Technology has created a lot of distractions over the years. Every day lots of people around the world spend chunks of their day scrolling through social media, playing games and even searching for cute videos of things like kittens to share with their friends. When you’re at home, streaming services like Netflix can distract you for hours. Bingeing a boxset often seems a more fun prospect than any chore you have to get done. Luckily, technology has also done a lot to help people increase their productivity, so you can catch up on all of that lost time playing on the Internet.
Whether it’s something as simple as a to-do list app on your phone, or something as complicated as a specialist piece of software that can track every decision made by a business, it seems technology has created a solution to help with virtually every task. If you want to increase productivity in your workforce, here are three pieces of technology you should consider investing in.
Streamline your business’ processes
Even if you work in the smallest of businesses, every hour of every day someone is making a decision that will affect your company. You might think that the only things that could have such a big effect on any business are the big decisions like launching a new product or service or hiring a new member of staff. In fact, it’s the little things that you often don’t notice that can have a big effect. Things like deciding when to order new stock, when to schedule meetings and even the organization of shift patterns might just seem like day-to-day tasks, but it’s vital these decisions are made correctly every time. Failure to do so could see a business lose out on a lot of money if they’re unable to complete an order on time.
Often when decisions like these go wrong, a lack of communication is the cause. It might be that you have an outdated system that doesn’t properly notify the relevant people if stock needs reordering or a meeting is scheduled. Luckily, there are systems that can deal with all of these tasks efficiently and reduce the number of problems you face on a day-to-day basis. For example, companies like Trinity Integrated Solutions can provide you with software customized to your business to help with virtually any task you need help with. These tasks could include project management, CRM, Gsuite scheduling and even inventory and asset management. Not only will software like this help reduce problems within the workplace, it could also save you time and money. For example, customers of the product mentioned above have reported that the software reduces the amount of time it takes to enter data into systems by 10 hours on average, every week.
Meet over the Internet
If you’ve got a meeting scheduled in your diary, it’s highly likely that it could take up a huge portion of your day. Even if it’s just an hour-long catch-up with your fellow managers, you have to make sure you get to the meeting room in time and prepare and print your notes beforehand to take with you. Even if it’s only an hour, it means you’re away from your desk and unable to reply to important phone calls and queries from colleagues. If you have to travel to meet someone in a different location, a different state or even a different country, you could be away from your desk for days.
While its important businesses have meetings like these, the importance of them being face-to-face is rapidly reducing. Instead of getting people to travel far and wide to sit in a room together, why not consider meeting via an online conferencing tool like Zoom. Not only will you save time and money, but people can be more clearly when speaking into their microphones, rather than shouting across a long table. You could even take advantage of features like the record function, which will create a video copy of any meeting for you to refer back to in the future.
Get physical
You might think the best way to get work done is to sit in front of your computer all day until the task is complete. The fact is that while there is some logic that spending more time on a project will get it done quicker, this not always the case in reality. If staff members are overworked, the pace they work at could slow dramatically. This could even lead to mental health problems that could see them taking extended periods of leave from work. If you allow members of staff to take regular breaks, you could see your productivity go up. Consider installing fitness machines in a spare room, as medical experts say just a few minutes of exercise every day can have a huge benefit on our health and productivity.
