As work gets busier, companies and professionals strive to find means to improve productivity. Gone are the days when just being active was enough. We want to be optimal with our efforts and maximize all time and resources as we try to achieve goals and targets.
Thankfully, anyone who wants to be productive now has access to many tools that can improve and measure productivity. In this article, we’ll talk about the features you should have in your productivity suite to help you attain better productivity this year and beyond.
So what is productivity software? These are digital tools employees can use to achieve more results with lesser output. They either deal with the actual work itself or support you or your team when getting things done.
Some of the best productivity apps will include tools like:
Task management tools
Time trackers
Communications tools
Output measuring tools
And so many more
Of all the tools available today and the capacities they give us, there are optimal features we should have in our productivity suite. Read on to learn five productivity features that will help you measure and improve employee productivity.
Having time-tracking and project management tools in your productivity software is crucial because it helps keep key projects moving. They line up milestones for your team so they can cut up larger objectives into smaller wins so you can keep the needle moving.
Project management helps with productivity because it ensures that everyone plays their part and is clear on what’s expected of them in the short to mid-term. If you pair that with a time-tracking app, you’ll also be able to track how long it takes for teams to achieve those goals and get timely reports on their deliverables.
Productivity is almost impossible without team collaboration. As the old saying goes, “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, build a team.” Productivity doesn’t only focus on short-term achievements. It focuses on sustainable action that brings more results. And that’s what communication and collaboration tools do.
One important communication tool is having a chat and video conferencing feature, something that tools like Skype can do. You can also look for a Skype alternative, such as:
Zoom
Google Meet
Microsoft Teams
Slack
Telegram
All these tools help your team exchange ideas, reminders, and other messages to ensure everyone has what they need to get things done.
As part of your productivity tools, you should also have reports and analytics. People don’t always like numbers and reports, but they’re crucial to getting things done. You improve what you measure, after all.
You can get reports on a number of employee activities, like the number of tasks finished, profits generated, customer service ratings, and so much more. Any productivity tool you have should have some form of reporting and insights. By checking those, you find ways to grow and improve your team.
With automation tools, your team can eliminate time-consuming and repetitive tasks so they can focus on high-value ones. This way, their time goes to activities that move the needle. There are tons of tasks that you can automate today, including data gathering, reminders, and so much more.
One great example is using appointment scheduling tools to manage your schedule or someone else’s. This is a tool that sales teams can use to get discovery calls easily. Managers can also use this to open their schedule to team one-on-ones or huddles. Check out appointment scheduling tools and examples to see which one you can use to your advantage for appointment scheduling.
Employees wait an average of 5 hours every week to get knowledge from team members who have expertise in something. You can help eliminate that time waste by creating information suite tools for teams to get access to information and data, such as:
Standard operating procedures
Sales spiels
Passwords
Employee information
Customer information
HR policies
Operations manual
And so on
Your team of remote professionals can focus on getting work done when more of your company and industry details are available in one hub. You can use productivity suites like information management tools, learning management systems, and human resource information systems, among many others.
When a company focuses on improving productivity, it’s not just the organization that benefits. Employees will also be happier and more engaged. Studies, after all, show that 92% of employees say that having productivity tools to help them at work improves employee satisfaction.
So investing in the best productivity software is surely a win-win situation for all. If you haven’t invested in productivity suite tools, you should do so as soon as possible and ensure you have all the features we discussed in this article.