present a highly professional appeal.  It is also the secretary that makes sure that the letter is delivered to the right recipient and when it ought to be sent. Both the boss and secretary take the responsibility for various parts of a given project – this requires joint effort. It should be a partnership, in which the secretary follows through the action that the boss initiates.

A true professional relationship requires both parties to be confident of the skills and contributions of one and both should learn to appreciate and respect each other. Secretaries view the boss, or act in a manner that implies such. To measure and increase secretary productivity, and thus enjoy potential perks of a boss-secretary relationship, it is important for the boss to know that their relationship is two-fold and that they cannot be able to achieve their common goal if they do not work together.

Higher remuneration may be the most immediate incentive in increasing secretary productivity, although this may not always necessarily be the be-all and end-all of such. Some form of relief from routine may also be a good incentive, as in the case of clerical work. For instance, you can assign decision-oriented and less than routinary work to secretaries who show themselves capable of managing them. Many secretaries, like most employees like to be acknowledged of their contributions in the corporate structure.