Adopting an open-door policy, discussing company goals with team members, keeping employees in the loop, and encouraging feedback are all things that promote a positive work environment. Frequent team meetings to share insights can help create plans that produce positive output. Finally, establishing a stress-free environment is key to enhancing productivity. 

Here are a few recommendations that can improve team communication:

• Establish a daily, weekly, or monthly practice of sharing updates.
• Managers should schedule one-on-one calls with team members to collect feedback, clear roadblocks, and build stronger relationships with employees.
• Encourage the team to keep their cameras on during virtual meetings. This helps the team feel more connected to each other. This is especially important for fully-remote teams. 
• Keep your team meetings short. This can encourage the team to prepare beforehand and ​​hyper-focus on the topic at hand.
• Promote and practice constructive feedback in daily interactions.

A review of set objectives is typically conducted once a year. Annual performance evaluations measure hits and misses against objectives. 

By reviewing team results quarterly, you can identify potential issues early and pivot if necessary.

As part of a quarterly review, employees can review their main initiatives and realign their efforts to achieve them. Teams can measure performance against set objectives by using a tool like Spreadsheet.com’s Quarterly Goals and Tasks template:

Here are some best practices to set objectives to improve team productivity:

• Ensure your team understands, agrees on, and aligns with the overall business goals.
• Connect your team-level objectives to every team member’s individual goals. Doing so helps your team understand their contribution and promote accountability for greater business goals.
• Encourage your team to focus on one project at a time. Multitasking can decrease efficiency and performance. 
• Celebrate wins – it boosts your team’s morale. This is easier when you break large goals into smaller, more achievable tasks. 

The pressure of managing multiple projects at once can cause project managers to lose track of what needs to be accomplished. Productivity software templates like Spreadsheet.com’s To-do List template can help you manage daily tasks. This template can be configured with automations to send out timely reminders, create new tasks or assign projects to team members.

Here are a few tips on how to manage a to-do list:

• Use tools to set up a to-do list. This can help team members to collaborate and track updates in real-time. To-do list templates can also help to better visualize how team members’ daily work aligns with the larger business objectives.
• Include task deadlines to the to-do list to ensure the deadlines are not missed.
• Organize your to-do list by priority and status to get a clear view of your progress
• Combine similar tasks so you can complete more in a single flow.
• Keep yourself motivated by keeping the list to a realistic number of tasks. Overloading your to-do list with projects can make it seem impossible to complete. 

Along with individual to-do lists, project managers need an organizational tool to manage project collaboration. This overarching task list can provide visibility into what each individual team member needs to accomplish and, at the same time, allow team members to see the overall objectives of the project.  

Tools like the Team Task List template can be easily customized for any project. This template can also be configured to send notification reminders for overdue tasks and notify your team of important status changes.

With Gantt charts, you can clearly visualize which tasks need to be completed before other tasks can begin. Using a Gantt timeline view can be especially helpful for complex projects with multiple dependencies.

In Spreadsheet.com’s Product Roadmap with Gantt Chart, for example, delays in one task automatically reschedule dependent tasks, and if alerts are configured, notifications are automatically sent out to all parties involved.

To make your Gantt chart easy to scan and interpret the data, use color coding for labels and update your Gantt it Chart frequently as you progress through the tasks. Use a Gantt chart template that allows you to collaborate and share updates in real-time.

With a staggering number of employees feeling disengaged, addressing your team’s pain points is crucial to cultivating a positive work environment that fosters productivity.

A workplace that appreciates and listens to employees is more likely to inspire innovation by encouraging employees to share their ideas.

By evaluating employee engagement, you demonstrate that you value your team. A tool like an Employee Engagement Survey template with a form will help gauge employee satisfaction and help you understand what needs to be addressed to keep your team running smoothly.

Check out Spreadsheet.com’s project management templates and see which ones are better suited for your team.