Use Technology to Improve the Team Productivity: Tips for a Successful 2022
Team productivity is an important aspect for all businesses. Sometimes, it seems easy to increase productivity. Sometimes, you get a headache just when you think about planning a strategy for increasing productivity.
Going with the flow of new technology is one of the useful methods. Here are 9 tips for today (adapted from the book 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse).
Team Productivity – The Key to Success
Pretty much all of the companies claim that productivity is the key to success. Being productive means using the right amount of work with the right amount of resources to get the profit you want. In theory, it sounds like an easy mission.
You have to plan the work of the employees and the resources in order to obtain the highest possible profit. And profit doesn’t only translate to money. We can also talk about a high number of visitors, users and clients, increased strategic visibility, the recognition of the industry etc.
Team Productivity is not Just a Matter of Planning and Acting
There are some more things that need to be taken into consideration:
- Communication – team members must communicate on a daily basis, understand each other’s requests and create meaningful messages that drive the entire work
- Responsibility – team members must know their responsibilities very well and understand the consequences of their work
- Matching skills – team members must have the skills required for that particular position and correlate their skills to the type of the work and the goal of the work.
- Security – team members must always be aware of cybersecurity risks and use the appropriate tools in order to keep the organization safe and protected from possible threats and make their own workflow smoother.
Say Hello to Your New Teacher, Mr. Tech
It is time to see how technology can be helpful for increasing the team productivity. We have to assume that technology is your new teacher.
Don’t use technology with fear or lack of curiosity. Use technology as if you were a child discovering an exciting toy. Learn the technology with the eyes of a beginner and the knowledge of a professional.
Of course, worksplaces can become stressful environments where learning is not the top priority for the day. However, in the process of delivering the products, learning is the building block for being productive. If possible, learning by doing is the best method.
Tips for Winning the Productivity Race of 2022 with Lumeer
The next 9 tips for using technology to increase team productivity are simple strategies that are easy to understand by all of the employees.If used in a systematic way, they lead to complex success.
Please open your notebook and start exploring alongside your new teacher.
1. Use a One-Year-Long Digital Calendar for the Most Important Goals and Tasks of the Company
First of all, create a one-year-long digital calendar for the most important goals and tasks of the company. This way, everyone will know from the beginning what are the goals for each department and the tasks that help achieving those goals.
The biggest amount of resources will be directed to the most complex and time-consuming tasks and thus the capacity to adapt to changes will increase significantly.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- clarifying the goals of the team
- gathering information for the further decisions
- seeing the adjustments made by the employees
- improving the communication flow.
2. Use Digital Tools to Schedule Appointments
Life inside the company is hectic. Appointments can become a major headache. Whether we talk about online or offline meetings, setting the appointments for all the busy employees is likely to become an easier task when using a digital tool. The tool must have several functions:
- adding the names and emails of the workers,
- adding the time and place of the meeting,
- adding the subject of the meeting, ,
- a voting system,
- a possibility to accept or decline invitations.
Every meeting should have a clear goal and a clear output that has to be created for that particular day/week/month.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- reducing the time for setting all the details of the meeting,
- getting to the core question of each meeting in order to achieve the right decision,
- keeping meeting minutes from all the meetings and referring to this information for future actions.
3. Use a Search Engine for Basic Questions
Companies are not encyclopedias, but Google is. If not a full encyclopedia, at least a work-in-progress encyclopedia.
Teams have questions while doing their daily jobs. For basic questions, a search engine would do the trick.
Grant your employees the freedom to search for an answer when the answer is not coming in the first place. Looking for a specific answer from a huge amount of information is also a skill that counts in today’s big data world.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- getting various answers in a short time that could be used in the daily activities,
- learning how to search and categorize information,
- using quick tips for unexpected situations.
4. Use an Out-of-Office Email Autoresponder
Emails are very common for communication within or among the departments. Responding to all the emails might be a time-consuming task.
When tasks are being delivered through emails instead of a project management software it surely gets harder. Using an out-of-office email autoresponder makes your work easier.
