How can we improve productivity in workplaces? It’s a dilemma that employers often deal with. You need to have the right tools so that you can witness a substantial surge in productivity and overall company success.
For instance, having a dependable internet connection is essential for any workplace. A fiber internet like Cox Internet would be a reliable tool to help your employees carry out their daily tasks smoothly. When your employees have difficulty accessing information or tools on a laggy internet connection, it can take them longer to finish their tasks and that affects the overall business operations. Hence, make sure they have access to a good internet so that they can do their jobs smoothly.
Hence, if you are looking to improve your employee engagement and artificial intelligence program, you need to leverage technology. Read on to find out how you can do so.
5 Ways to Leverage Technology for Employee’s Productivity
When you have employees that are disengaged and less productive, they are more likely to have a negative impact on your business operations, and even end up leaving the organization.
However, easy access to advanced technologies has given you powerful tools to keep your employees engaged and motivated. This is why you should start thinking about using these technologies to manage employees engagement:
1. Tools for Communication/Collaboration
Suppose that one employee needed to collaborate with another employee from another department to get his work done. He will have to leave his table to go to another, collaborate and get his work done, and then come back to his workspace to carry on again.
Instead of doing that, why doesn’t he simply shoot a message on Skype or Teams, have a video call and communicate with the other person this way? He can even add two or more people to this collaboration, hence, all employees sharing and collecting ideas right from their own workstation. Besides that, Zoom offers a virtual whiteboard to chalk on and share ideas.
This is especially useful for your remote or hybrid employees, who can communicate from their comfort zones instead of commuting to the workplace just to share their ideas.
2. Tools for Self-Service
Your employees need a self-service platform for tasks such as clocking in or requesting time off.
Without any self-service tools, your employees would need to reach out for these simple tasks. There is a whole paperwork involved and a waiting period of whether their leaves were approved or not.
If you employ self-service technological tools, you can save your employees from going through this hassle. For instance, SharePoint Self-Service portal allows your employees to access documents, reach out to helpdesk, and even apply for time-offs. These requests are automated; employees can immediately get access to required documents or their allotted leaves to get approved unless any manual assistance is required.
BambooHR is another self-service tool that allows employees to view and update their personal information, request PTO, access company documents, etc. Such self-service tools are useful for streamlining all employee information, without them having to constantly reach out to management for their personal requests.
3. Tools for Time Tracking
It’s not possible to keep an eye on your employees all the time, especially when it comes to remote or hybrid working environments.
How much time do your employees spend on working and distractions? What are their most productive hours? How substantial is their contribution to the company’s daily operations? Are they hitting their benchmarks as they should? Getting time-tracking tools will help you to precisely answer these questions and identify your employee’s poor performance issues.
It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Time tracking tools such as Toggl Track, Harvest, Timely, etc. let your employees enter, start, and stop tracking their tasks quickly. They can use it to personally reach their productivity goals. Employers, in turn, can check insights about how their employees are doing, what productivity roadblocks they’re facing, and whether there is any room for improvement.
Side Note: Some employees may consider it a breach of their privacy, which is why it is important for you to be upfront with them to gain their confidence.
4. Tools for Project Management
A project management tool can help your teams to quickly view the workflow pattern, schedule project deadlines, and also automate tasks management.
Instead of assigning tasks to your employees by word-of-mouth, you can do so through a project management tool that stores all records of tasks and processes being carried out. Plus, you can share this record with all team members so that they understand who’s responsible for what particular tasks.
One such tool is Asana that features breaking down large projects into smaller ones so that every member of the team can track each stage of the whole process. Of course, all data is synced across all timelines, calendars, boards, etc. Asana also allows your employees to automate repetitive tasks so they can carry out their work much quickly.
Todoist is ideal for small businesses as this simplified task management tool can help your employees to stay on track by keeping track of tasks and their subtasks. You can also prioritize tasks based on their deadlines, set reminders for these tasks, and filter tasks from a huge number of listed ones.
5. Tools for Continuous Education
Overall using technology means that your employees can remain students for life: there is continuous education and growth. Your employees can access hundreds of online courses, certifications, and bootcamps for upskill.
Udemy, Coursera, HubSpot Academy, etc. are some of the best educational platforms that offer online courses and even certifications in various niches. Whether it’s for a rookie employee or an experienced professional, they all have something new to learn from these online platforms.
Apart from that, your employee can also shadow their colleagues’ work project, ask related questions and even peruse through old documents to learn about the company’s operations. Invest in continuous learning and education of your employees to improve their productivity at workplaces.
Final Thoughts
As you can already see from the above article, utilizing technology in workplaces will help to streamline the workflow of your employees as well as help them to stay productive and efficient.
Digital calendars, online platforms, or video conference software are just a few of the many technological solutions that you can invest in for increasing productivity for all your employees.
Dariel Campbell is currently an English instructor at a university. She has experience in teaching and assessing English tests including TOEFL, IELTS, BULATS, FCE, CAE, and PTEG. With over a decade of teaching expertise, Dariel Campbell utilizes his knowledge to develop English lessons for her audience on English Overview.
