Team productivity refers to the efficiency and effectiveness with which a group of individuals

collaborates and produces results or achieves goals together. It measures the collective output of a team
within a given timeframe in relation to the resources, time, and effort invested.

Factors that contribute to team productivity include:

Communication: Clear and effective communication among team members is crucial for productivity. It
involves sharing information, ideas, and feedback promptly and transparently.

Collaboration: Working together cohesively towards shared objectives fosters productivity. Collaboration
ensures that team members leverage each other's strengths and expertise.

Goal Alignment: When team members understand their roles and how they contribute to the overall
team goals, productivity increases. Clear objectives and alignment of individual tasks with these goals
are essential.

Resource Allocation: Efficient allocation of resources, including time, skills, and tools, plays a pivotal role
in enhancing productivity. Ensuring that the team has the necessary resources to perform optimally is
important.

Workflow and Processes: Streamlined workflows and well-defined processes can significantly enhance
productivity by eliminating inefficiencies and unnecessary steps.

Motivation and Engagement: Keeping team members motivated, engaged, and satisfied with their work
impacts productivity positively. Recognition, rewards, and a supportive work environment contribute to
higher productivity levels.

Adaptability and Flexibility: Teams that can adapt to changing circumstances and are flexible in their
approach tend to be more productive. Being able to adjust to new challenges or opportunities is
essential.

Continuous Improvement: Encouraging a culture of continuous learning and improvement helps teams
evolve and become more productive over time.

Measuring team productivity involves assessing output against the goals and expectations set for the
team. This can be done by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), such as completed tasks, project
milestones, customer satisfaction, or revenue generated, depending on the nature of the team's work.

Enhancing team productivity often involves a combination of factors, including effective leadership,
fostering a positive team culture, providing necessary resources, and optimizing processes to achieve
optimal results.

Communication: Scenario: Imagine a marketing team working on a new campaign. Effective

communication among team members is vital. If one member receives incomplete instructions about
the target audience for the campaign, they might create content that doesn't resonate with the intended
demographic. Clear communication channels ensure everyone understands the campaign's goals and
audience, leading to a cohesive strategy.
Team Dynamics: Scenario: In a software development team, positive team dynamics foster collaboration.
Suppose there's a diverse group of developers, designers, and testers working on a new application. A
healthy team dynamic where everyone respects each other's expertise and collaborates seamlessly
results in quick problem-solving and the creation of a robust, user-friendly app.

Leadership: Scenario: Consider a sales team led by a manager who provides regular guidance and
support. When the team faces challenges meeting their targets, an effective leader steps in, offers
advice, motivates the team, and helps prioritize tasks. This leadership guidance boosts morale and
encourages the team to reach their goals.

Goal Clarity: Scenario: In a project management scenario, imagine a team given a vague project outline.
Without clear objectives, team members might diverge on their interpretations, leading to confusion and
wasted effort. However, when the project goals are specific, such as developing a new mobile app with
defined features and a launch deadline, the team can align efforts toward achieving those objectives.

Roles and Responsibilities: Scenario: In a customer service team, each member has designated
responsibilities. If there's confusion about who handles specific customer inquiries, it could result in
delayed responses or overlooked issues. However, when roles are clearly defined (e.g., one team
member handles billing inquiries, another manages technical support), tasks are addressed promptly,
improving customer satisfaction.

Workload Distribution: Scenario: In a content creation team, distributing tasks based on expertise and
availability is crucial. If one team member is overloaded with writing assignments while another is
underutilized, it can lead to missed deadlines or compromised quality. Proper workload distribution
ensures tasks are completed efficiently without overwhelming any individual team member.

Resources: Scenario: Picture a research team aiming to analyze extensive datasets. If they lack access to
specialized software required for data processing, their analysis might be slower and less accurate.
However, when provided with adequate resources, including the right tools and technology, the team
can perform their tasks effectively, leading to accurate insights.

Training and Development: Scenario: In a tech support team dealing with new software, ongoing training
sessions on product updates and problem-solving techniques are crucial. A lack of training might result
in inefficient handling of customer queries or an inability to troubleshoot effectively. Regular training
ensures the team remains adept at resolving issues efficiently.

These scenarios illustrate how each factor can significantly impact team productivity and the outcomes
of their work. Addressing and optimizing these factors can lead to improved team performance and
enhanced productivity levels.

What is team productivity?

Productivity is a word used to describe how much an individual or

team creates as output. For individuals, it's usually signified by how
much they can generate or accomplish within a single day. Team
productivity is how many projects or assigned tasks team members
complete at the company level. In a queue-based role, like support, it
can also mean the amount of conversations or tickets handled in a
day.

For many companies, an employee's productivity is equally related to

how much they are worth. If an employee is highly productive and
regularly contributes to the overall company mission, they will
progress in their career more quickly than someone who does not. So,
along with being in the company's interest, being productive is also
valuable to the employee.

