Efficiency tips for a happier, healthier workplace
Find out how you can improve efficiency in the workplace.
Knowing how to work efficiently can save you and your team time while reducing stress and improving outcomes. Efficiency expert Dermot Crowley from Adapt Productivity tells us how three simple changes can help promote productivity at work and better physical and mental health.
What does working efficiently mean?
“Creating an efficient working culture is about helping people reach their full ability during core working hours. So, working in a balanced way,” says Dermot, an efficiency expert of more than 25 years.
It’s also about being effective. Efficiency is doing things with the least amount of friction, effort, and rework. Effectiveness is making sure you're working on the right things.
What stops us from being efficient at work?
The average worker will check email every 37 minutes throughout the workday.
Most CEOs spend 72% of their time in meetings.
In a post-COVID work environment, where professionals are splitting time between the home and office, effective collaboration tools are essential for overall work visibility, but many companies simply don’t use them.
“Every organisation has its own culture that includes things like how people respond to emails, how meetings are structured, what is considered urgent, and how to collaborate,” says Dermot. “All these aspects of work culture have a dramatic impact on people's productivity and wellbeing. Without the right systems and support, the culture can be unbalanced and unhealthy”
Three ways to work more efficiently
Rethink your emails
“Email has increased a constant feeling of urgency and reactivity, which I believe is one of the greatest stressors when it comes to wellbeing and health in the modern workplace,” says Dermot. Follow these simple steps to better manage your email load.
Turn off all mobile and desktop alerts – Constant interruptions sap your time and focus. Allocate time at the start and end of the day to deal with emails and have brief check-ins no more than once an hour if needed.
Stop using your Inbox as storage – Instead of letting emails pile up which can lead to overwhelm and missed deadlines, create one or two folders where important items can be archived. For everything else that needs to be actioned, turn the email into a Task (see below).
Respond to emails effectively – “I created the SSSH technique that helps us respond to emails in an effective way that is less reactive and more responsive,” says Dermot.
S – Send a short response to let the person know you have seen their email.
S – Set an expectation of when you will respond in full.
S – Turn the email into a Task. This removes the email from your Inbox while still retaining the information you need and allocating time to action a response. In Gmail you can do this by selecting ‘Create a task’. In Outlook, drag and drop the email to Tasks on the navigation bar.
H – Hold yourself accountable to action the email task at the assigned time.
2. Reduce your meetings by 100%
“It’s possible,” smiles Dermot. 25% fewer meetings – be ruthless about the ones you really need to attend.
25% shorter meetings – schedule the appropriate amount of time for the meeting instead of defaulting to the calendar allocations of 30 minutes or one hour. 25% fewer participants – stop over involving people; it kills productivity. 25% less wasted time – use a simple agenda to better organise the meeting.
3. Use a collaboration tool
With many companies now global, and local teams split across numerous work sites, effective collaboration is an essential part of productivity at work.
“Often collaboration is required on more complex work, like large projects,” says Dermot. “If a lot of the work being done is invisible, meaning it’s in someone’s head or on their notepad, it can create stress and a lack of visibility that slows productivity.
“Tools such as Microsoft Planner and Slack are electronic project boards that provide full visibility across teams. They allow managers to allocate what needs to be done, by whom, and when, with a work-in-progress aspect that’s there for everyone to see.”
How much time can we save by being more efficient at work?
Research we have done with thousands of clients over the years suggests we can save up to one hour per person per day. Over a year that adds up to one month of time saved.
Dermot is keen to stress that productivity and efficiency is not a quick fix, but an ongoing process.
“Organisations really need to take responsibility here. Productivity is a leadership issue. Where I've had the most successful outcomes has been with teams who have seen productivity, not as a one-off training event, but as a project that they need to work on over a period of time.”
For onsite and online productivity training programs go to Adapt Productivity.
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In partnership with
Dermot Crowley
Dermot Crowley is one of Australia’s leading thought leaders on Productivity. He has over 23 years of experience teaching people to work more effectively in the modern workplace, and has been running his own productivity training business for over 20 years. He is the author of three books, Smart Work and Smart Teams and his most recent release, Urgent!
Dermot is passionate about productivity and believes that the best way to boost effectiveness is to combine practical productivity strategies with the technology already at our fingertips like MS Outlook and OneNote. Get ready for Dermot to shift old mindsets, inspire new possibilities and change your behaviours around productivity.