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Today, decision-makers in organisations put considerable effort into optimisation, minimising inputs and maximising outputs, reinvesting those cost savings for growth.
A company's employees are the key to facilitating action in optimising business operations. That's why an efficient workforce is imperative to success.
Improving employee productivity can help reduce operational expenses, minimise waste and streamline processes and workflows to drive more revenue. Are operational inefficiencies holding your team back? Here’s how leaders can unlock workforce performance and drive lasting results.
Workforce efficiency is a term used to describe an organisation's employee productivity and its ability to achieve goals and targets within set guidelines. Improving workforce efficiency means getting higher output from your team members while minimising the use of resources.
For decision-makers, workforce efficiency is a key metric to uncover productivity trends and guide improvement efforts. Leaders drive growth by implementing workforce management strategies that foster productivity gains, ultimately contributing to a company's sustainable success.
Workforce efficiency is a critical part of organisational success. Impacted workforce productivity often leads to internal issues within the company and can affect business performance.
Almost every organisation will face challenges and obstacles that hinder workplace efficiency. Here are some of the most common.
Employee productivity levels are a key performance metric that significantly impacts efficiency. Decision-makers will review reports detailing employee contributions, including revenue generated and the number of units produced per hour.
If labour costs surpass revenue generated or production output, it's often an indicator of a problem with workplace efficiency.
Here are some of the main factors that affect employee productivity:
There's a correlation between these factors and productivity levels. Leaders who focus on improving these areas tend to see increased employee commitment, whereas ignoring them often leads to lower productivity.
The best way to really understand what drives productivity among employees is to listen to their needs. Idea management tools like Sideways 6 help to bridge the gap between leaders and frontline workers, and can even help businesses uncover efficiency improvements worth millions in savings.
A lack of team member motivation can be another significant burden on workplace efficiency. One of the key performance metrics of an efficient workplace is cycle time, which refers to the time it takes to complete tasks.
An unmotivated team will likely spend more time than budgeted on tasks, which can impact workforce productivity. Often, an unhealthy organisational culture is cited as the main reason behind employee motivation levels.
Leaders create the working environment and make key decisions within the organisation. Ultimately, a leadership style serves as a role model in the workplace and can significantly impact workplace efficiency.
The way leaders conduct themselves within the team often affects productivity. Communication, mentorship and encouraging collaboration are three crucial principles that contribute to employee productivity.
The more empowered employees are to share feedback and value-driving ideas, the more natural collaboration becomes. As discussed in our recent Idea Exchange webinar, efforts to work employee ideas into decisions can help businesses react more effectively to change.
The extent to which an employee engages with the business can also impact efficiency. Team members who are uninterested in business outcomes may result in lower productivity and increased cycle times.
The utilisation rate, or the percentage of time spent on a task against working hours, can also drop. Incentivising employees' performance can help to engage employees, but there are plenty of other equally effective ways to motivate employees and increase engagement.
Digital tools for reading and analysing performance metrics are essential platforms for gauging and improving workplace efficiency. Outdated or irrelevant tools for measuring productivity levels can affect how a team performs within the organisation.
High employee exit rates in a company will almost certainly affect workforce productivity. There may be an increase in labour expenditure due to training requirements for a constant influx of new staff.
Business leaders who prioritise retaining top employees often experience a sustained increase in workplace efficiency. Turnovers can be reduced by offering a better work-life balance and incentives that prioritise employee well-being.
Workplace efficiency is the engine that fuels growth in an organisation. Where there is high workforce productivity, there is more output and fewer costs for the company, which is why decision-makers place a great emphasis on increasing efficiency to improve business outcomes.
Here's a breakdown highlighting the importance of an efficient workplace:
Effective leaders consistently seek actionable insights to improve efficiency in the workplace. Many strategies can help boost employee productivity and create a more efficient workplace.
Below are eight tips business leaders can use to improve workplace efficiency.
Effective leadership will set out realistic and achievable goals for team members. Of course, maximising performance metrics is the primary goal of decision-makers, but setting unobtainable targets within the organisation can be counterproductive to business growth.
Creating realistic goals and clear expectations within the current productivity parameters can not only help employees complete the right tasks correctly but also improve business engagement. Hitting targets creates empowered employees who become incentivised to improve efficiency, especially when they’re given a way to share ideas for improvements through an intuitive idea management platform like Sideways 6.
Continuously measure productivity and performance, using the reports to create achievable short-term goals. Communicate targets and expectations effectively with employees, sharing how teams will achieve them and listening to any feedback.
One of the primary roadblocks to working efficiently is the lack of adequate tools to measure productivity. Considering that decision-making in the workplace is a data-centric process, tools that analyse performance and foster collaboration are essential.
