When business is going well, you don’t want to get complacent. If anything, now is a great time to push things forward and boost productivity. In business, there are lots of different things that can affect productivity both directly and indirectly, so if you want to make your company the best it can be, here are a few things to bear in mind.

Update Your Office

Your office is right at the heart of your company. It’s the space where your employees spending most of their time, chances are you do too. So creating an office space that's pleasant to work from is likely to lead to happier and therefore more motivated employees. Have the walls painted in a light and neutral shade such as white, light grey or magnolia. Upgrade your desks, chairs and computers. Display living plants- not only do these look nice but psychologists have also shown they boost mood and productivity in the workplace. Even details like lighting are something to get right, typical office lighting like fluorescents can be harsh and cause eye strain or migraines. Your best bet would be to use daylight bulbs instead. You could also position desks, so they’re close to windows since natural daylight is another mood booster, This is a free and easy way to increase employees happiness!

Keep Employees Happy

If you look after your employees, they will look after your business. So there are a few things you should do to ensure that your workers are being properly cared for. The first is a decent salary, it should legally be above minimum wage, but you might want to consider paying more based on experience. A minimum wage worker is much more likely to do a minimum wage job and could well leave your company in search of something better. If you pay based on experience, this is fair and makes employees feel more valued. It's also worth offering good employee benefits, these are things like medical, dental and retirement plans which give your workers a sense of security. You could even consider a company car, a laptop or a smartphone- have a think about what would make your worker's jobs more convenient. That way you can provide them with right equipment to do it well, and these extras are perks of their job. Another way to improve staff productivity and bonds in the office is to arrange team building activities. There are lots of companies out there who run workshops, training days and fun events you can book. You could also organize outings yourself for the team, or even just the occasional lunch, dinner or drinks paid by the company. It's a good way for everyone to get to know each other.

Provide Proper Training

You will need to make sure that you are hiring competent employees who are good at their job. In many cases you will need to provide additional training, especially for things that are specific to your business. If you don’t and someone gets hurt, you could end up sued for negligence. This site explains what is required to prove negligence, you will need to ensure that you are going about things in the right way as an employer. As well as training there are other things you can do to improve employees skills too. You could fund their online college or university, this allows them to improve and boost their skills, and you get the benefit of more educated and trained employees. General training as well as things like health and safety training should be given to every employee too. That way you cover your back against health and safety issues, and workers can feel confident that they’re doing their job to the right standard.

Be a Good Boss

If you’re the sort of boss that employees feel comfortable coming to with issues, they are likely to get sorted far more quickly. Plus it builds up that professional trust and helps employees to feel valued. Be approachable, take what your workers are saying on board. Listening and taking appropriate action where needed will keep your workforce happy. It’s important to be the kind of boss that your employees feel comfortable talking to. As someone running things from the top, chances are you don't have the best understanding of everything that goes on day to day. Issues like bullying and workplace harassment could be taking place, making workers miserable, leading to time off or general unhappiness lowering productivity. Being the kind of boss that employees feel comfortable coming to with issues, or at least having a good reporting system in place can help to nip these things in the bud.

Use Business Software Over Manual Methods

Manual methods are tedious and time-consuming- they cost you money as you’re paying an employee for the work a computer can do in minutes. There are lots of different types of software to help run different areas of your business. For example, online backup software is useful in any industry as it protects your information on the network by encrypting data.  From there it's sent to secure servers and stored. The main benefit of this is if anything happens to your computers, your information stays safe as its not stored on the machine itself. A flood, fire or a robbery could mean any backups on computers being are destroyed or lost, but with a cloud-based backup service the information is then encrypted for safety and stored online. Keeping good accounts is essential for any business, and while you'll need an accountant to wrap everything up with things like tax returns your software can allow you to do the majority of the work. It keeps your books in order so you don't have to pay an accountant for more hours than you need to. A live chat feature is useful for many businesses, it gives instant access to a real person, without them requiring to make a phone call or wait for someone to get back to them on social media. A blogging platform will help to drive traffic to your site as well which means more pages are indexed by search engines, and your page rank will increase. It also helps to boost domain authority which is a metric used to show how much influence your site has online.

Stay Ahead of Your Competitors

Staying one step ahead of your competition is crucial when you run a business. You need to be giving your customers a reason to shop with you instead of choosing other similar companies out there. Do plenty of research, find out what other companies there are in the same niche. From there you can work out how you can be different and better than them. Is there something they are missing that you could offer, or could you do something better to cater for your customer base? Looking at the successes and the shortcomings of others can be very beneficial.

As a business owner you’re constantly spinning plates. But making sure each of these areas is being managed and run correctly will keep productivity levels high and lead to happier staff and better profits. Whether you’ve noticed things are slowing down or sales have decreased, or things are doing well and you just want to keep pushing forward, these areas are well worth looking into.

What areas are you currently addressing in your business to make sure things stay running well and productivity is maintained?