2020 came and left with its fair share of troubles. A lot of companies had to quickly change their work ethics in order to stay relevant, while those that could not had to close up, and drop out of the business race forever. As a result, a lot of people lost their jobs.
Now, the business world is a completely different place. The effects of the pandemic can still be felt everywhere especially in the tourism industry.
In some places, productivity is at an all-time low, with no feasible way to bring it back up. Nimrod Santo, seasoned digital marketer has been paying attention to the market trends for the past six months, and this interview is about what he came up with on how to maximize efficiency in 2021.
What do you mean by maximizing efficiency?
By efficiency, I mean the ability to use the resources available to create a greater outcome. It involves great management and the ability to minimize wastefulness to the barest minimum.
Simply put, it is the process of reducing production cost while still maintaining quality of the goods and services manufactured by a company. Efficiency is not measurable, but it can be felt.
When efficiency is maximized, there’s less delay in the production process. There’s also a desirable outcome which can drive profit higher.
What happens when efficiency is not present in the production process?
I’ll use an analogy to answer that question. Think of a situation where two people, John and Adrian sell natural soap with the same set of ingredients.
In this scenario, they make the same profit from the production of every soap, but there’s a difference in their manufacturing techniques. By this, I mean that John has a system where he uses different molds to create a large number of soaps at once while Adrian makes every bar of soap one after the other. Who do you think is missing out and what do you think he’s missing?
In this situation, Adrian is missing out on profit, quality and quantity. More often than not, he won’t be able to satisfy the demands he gets from his consumers and once that keeps happening, he’s bound to lose them.
The reality is, the business world is a competitive one, and without efficiency and a great outcome, a company will always lose out.
How can you improve efficiency?
As difficult as it sounds, improving efficiency in a business is easy. The first thing you need to understand is that you can’t do it all.
No matter how keen you’re on quality, you need to allow every one of your employees to participate in the production or creation process. If they’re not capable to begin with, there’s no reason why they should be working with you. To improve efficiency, you have to be able to assign jobs with the confidence that they’ll be carried out well.
The second way to improve efficiency is to assign tasks to employees that have the necessary skills to carry them out. This is very important in ensuring seamless running of a business.
You can’t give a trained product manager the job of a programmer and expect it to go well. The employee is just not equipped for such things.
The last tip I have is to give incentives. See, as individuals, we love the idea of being rewarded for something we’ve done. It encourages us to do more, and the same applies in business.
The workers work well when there’s something to look forward to. This doesn’t have to be a pay raise. It can be anything that the employee will appreciate.
That’s a great insight. So, what do you think can reduce efficiency?
There are many things that can reduce efficiency but chief among them is the environment your employee is working from. Since many workers can’t come in to work, it is important to keep track of what they are doing and where they are doing it.
This is where your Human Resources department should come into play. Make sure that every employee is on the company’s radar at all times. If they can’t afford to work from home, help them set up a space.
Also, create an online environment where they can chat with other employees after working for a while. This can be arranged on Zoom or other meeting platforms.
What’s your advice for companies that are having a problem with efficiency at this time?
I think these companies need to have a sit-down with their employees and ask them why productivity is slow. When they know these things, it’ll be easy to find solutions to them, and get productivity on track again.