How to increase team productivity at work

Increasing productivity isn't like juicing an orange. It's not like the
harder you squeeze, the more juice you'll get. Eventually, if you
squeeze too hard, you will run out of juice.

Instead, increasing productivity is more a function of how much you

can empower your team. Empowered, confident team members
accomplish more and are more productive than those who aren't. Here
are ten ways to empower and improve team productivity.

1. Reward quality, not quantity

Recognition is so important when it comes to the workplace. Any good

team lead or manager takes the time to recognize the hard work and
effort their team members put in. This recognition can occur at the
team level, within stand-ups or meetings, or at the company level
during all-hands or annual events.

When you recognize excellent work and contributions, try to focus

on quality efforts rather than the quantity of a body of work. For
instance, consider if one of your team members answers tons of
tickets but has a low customer satisfaction score. You may also have
another team member who responds to fewer tickets but has a 100%
customer satisfaction rating. In this situation, it's best to target your
praise on the team member with higher-quality work.

While it's great that the first team member is answering lots of tickets,
they aren't doing so with customer focus. Praising the latter
performance over the former incentivizes that behavior for the rest of
your team members.
2. Monitor progress

Keep track of the projects your team is working on and how far along
they are toward accomplishing them. You could report this tracking in
a productivity tool like Trello or Asana, but you can also speak about it
in daily stand-ups or team meetings. Asking people to share their
contributions with the group can be a great way to promote ownership
and accountability for tasks.

Set deadlines and track how you are doing moving up to them. Ask
team members to create smaller, digestible steps to move toward the
larger goal, and then ensure that they report on their status as you
move toward your target completion date

3. Hold standing meetings

This advice may seem counterintuitive — how are you supposed to be

productive if you have a ton of meetings taking up all the time on your
calendar? Standing meetings are an excellent way for your team
members to connect and share what they are working on.

The more people talk about their projects, the more opportunities they
have to get alternative perspectives and feedback on their work.
Getting diverse views on what could be improved or changed about a
specific project is an excellent way for the person running it to
continue improving and creating even better work.

Here are some best practices for standing meetings:

 Have an agenda and stick to it. Everyone will come prepared and ready to engage.
 Keep it short and sweet. Fifteen minutes is a perfect amount of time for a stand-up.
 Keep it at the same time every day you have it, and if you're going to skip it, give people
an advance heads-up.
 If you plan to deviate from the standard schedule, let people know ahead of time to
prepare.
 Send talking points ahead of time so people can think about them and come prepared to
discuss.
 Make it easy for people to join remotely.

4. Create a healthy work environment

It is not often that someone performs most optimally under continued,
ongoing stress. If your team members are constantly worried or
always on the edge of burnout, they will not perform well or
productively.

Ensure that your team members know that it's okay to take breaks,
and create a team or company culture of balance. While it's good to
check in on how projects are and ensure that they're still on track, it's
equally important to check in on how your team members are doing
personally. Set aside time in one-on-ones to talk about personal life —
are your team members happy? Do they have time to spend with their
families? What are some of their favorite hobbies? You can also create
spaces outside of work for your team to connect, through offsite
events and social gatherings.

When you encourage a life outside of work and ensure that your team
members are taking time to enjoy it, they can come back to the office
invigorated and ready to work hard. If all you ever do is harp on the
importance of work and require your team to work extra long hours,
you're pushing them closer to burnout.

5. Ensure proper communication

In business, nothing gets done if you aren't communicating effectively.

The more your team feels like they can talk about the work that they
are doing and get the support they need from their team members, the
better.

That said, communication doesn't need to solely happen inside of your

group for it to increase team productivity. Cross-functional teams,
such as sales and marketing or customer success, need to be a part of
the communication loop. When everyone is involved and knows what's
going on, they can better support and help move efforts forward.

6. Identify your team's strengths and weaknesses

While there are always opportunities for improvement, one of the best
ways to move forward productively is to coach your team's strengths.
Spend time speaking with the individuals on your team about what
they love working on and where they feel are their most significant
opportunities for improvement.
For instance, you may have a team member who loves writing
documentation and saved replies but dislikes triaging technical bugs
or working with your database. As you identify and work with this
person's strengths, you may give them projects where they manage
the documentation or are responsible for ensuring that saved replies
are up to date. Working with their strengths ensures that they will do
their best work and enjoy doing it.

7. Be authentic and vulnerable

Create an environment of trust and honesty within your team so people

feel comfortable talking about what's going on for them. Start from the
top by being honest and open about where you have opportunities or
where you might have trouble. Being publicly vulnerable with your
team shows them that admitting when you don't know or need
assistance is OK.

