If your business is supported by the best ERP system on the market or manages all projects from a whiteboard, having good work habits in your team can make a huge impact on how effective those tools are.
Alongside ensuring your team has the right training to understand your processes and tools, cultivating good work habits can help you get more from job costing and project management.
Here are three of the key work habits you can adopt in your workshop to make project management easier and smoother.
When more than one member of your team is working on a project, especially over a number of days, keeping communication up is crucial. It will help you to run your projects more smoothly and prevent issues like double handling or assuming things have been done that haven’t been done.
You want to make sure you’re having productive conversations that focus on the right things. This might mean having quick 5 minute meetings in the morning that help share information or having written briefs to go alongside your projects.
Even if you have a new system that your team aren’t used to using, then making it a key part of your communication can help them familiarise themselves. Make the projects notes section the main source of truth when handing over a project or use the project scheduling calendar as the starting point to your morning meetings.
These methods help you keep communication channels open while helping your business to operate efficiently and help your projects run smoother.
Learn more: Forbes.com “Five Strategies To Improve Communication With Team Members”
Managing your time and to-do list each day can help you get the most out of every day. But, distractions are inevitable. Whether it’s questions from your team, urgent jobs that pop up or teammates calling in sick, you don’t know what the day with throw at you.
It’s important to be able to reassess and reprioritise your day, but keeping on task and planning out your day can help you get more from your working hours and do more profitable work. Starting to get into the habit of planning out your day and week can also help you see any unused time ahead that can prompt you to chase up quotes and get more projects in.
Starting by scheduling in your weekly jobs can help you say focused on the task at hand without feeling that there is something else you should be doing instead.
A great work habit you can instill into your business is a push for improvement. If you’re looking to grow, keeping a ‘status quo’ culture can be detrimental. Focusing on achievable, measurable goals can help you and your team track your forward progress.
Using reporting tools to track what is important to you and monitor progress towards goals can help keep your team motivated. Using realistic and tangible results to measure your goals also means that you can celebrate and acknowledge when these goals are achieved.
While focusing on setting goals, ensure you and your team don’t feel too pressured which can be demotivating. Find a balance between challenging your business and setting realistic goals that don’t cause undue pressure.
Read More: Tips and tricks to setting new year goals
Having a good system to support your business and promote good work habits and processes can help you get more productive work done and make more money on projects.
WorkGuru.io can help you schedule projects and manage work and timesheets.