Sandra looked around at her team. Though it was past five o’clock, they were still hunched over their desks, busily working away. It was the second day this week they’d worked overtime, yet they were behind on reaching their targets. What is going on? she thought. They clearly cared about what they were doing, and they had a lot of talent. But somehow, that wasn’t translating into results achieved.
That’s an all-too-common scenario. Due to overlapping responsibilities, poor workflows, and lack of communication, teams often grow busier and busier without having much to show for it. The biggest culprit is misalignment of duties, as we’ll discuss in a moment.
According to the global consulting firm McKinsey, workers can be grouped into six different categories:
- Quitters
- Disrupters
- The mildly disengaged
- The reliable and committed
- Double dippers (those working more than one job)
- Thriving stars
Thriving stars represent just 4% of the total workforce. As a leader, your main job is to help all of your employees become thriving stars — or at least reliable and committed. In other words, you need to enhance your team’s productivity without causing burnout.
But how to increase team productivity when people are already maxed out? If your team is overworked but underperforming, let’s address the main factors that are probably holding it back. By taking action to correct these issues, you’ll help your people achieve their full potential.
Misalignment of Duties
When people are handling tasks that fall outside of their competencies, productivity plummets. This is the number-one reason why teams remain busy but not effective. Because employees don’t enjoy these tasks — or just aren’t good at them — they do them poorly. Or they take several times as long to complete a task as it requires.
In a recent report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 37% of employees said their role doesn’t line up with their abilities and experience. Meanwhile, 53% said their job doesn’t align with their training and education. Many companies are only using a fraction of their people’s skills, while requiring them to focus on work they just aren’t good at, these findings highlight.
How to correct this problem? Conduct a skills audit of your team, listing each person’s core strengths. Then, write down the key skills required for their role. If you spot areas of misalignment, look for ways to reorganize roles, as we’ll discuss in a moment.
Overloaded Teams
Feeling swamped and strapped for time makes it incredibly hard to focus. People may jump from one task to the next, scrambling to do things rather than devoting their full attention to a task. Worse, they’re likely handling a mix of unrelated tasks — including lots of things they aren’t truly good at, as discussed above.
In this situation, you’ll usually find lots of redundancies. People are carrying out overlapping tasks — an inefficient use of their time. Because functions are muddled together, managers struggle to see where backlogs are occurring.
Address this issue by creating departments, or mini-departments, in your organization. You may need to design new roles within them centered on specific functions. By dividing up work in this way, you’ll gain a clearer picture of where bottlenecks are happening. If the sales person is thriving and doesn’t feel stressed, but the renewals person is overwhelmed, you can take action to address that issue.
You might also need to restructure roles, as mentioned above. If people aren’t using their core skills, place them into jobs that use their strengths. Then, look for where any skills gaps exist and make a new hire to fill them, if needed.
For example, a client in San Antonio, Texas, determined that they needed someone to handle cross-selling to existing clients. This was a new role they were creating. Already, staff had achieved double their quota for these renewals — but it was time-consuming. They were making 100 calls a day even before hiring for this role. By enlisting ia Blueprint to fill this position, they found an experienced client renewal specialist with expertise in cross-selling. This VA expertly handled client updates throughout the year, matching customers with products that met their needs exactly.
A Focus on Putting Out Fires
Are you more fixated on addressing emerging crises than moving long-term plans forward? That’s a common problem for leaders. If you’re always in reactive mode, you need to step back and figure out how to recenter your core priorities.
In this situation, hiring an executive assistant could be the most important thing you do. An executive assistant can tackle the pressing tasks that are derailing your focus, letting you zero in on your core contributions. They’ll respond to emails, help you prepare for meetings, and make client calls with much more efficiency than you probably can, since their role revolves around tasks like these.
Neglecting the Roots of Problems
Similarly, productivity plummets when you don’t address the roots of a problem. If you’re always looking for workarounds, you’re probably wasting a lot of your time.
In Start with Why, Simon Sinek tells the story of how a bunch of American car executives traveled to Japan to tour a car factory. Looking at the assembly line, they asked how the company ensures its car doors fit perfectly. In their own factory, a worker would tap a rubber mallet along the edge of the doors to ensure proper alignment. But on the Japanese assembly line, this step was missing.
“We make sure it fits when we design it,” their tour guide told them. Instead of troubleshooting a problem, they circumvented it through good engineering. As this story shows, fixing problems at the beginning can avoid a lot of headaches and save countless hours. If you have a cumbersome process, instead of trying to speed up how quickly you can perform each step, think about how you can streamline things through more efficient design. You’ll not only increase team productivity — you’ll also build a better product or service.
Short-Term Thinking
Short-term thinking keeps people locked into inefficient ways of working. For instance, leaders may feel they don’t have time to train someone as their assistant. So, they avoid delegating time-consuming tasks — even though in the long-term, this would make a massive difference for the business.
In reality, training an executive assistant, or a virtual assistant, will pay tremendous dividends. That’s why 91% of HR execs say delegation is a crucial skill for leaders. And according to Gallup, leaders who delegate effectively bring in 33% more revenue for their company.
When delegating, don’t expect perfection right off the bat. Resist the urge to claim ownership over the task if someone is struggling. Instead, share pointers and resources to help them along. Plan to mentor them in the task over the next few weeks until they grow proficient.
By taking these steps, you’ll enhance your team’s productivity without causing burnout and exhaustion. You’ll not only achieve a sustainable level of productivity; you’ll also boost job engagement and satisfaction. This begins with addressing misalignment and overload by putting people in the functions they’re actually good at. Through these strategies, you’ll continuously increase your whole organization’s effectiveness while also supporting each person’s well-being.
Want to learn more about how hiring a virtual assistant can increase team productivity? Let’s set up a conversation. We’ll discuss your distinct needs and what a VA can help you achieve. Whether you’re looking for an executive assistant to handle time-consuming admin tasks, or a VA to handle customer service, we’ll pair you with exactly the right person to meet your needs.