6 Best Tools to Boost Team Productivity
While having gifted individuals may greatly help your company, making them into a proper team is what can become game-changing. When it comes to this, hiring, team building and micro-management of the team may take priority when it comes to its performance, there are more than few other ways in which you can boost this. One of them is with the use of an adequate digital tool. Here are six of them you may want to consider.
1. Pomodoro Technique Timer
The greatest problem with micro-management of one’s time is that people tend to overestimate the intervals in which they can hold full focus while underestimating the size of periods necessary recuperate from it. Luckily, both of these problems can be solved with the use of the Pomodoro Technique. Instead of relying on hours of work time, Pomodoro gives one short work intervals (25 minutes long) and combines them with 5-minute breaks. According to numerous surveys, this is the most time-efficient work schedule out there, which is why including a Pomodoro Technique timer might be a good idea.
2. Video Conference Tool
A large work project requires a lot of meetings, which can be a bit of a problem for your overall productivity. As it is, an average office worker spends about one hour a day attending office meetings and conferences. We are talking about an average of 31 work-hours each month, which is an irrationally high. In order to remedy this, you may want to try exploring efficient video conference solutions in HD in order to provide your staff members with an adequate substitute. In this way, you get to maintain the communication in the office at an all-time high, without the unnecessary waste of time mentioned above. Not to mention that this is something that can give a real conference experience to the telecommuters as well.
3. Smart Thermometer
Even though this may seem a bit odd, there is a direct correlation between the temperature in the office and the overall productivity of your employees. The way this works is quite simple and some studies have shown that the best temperature for productivity is in a narrow span between 65F and 70F. This means that investing in a smart thermometer and always keeping it within these margins has the potential to slightly alter the overall office productivity in your favor. The best of it all is that this will work silently in the background and is something your clients probably won’t even consciously notice.
4. Stress Management Apps
Aside from hurting an individual, stress can be a serious company-level productivity killer. There is a figure out there claiming that one million workers missing out from work due to the stress. Now, for a small company, this can be completely devastating, seeing how they are usually understaffed as they are. Because of this, using stress management apps might come in as extremely handy. All of them work on a different principle and while some are there simply to alert you of a potentially alleviated stress level, others focus on playing you soothing sounds or even virtually taking you to a distant part of the world.
5. Telecommuting Platforms
In 2017 telecommuting is really hitting off as a trend. In fact, there is a figure of telecommuters being 14 percent more effective than their peers who work at the office. Still, not having everyone around can be a bit difficult for any manager. Luckily, this particular problem can be solved through some basic organizational skills combined with any reliable telecommuting platform. The most common names in the business are probably TeamViewer and Dropbox, but there are others such as Asana, ClickMeeting and our favorite Basecamp that can be equally as good. Most of it depends on your industry-specific needs and your personal preferences as a manager.
6. Fitness Apps
Finally, people who regularly workout are much less likely to suffer from a burnout (or even depression), not to mention that employees who exercise before work tend to show 15 percent better results. Because of this, you may want to find a way to encourage your staff to engage in this sort of activity. The best way to do so in the 21st century is with the use of a fitness app which can track and post their progress online. In a way, this can help you turn this healthy practice into a bit of a positive competition from which everyone will benefit.
In Conclusion
As you can see, while this list contains apps and platforms which directly influence the productivity of individuals and boost overall collaboration, there are also those that act more indirectly. Nonetheless, it is by utilizing all of them at the same time that you can help your team unlock its full potential and truly give you their 100 percent. To be honest, whether or not they actually do it is more of a motivation-related question than anything else (which is a story for another time), but it is your duty to give them all necessary conditions to do so. With these six tools, you will be able to do just that.
Written and composed by Guest Blogger, Leila Dorari