In Help Scout, you can use internal notes to ask for assistance or
explain your perspective on customer conversations. This is
particularly useful if you don't necessarily know the answer to
something and need to ask a colleague. This is a great way to show
vulnerability, but it's also an excellent way to catalog information. If
another team member searches for a keyword that triggers your
question (and its response), they may also be able to partake in
knowledge-sharing.

Cultivate a team culture that lets people know that it's okay to be
human. Asking for help, admitting you were wrong, or having a project
go sideways isn't unforgivable. If you position these things as learning
opportunities, it will help your team be more productive — they can
move forward and try new things without having to worry about being
punished for failure.

8. Set a North Star

One of the hallmarks of a good team is working together. But how are
you supposed to work together if you don't know where you're trying to
go? Imagine a three-legged race where both participants are trying to
run in different directions — they wouldn't get very far!
The same goes for your team if they don't have a unifying goal or
metric that they are trying to hit. Before you start trying to boost your
productivity, identify the big things that would impact your customers'
experiences. From there, distill the big-ticket items into achievable
goals and metrics.

A "North Star" metric is a measure that is the most likely to indicate

success for a company or team. In the case of support, your North Star
metric may be:

 Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

 Customer effort score (CES)
 First contact resolution
 Time to first response

Or, it may be something that funnels up to your company's overall

metrics. For example, if your company sets a North Star metric of the
number of customers and wants to increase from 10,000 to 30,000
customers in a year, your team would need to set some goals in
service to that. Those goals might be closely linked with:

 Customer happiness
 Time to first response
 Churn
 Renewal rate
 Customer satisfaction

Each of those metrics contributes to the company’s North Star by

helping to maintain or gain new customers.

9. Prioritize

It's easy to go down a rabbit hole and get stuck there. Anyone with a
Twitter account and a smartphone knows that. However, the power in
productivity is about what you do once you notice that you are stuck.

One of the best ways to increase productivity within your team is to

prioritize your goals well and to help your team members prioritize
theirs. Once you've identified priorities and started to work toward
them as a team, check in regularly to see if they need to shift or grow
with your team’s abilities and your company's goals.
There are a few different ways to prioritize tasks. The most common
are according to which tasks have a deadline coming up soon or which
tasks will have the highest impact when completed. Use a
combination of these two factors to help determine which projects
should get done first. Recognize that deadlines can change, as can
impact, and be willing to adjust prioritization as needed.

10. Use the right tools and technology

Team productivity is firmly based on how well team members work

together. If you don't have the tools or practices in place to support
that productivity, it's never going to be as explosive as it could be
otherwise.

Start small by putting supportive practices in place, like standing

meetings and regular check-ins in one-on-ones or team meetings. From
there, see if there are any tools that you might be able to use to
facilitate better communication between team members. The more
that people on your team communicate and check in with one another,
the more productive they are likely to be.

Use tools that give a birds-eye view of everything your team is working
on, both at the individual level and holistically. A good place to start is
with a help desk like Help ScoutSlack or Asana. Be sure to open
access to this tool so other team members can also use it to view
progress as needed. As you implement new tools, be flexible with
policies and how you are using the product. It takes time to get used
to new processes, and it may be that things need to change as your
team gets accustomed to using it.

How to track and measure the productivity of your team

It's hard to understand if the actions you are taking have any impact if
you don't have benchmarks or a way to measure them. Before you
make too many earnest efforts to boost your team's productivity, it's
essential to find a baseline for where your team's productivity
currently stands.

While there are ways to understand what kind of output your team is
having, productivity is not as easily quantifiable as the number of
projects someone completes. However, to understand improvement
in output (which is loosely correlated with productivity, but not
entirely), there are a few things you can keep track of.

First, utilize the tools you have implemented to keep track of how
quickly your team moves through tasks and projects. If you see an
increase in completed projects or completion speed, you can assume
that you're increasing team productivity.

Second, watch your metrics. While this is undoubtedly a lagging

indicator of success, if you see an improvement in key metrics for your
team and you haven't hired anyone new, it's likely because your team
is being more productive. It is not a direct correlation, but it is an
excellent way to gut-check if things are getting better.

Finally, rely on your people. If you have worked to cultivate an open,

honest culture focused on well-being, the people on your team should
be able to speak to whether or not they are being more productive.
Even without a hard and fast metric or reporting tool, they will be a
good barometer for your efforts' successes. Talk about it during your
standing meetings or one-on-ones, and ask for more detail if they give
you an answer you didn't expect. Similarly, if outliers answer
differently from the rest of your team, make sure to follow up — they'll
have helpful insights.

Take it slowly with productivity

When trying to improve your team's productivity, less is more. If you

try to turn up the heat on your team's output too quickly, you may burn
them out. Conversely, your team may lose enthusiasm about their
projects and productivity may drop if you're too lackluster.

Take your efforts to improve productivity slowly and with control.

Remember, the more involved everyone feels in decision-making and
action, the more productive they will be.