Set a message for all the recipients that are eligible for receiving this type of information. In the meantime, you will be able to focus on the most urgent tasks.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- reducing the time spent on verifying and responding to emails,
- taking care of the top priority issues,
- improving the communication flow.
5. Use 2 Digital Calendars: One for Work and One for Your Personal Life
Employees struggle to maintain the work-life balance. These days, the pandemic has affected the life of all workers. A lot of people must work from home. It is said that professional life should not interfere with private life.
Calendars make no exception. Try to create and use 2 online calendars: one for work and one for personal affairs. Often, employees with hectic schedules in their private life tend to have a lower level of productivity. This happens because their minds focus on many things instead of focusing only on the current and urgent tasks.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- making clear differences between work and free time,
- focusing on the important aspects inside the company,
- setting the priorities for both the private and the work life.
6. Use Visual Collaborative Applications
Teams in the 4th Industrial Revolution are known for their use of visual collaborative applications.
Sometimes, teams spend more time than planned on the tasks and get lost. Individuals have their unique understanding and dealing with tasks rates.
Not all collaborative apps make teamwork more productive. It is vital to benefit from clear functions, simple and intuitive interface, the possibility to view, send and edit all kinds of materials, report errors and receive help in a short amount of time.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- reducing the time for gathering information from all the participants in one place,
- increasing the quality of solutions provided by the employees,
- getting decisions in an easier manner,
- spotting mistakes and flaws in the daily activities with the help of other members of the team.
7. Use a Project Management Tool
Most of the companies are accustomed to use various project management tools. Especially powerful are the tools are flexible and easy to customize.
The quality of these tools influence the work of the companies. The project management applications incorporate more complex functions. At the same time, they require more complex packages of information. The project management tools deliver the data necessary for creating the best possible products.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- reducing the time for scheduling the actions of the team members,
- understanding the needs of customers that buy the product created by a particular project,
- tracking the changes and the performance of the daily activities,
- improving the communication flow.
8. Use Video Conferencing for Remote Workers
Globalization changed companies from land factories to cloud factories. The rigid units of production transformed into multinational hubs of innovation.
More and more economies benefit from this kind of transformation. In this context, the employees come from different geographical and cultural backgrounds.
When dealing with remote workers, companies should establish a clear strategy for them. Using video conferencing for remote workers is a useful tip. Create short and purposeful meetings with the digital nomads. Let enough time for the actual work that delivers the goal.
How the team productivity is enhanced:
- reducing the need for meetings at the headquarters of the company,
- reducing the time for gathering information from the remote workers,
- creating meaningful interaction with those employees,
- increasing their involvement in the team,
- improving the communication flow.
9. Do Your Tech Homework – A Week of Exploration of New Apps and Tools
Team building is a classical method for exploring how the employees bond together. But this doesn’t mean that we cannot transform the classical into a futuristic pathway.
One particular exercise a week of exploration of new apps and tools that increase team productivity. It is the equivalent for one week of incubator/accelerator at a fast pace. Allow the team members to take one week and use it for exploring new apps, tools, and solutions while doing their job.
The desire for novelty is deep-rooted in all humans. It can be helpful for disrupting the daily, hard and sometimes boring activities.
When employees experience this kind of shift, their productivity will increase because novelty, experimentation and curiosity are important fuels in delivering successful products.
Remember – Technology is a Tool not the Final Goal
Pretty much all of the teams are attracted to technology. Technology can be used for tracking every single action of a company and increasing productivity.
With technology, a company creates models that reduce the inefficient areas, frictions, the negative effects and predict the features of the perfect product. 360° access and control might be the ultimate desire of a business.
However, technology should remain the mean for achieving the goals, not the goal itself.
How Can Lumeer Help?
Lumeer is a project management software designed especially for small and medium enterprises. Lumeer integrates the functions of a digital calendar, task tracking, and a visual collaborative tool under one hood.
Lumeer is flexible, intuitive and has a very nice user interface. Create a free account and try Lumeer yourself!
There are templates available for applying the most important strategies listed in the article:
The productivity race is on in 2022. We are here to fuel your engines and help you with the right resources.
