Even the most capable teams face challenges that slow them down. Unproductive meetings, overflowing inboxes, and a lack of visibility into what others are working on can make it harder to check off tasks and complete them effectively.
Team efficiency isn’t just about being busy—it’s about maximising the amount of meaningful, high-impact work your team can accomplish by reducing distractions and workplace friction. The goal is to create an effective and supportive work environment that fosters healthy collaboration and drives better overall team performance.
How Can You Improve Team Efficiency?
Enhancing team efficiency starts with removing the barriers that prevent your team from focusing on high-impact tasks. Research from the Anatomy of Work reveals that employees spend 60% of their time on “work about work” and only 27% on skilled, meaningful tasks. By improving efficiency, you free up your team’s time to concentrate on the projects that truly make a difference.
Your Nine-Step Guide to Boosting Team Efficiency
Want to help your team work smarter and faster? These nine practical tips will enhance your project management skills, improving both the speed and quality of your team’s output.
1. Cut Out Unnecessary Meetings
As Dave Barry famously said, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’”
While not all meetings are bad, many can drain your team’s time and energy if they lack a clear purpose. Productive meetings require a focused agenda, the right participants, and preparation. Without these, even a short 30-minute meeting can eat into time better spent on meaningful tasks.
FAQ: How to Decide if a Meeting is Necessary
Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself:
- Is this meeting essential, or could it be replaced with a quick update?
- Would another form of communication, like a project report or email, work better?
Alternatives to Meetings:
- Share project updates through a status report instead of scheduling a team meeting.
- Use a virtual brainstorming board for collaborative ideas instead of meeting in person.
- Communicate informational updates asynchronously via a shared document or team chat.
If you’re invited to a meeting and your role isn’t clear, consider messaging the organiser to determine if your attendance is necessary. By minimising unnecessary meetings, you give your team more time to focus on what truly matters.
2. Make Meetings More Efficient
Some meetings are essential and can lead to great collaboration, but they need to be structured well to be productive and effective. Here are simple ways to ensure your meetings are actionable and worthwhile:
1. Create and Share an Agenda
Every meeting should have a clear purpose. Outline specific goals and even identify non-goals to keep the discussion focused. Share the agenda ahead of time so participants are prepared, and include any reading materials or supplemental documents to review beforehand.
2. Set Meeting Norms
Whether in-person or virtual, establish ground rules. Decide if laptops should be closed, if cameras should be on during calls, and who speaks first when multiple people have input. Clear conventions keep meetings organised and on track.
3. Take Actionable Notes
Assign someone to document key points, decisions, and action items, including due dates and assignees. Use the same location as your agenda to ensure everything is easy to access and reference.
4. Gather Feedback Regularly
Ask your team for input on the value of your meetings. If certain meetings aren’t beneficial, consider replacing them with a digital update or project status report. Continuously refining meeting practices can save time and boost overall efficiency.
3. Prioritise Work Based on Key Results
Each day, your team members juggle multiple tasks across different projects, and it’s easy for everything to feel equally urgent. So, where should they focus their time and energy to deliver their best work?
Not all tasks are created equal. This is where having clear goals and understanding how each task supports those goals becomes critical. Short-term objectives should serve as stepping stones toward long-term priorities, such as a product roadmap or release schedule. A well-defined vision ensures everyone is aligned and empowered to make decisions that contribute to the bigger picture.
Connecting Individual Work to Company Goals
When employees see how their work ties into broader company objectives, they can identify tasks that drive the most significant impact. According to the Anatomy of Work, employees who understand how their efforts align with organisational goals are twice as motivated as those who don’t.
Encourage your team to focus on high-priority tasks that directly support the company’s mission. If a task doesn’t contribute meaningfully to overarching goals, consider whether it’s necessary to complete it at all.
Example in Practice
Claire Knebl, Director of Marketing at Ritual, achieves team success by prioritising customer-centric work. She spends time immersing herself in her target audience’s perspective before launching campaigns, using informal conversations to gain deeper insights. By understanding her customers’ needs, Claire ensures her team’s efforts deliver maximum value.
4. Manage Lower-Priority Work with the 4Ds: Delete, Defer, Delegate, or Diminish
At times, team members may find themselves overwhelmed with tasks, leading to reduced efficiency and morale. In fact, 85% of employees report feeling overworked, and 42% believe excessive workloads lower staff morale. Implementing a system to handle lower-priority tasks is essential to maintain productivity and workplace happiness.
The 4Ds Framework:
- Delete: Remove tasks that don’t align with overarching company goals. If a task doesn’t contribute meaningfully, it’s better to eliminate it.
- Defer: Postpone less urgent tasks to focus on projects that have a greater impact on team objectives.
- Delegate: If one team member is managing multiple high-priority tasks, reassign one to someone with more capacity.
- Diminish: For tasks that can’t be deleted, deferred, or delegated, reduce the time spent on them. Eliminate unnecessary meetings, shorten their duration, or scale down the scope of the task.
How to Identify Priorities: Start with a big-picture view of your project. Assess what absolutely needs to be done and which tasks are lower priority. Tasks that don’t directly support critical goals should be reconsidered or restructured.
Workload Management FAQ: To manage workloads effectively, begin by gaining visibility into your team’s current tasks and capacity. Tools like workload management platforms provide insights into who is working on what. Once you’ve reviewed all tasks, allocate resources based on capacity and adjust as needed to prevent burnout.
