No matter how complicated people make it out, the business world operates on a couple of fairly simple principles. At the forefront of these requirements is the constant struggle to optimize employee productivity and the company overall workflow productivity. Reaching this ideal state when your employees are capable of working at their 100% capacity is where this story starts to be a bit tangled. But, it’s safe to say we can all agree that without a safe and productive workplace environment as their foundation, various techniques aimed at increasing workplace performance will bear only the limited.
This is where things start to be less elusive. A productive workplace is built by devoted maintenance. So, let’s take a look at some of the recommended ways to optimize employee productivity and keep your company workflow uninterrupted.
Analyze existing workflow efficiency
If you want your productivity improvement measures to have an effect, you first need to know when they need to be deployed. Try then to take some time and thoroughly inspect your current company workflow and its eventual bottlenecks to optimize it. If you notice some of the productivity gaps are the direct result of workplace deficiencies, this is the area where you should put more effort into maintenance.
Generally speaking, the efficiency of one workflow is roughly described through the following variables:
- The time necessary to complete tasks
- Number of handovers and touchpoints (the fewer the better)
- Employee feedback on effectiveness
- Customer satisfaction
- Percentage of tasks completed on time
Streamline and standardize the inspection process
Slow and sloppy inspection leaves doors wide open for all sorts of problems. The inability to properly identify the equipment issues and slow response times are the first two that come to mind. Well, a lot of similar issues can be easily avoided if you perform future inspections in a more proactive and standardized manner.
So, try splitting the activities into wider groups like constructions, electrical equipment, fire safety, plumbing, etc. When you are done, you can use these foundations to create standardized templates that will cover even the minutest facets of these systems. A high level of consistency will allow you to notice patterns and underlying problems as well as perform inspections faster in the future.
Develop relationships with third-party professionals
Keeping one facility in top-tier condition is absolutely impossible without the help of various third-party handymen services. What you should do to make this situation even more beneficial for all parties involved is to bring these companies closer under your roof and develop long-term relationships.
Let’s take plumbing as an example. The professional plumbing services you have hired earlier know the layout of your facilities and its inherent problems so they will be able to solve the issues much faster. They can also provide valuable input for inspection checklists and provide training to your employees which will optimize your employee productivity. You can sweeten this deal with opportunities for cross-promotion, referrals, etc.
Upgrade the facilities
This goes without saying – no matter how hard you work to keep your facilities tight, you need to perform occasional updates to make sure they are fully operational. Even more so keeping in mind that new equipment is, traditionally, easier to service. We can take the latest-gen LED bulbs as a great example. They provide considerable energy savings (up to 75%), they are much easier on the eyes, and, most importantly, they last 25 times longer than traditional incandescent alternatives. That will make lighting maintenance much easier. Similar examples can be found across other fields as well.
Move digital infrastructure to the Cloud
When talking about workplace maintenance people often forget to remember that it covers various IT resources as well. So, trimming down the number of such resources you keep in-house will also have an effect on maintenance. The simplest way to do that is to switch to digital documents and move as much of your infrastructure as possible to the cloud where most of the updates, maintenance duties, and fixes will be performed by service vendors. Of course, cloud computing is inherently productive and opens new doors for collaboration so efficiency won’t be achieved solely through maintenance.
Encourage a culture of responsibility and efficiency
Out of all these measures, this is probably the hardest to pull off, but if you succeed, you will create tremendous results. The most important is to give your team a stronger sense of ownership over the facilities, equipment, and personal performance. You can try to do that by creating maintenance committees that will have full responsibility for inspections and propose new ways of improving efficiency. Try to include employees from all levels of the company and give them incentives to take this task seriously. You will see just how fast the mentality of your workforce will turn around.
Make workplace maintenance mandatory
Of course, even with all the incentives in the world, there is still a high chance that a great number of your workers will willingly stay out of the loop in this regard. That is why you should compile thorough but simple maintenance guidelines, make them public, and even more important, make them mandatory. This stick will also require a carrot, so find a way to reward full compliance with some small workplace perks and reward the employees who put in the best effort. Proper maintenance is possible only if it’s made into a shared effort.
Evaluate the success of your efforts
For the very end, we would like to point out that simply checking things off this list is not that different from throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Be sure then to keep a record of all things you are doing and establish a set of KPIs to measure the results they are bearing. Also, never forget to seek feedback from your employees. These insights combined with hard data will allow you to make necessary course corrections as you go. And try to keep in mind this is not something you will do once or periodically. When you are done, go back to square one and keep tuning the system to perfection.
Well, we hope these couple of suggestions gave you a better idea about the measures you can take to make the maintenance of your facilities and equipment faster and in turn optimize overall employee productivity and company workflow productivity. This issue is very important and goes way beyond topics of infrastructure and logistics. If they are not provided with a pitch-perfect environment, your workers will never be able to give their 100%. Keeping in mind the competitive nature of the present-day business arena… Well, this can be a massive problem. So, put your company on a strong foundation and allow your workforce to thrive. It all starts with quality maintenance.