An in-depth understanding of performance metrics enables leaders to create resource-optimised plans to improve efficiency. Tools that analyse real-time data, such as business availability, resource management and capacity, provide the foundations for improving productivity.
Collaboration tools for employee ideas, such as Sideways6, can also help deliver positive collective outcomes. Sideways 6 integrates freely with tools like Microsoft Teams and Excel, making it easy for frontline colleagues to submit realistic ideas for improvements in seconds.
No logins, no new platforms - just actionable insights where you need them.
Minimising waste and optimising resource allocation is a key pillar of workforce productivity. That's why streamlining processes and workflows is critical to working efficiently.
Leaders should focus on automating the more mundane and repetitive tasks of the organisation's operations. This can help free up time for employees to focus on the high-performance tasks that generate more revenue and drive towards growth targets.
Streamlining processes and workflows through automation can also improve accuracy, reduce errors and help eliminate operational redundancies. Ultimately, efficiency improves through the resulting cost reductions and a shift in focus towards growth-oriented tasks.
Low morale can have a detrimental effect on employee productivity. When an organisation's employees feel undervalued or that their set goals are unreachable, workforce efficiency may deteriorate over time.
Curating a positive workplace that helps better employee mental health can be valuable towards improving productivity. Many leaders will often prioritise the well-being of their employees, considering the resulting output to be significantly higher than when workers feel they are expending wasted effort.
Most organisations focus solely on performance metrics to improve efficiency. However, facilitating clear communication and offering a respectable work-life balance can foster a positive workplace, resulting in increased individual productivity.
Actively listening to employee feedback and ideas through platforms and pulse surveys can help leaders achieve the desired workforce productivity. Often, the average worker feels that their voice doesn't matter, which can lead to a decline in motivation when working on tasks.
There have been remarkable success stories of workplace efficiency where leaders have introduced idea management and feedback systems, allowing every employee to contribute to bettering the company. Take Marks & Spencer for example, who engaged 75% of their workforce in transformations using their Sideways 6-powered Suggest to Steve platform, or Primark who generated 130% in sales in one year thanks to a single employee idea.
Employee ideas and feedback can be invaluable to creating an efficient workplace. Most executives won’t view process improvements the same way as the people doing the work. That’s why idea platforms like Sideways 6 are so powerful; they empower organisations to transform frontline insights into leadership decisions to unlock measurable efficiency gains.
Another regularly overlooked tip for workforce productivity is recognising and celebrating small achievements. The practice has become a key element of many change management models due to its effectiveness in implementing change.
Leaders should not only celebrate outstanding performance but also when teams and individuals hit the smaller goals. Recognising these achievements drives personal growth and motivation, furthering engagement and bettering output.
Employees who understand the incentives behind their efforts are more likely to improve their productivity and efficiency.
Today's business climate is characterised by constant change, requiring leaders to adapt their operations and introduce new processes and tools to remain competitive. Maintaining workforce efficiency requires continuous investment in training and technology, a topic we discussed at length in a recent episode of The Idea Exchange: ‘AI-Assisted Transformation in 2025: The tools and insight to scale with this technology’.
Investing in employee training provides employees with the skills necessary to adapt to change more quickly and expand their abilities to take on new projects. Implementing new technologies can help automate processes and workflows, allowing employees to focus on growth-oriented tasks and enabling the business to compete in an evolving environment.
Curating a skilled workforce through development programs paired with automation technology brings considerable value in terms of efficiency. The resulting productivity can lead to increased output while reducing costs.
According to a McKinsey report, work-life balance is a key driver behind workplace success, often found through leader-employee compassion. Bosses allowing remote work helps facilitate that balance, ultimately resulting in higher productivity.
Within the context of your business operations, allowing remote work can be beneficial to workforce efficiency. We'll cover the topic more in the following section.
Remote working in the UK has remained popular even after the COVID-19 pandemic. The benefits yielded by both individuals and employers, such as reduced costs and improved communication, cannot be overlooked.
Many organisations question whether allowing remote work can boost productivity and improve employee efficiency. However, a 2021 Office for National Statistics (ONS) report highlights how hybrid working can accomplish both.
Here's how allowing remote work can increase efficiency in the workplace:
Leaders' operational targets of reducing expenses and increasing revenue stem from cultivating a more efficient workforce. However, many decision-makers would be concerned that implementing productivity solutions will significantly add to the costs of running the business.
Sideways6 is an ideas platform designed to build a more efficient workforce through empowering and engaging your employees. Our award-winning solution seamlessly integrates with existing collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams, to drive business goals and foster a better organisational culture built around efficiency-driving employee ideas.
Discover how Sideways 6 can help create a more efficient workplace. Try a free demo today.