Practical Tip:
Claire Knebl, Director of Marketing at Ritual, recommends focusing on three priorities each week:
- One strategic, high-impact task.
- A simpler but still important task that can be completed quickly.
- A stretch task that requires collaboration or additional support.
5. Assign Work Based on Team Strengths
Every team member brings unique skills, experiences, and preferences to the table, making them an essential part of your team. However, no two employees are the same—what excites one person might frustrate another. For example, one team member might thrive on organising research into detailed reports, while another would find that task unbearable.
Understanding who excels at what and aligning tasks with their strengths can streamline projects and improve overall efficiency. When team members enjoy the work they’re assigned, they tend to produce higher-quality results and complete tasks more quickly.
Why It Works:
When people are engaged in work they find personally rewarding or intellectually challenging, they are more motivated and focused. This not only benefits the individual but also enhances the team’s performance as a whole.
Assigning tasks based on strengths is not just about efficiency—it’s about creating an environment where everyone can do their best work. By leveraging your team’s skills and interests, you empower them to succeed while driving the team’s overall progress.
6. Map Out Your Team’s Work Before Starting
Having a clear plan in place before beginning any project is essential for avoiding unnecessary delays and confusion. Once you’ve identified what needs to be done and who will take on each task, the next step is to create an actionable roadmap for your team to follow.
A well-structured plan eliminates “work about work” later on by providing clarity upfront. This ensures that realistic timelines are set, responsibilities are clearly defined, and everyone knows how their role fits into the bigger picture. With a comprehensive plan, your team can focus on moving forward with confidence.
How to Create an Effective Plan:
- Define Goals: Clearly outline what you aim to achieve.
- Establish Success Metrics: Determine how progress will be measured.
- Assign Roles: Identify stakeholders and define team responsibilities.
- Set a Budget: Allocate resources effectively to avoid overspending.
- Break Down Milestones: Divide the project into manageable deliverables.
- Create a Timeline: Set realistic schedules for each stage of the project.
- Develop a Communication Plan: Ensure everyone stays informed and aligned throughout the project.
Pro Tip:
Leverage work management tools to organise and track smaller tasks that contribute to larger goals. Using templates from platforms like EZtek can streamline your process by replicating successful workflows, ensuring that no steps are overlooked, and preventing work from slipping through the cracks.
7. Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration
Collaboration doesn’t stop at department boundaries. Even if you work in different areas of the organisation, you’re all striving toward the same overarching goals. When teams understand what others are working on, they can identify opportunities to collaborate, especially when goals and tasks overlap.
Work management tools are invaluable for increasing cross-team visibility. These platforms allow teams to map each phase of a project back to shared objectives and provide a centralised hub for updates and collaboration. By establishing a single source of truth, you can eliminate silos, boost teamwork, and break down barriers to high-impact work.
Real-World Example:
At Carta, an SEC-registered transfer agent, compliance specialist Jina Kim uses EZtek Software to promote collaboration across business units. This helps their teams understand how individual projects interconnect and impact each other. For instance, when a change occurs in the product overnight, the support team can quickly identify and address the update through shared tools and visibility.
Encouraging cross-functional collaboration not only aligns efforts across departments but also enhances efficiency, creativity, and problem-solving throughout the organisation.
8. Dedicate Meeting-Free Days for Deep Work
Meetings, while sometimes necessary, can disrupt your flow and make it harder to focus on completing important tasks. Setting aside at least one day each week for uninterrupted, meeting-free work can significantly boost productivity and efficiency.
For example, at EZtek Software, employees observe “No Meeting Wednesday,” a day dedicated to deep work without the distraction of internal meetings. Team members are encouraged to respect one another’s schedules and avoid scheduling meetings, allowing everyone the time and space to focus fully on critical projects.
This approach gives employees the freedom to concentrate on analysing, executing, and reviewing key tasks. Many team members find that meeting-free days help them make significant progress, with projects often crossing the finish line midweek.
9. Clearly Define the Purpose of Communication Channels
Teams often have access to a variety of communication tools, but these tools are only effective if everyone understands how and when to use them. With the average employee switching between 10 apps daily, this constant context-switching can be exhausting and make it harder to find information when needed.
To streamline communication, define the specific purpose of each tool:
- Email: Use for external communication with vendors and clients.
- Instant Messaging (e.g., Slack): Reserve for quick, immediate questions or updates.
- Work Management Tools (e.g., EZtek): Use for planning, tracking, and managing actionable tasks and projects.
FAQ: How Many Tools Are Too Many?
While communication tools can improve efficiency, having too many or using them inconsistently can create unnecessary work. If a tool’s function is already covered by another platform with unique benefits, consider eliminating it. Reducing the number of tools ensures your team spends less time switching between apps and more time focused on meaningful tasks.
Work management platforms like EZtek allow you to integrate your favourite business tools, consolidating all relevant context into one place. This approach simplifies communication and ensures your team has everything they need to collaborate effectively.
Help Your Team Reach Peak Efficiency
Improving efficiency is an ongoing journey. While it might feel overwhelming at first, adopting simple tools and strategies can make a significant difference. As your team becomes more comfortable and proficient with these methods, efficiency will naturally integrate into your workflows and become a standard part of every project.
Explore how work management tools like EZtek Software can help streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and boost productivity within your organisation. With the right approach, you can equip your team to work smarter, not harder, and achieve outstanding results.
