Whether it’s a startup or a corporate giant, investing in the right digital workplace technologies can significantly impact the efficiency of the team. In a survey by Ultimate Software, 92% of workers say using technology that helps them to do their work efficiently, influences their work satisfaction. It is clear that the right tools increase business productivity and improve employee experience creating a positive working environment critical to the team’s success.
How do digital tools boost business productivity?
A recent survey by Oracle shows that firms that utilize emerging technologies have increased their annual revenue by 58 percent. As market competition rises amongst businesses, it is clear that business productivity and innovation must go hand in hand for companies to achieve high levels of success in the market.
The use of business productivity tools gives companies the opportunity to utilize their limited resources to concentrate on innovative and productive projects. Technology can help in:
- Improving employee focus
- Fostering easy team communication
While technology has added value to business productivity and streamlined workflows, an Average Employee Productivity statistical study revealed that 44.3 percent of workers believe that using too many apps significantly lowers productivity. Therefore, companies must be judicious in choosing their workplace software considering its viability, and how it would help in getting the work done effectively.
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10 Effective tools to enhance business productivity
Here are ten of the best business productivity tools that improve employee efficiency and improve team performance:
Clariti is free and ideal for small and medium businesses to boost team communication and drive productivity. It is securely hosted on Amazon Web Services, providing total reliability, 100% uptime and trusted security of all your workday data. Clariti combines all your communications from emails, chats, calls, documents in cloud storage, and to-dos in one app. The application is also free and easy to use. It doesn’t require any training. Companies may find it extremely convenient to own and use Clariti.
- Asana
Asana is one of the most popular work management software used by many businesses around the world. The application is designed to reduce the workload of managers by helping them set clear goals, roles and responsibilities for their team. The software has an extensive range of functionalities that help teams of any scale manage their workflow systematically.
- Users can easily assign tasks to other team members
- Hubstaff
With the workforce going remote or even hybrid, employee tracking and monitoring have become crucial in maintaining business productivity. Hubstaff is a comprehensive employee tracking platform that offers services like:
- Creating job orders and organizing work in one place
- Getting detailed timesheets and reports to optimize team performance
Using Hubstaff, managers can keep track of their team’s work patterns from any location. This also keeps employees accountable and focused on completing the tasks assigned to them on a timely basis.
- Time doctor
Time Doctor is an effective desktop-based time tracking app that provides insights into where employees spend their time during work hours.
- The application provides a summary of the time spent on web and app usage. If it detects that the employee is spending too much time on social media or other non-work-related sites, it alerts the employee with a pop-up warning. It also detects idle time by monitoring how long the computer is working
- Time Doctor also helps in tracking how much time is spent on each assigned task
These reports can help teams analyze which tasks consume their time and eliminate tasks that hamper their productivity.
- Dropbox
Teamwork and collaboration are essential for improving business productivity. Dropbox is a highly effective collaboration tool that helps teams work simultaneously from anywhere and store all important information securely in one location. This ensures that all the members of the team have access to the same pool of documents and have a hassle-free online collaboration with complete transparency.
Dropbox also facilitates real-time document editing, notetaking and secure document storage.
- Freedom
To attain maximum business productivity, it is important that time is utilized judiciously. Employees get distracted easily by external apps and websites. Studies reveal that such distraction can adversely affect productivity and deteriorate the quality of work produced.
Freedom is an ideal distraction blocking app developed to eliminate diversions on the net during working hours.
- The application blocks time-wasting websites, social media apps and games, boosting employee focus on their work and promoting active engagement.
- Evernote
While most business productivity apps focus on overall task management and time tracking as a measure of team productivity, it is important to improve individual performance as well. Evernote is a simple notetaking application that enables the organization of information or notes that can be accessed from any device. With this app, users can keep a personal list of important tasks that need to be completed and quickly find any relevant information that is stored with just the search of a keyword or tag. Evernote enables making notes that not only include text but also images, files or lists
- Trello
Trello is a project management and team collaboration tool that can be used to break down complex projects and list ideas on a colorful board of cards. The application is easy and has a visually appealing interface that helps users organize their notes creatively with unique features like maps, and calendars and generate charts and infographics. Its drag and drop functionality makes it very easy to use.
Trello has a unique voting feature that is ideal for brainstorming ideas and upvoting the best ideas forward.
- Slack
Slack is a popular instant messaging and collaboration platform that facilitates channel-based communication. This ensures that all discussions on a relevant topic flow in a single thread. With Slack, users can discuss multiple topics at the same time through different channels without losing continuity of the conversation. With Slackbots, you can also set reminders for a specific task. This application is especially relevant when managing a remote team that is working on multiple projects.
- Limeade
Employee mental and physical health are important contributors to business productivity and team efficiency. According to the Institute for Healthcare Consumerism, companies that implemented a wellness program experienced a 28% reduction in employee sick time. Employee stress and burnout are common causes for lack of productivity in the workforce. Companies need to encourage employees to take regular breaks and have a healthy work-life balance.
Limeade is a comprehensive employee experience platform that helps companies focus on employee well-being. With its well-researched employee wellness and engagement activities, Limeade promotes a healthy work culture and employee satisfaction.
The platform allows companies to customize employee wellness programs and activities according to the company’s work culture. The programs in the application are tailored to be interactive and rewarding to increase employee satisfaction. Research has shown that employees who feel that their companies care about their well-being tend to perform better at work.
In this age of digitalization, companies have a wide range of technologies available to cater to the needs of their organization. These innovative solutions can positively impact productivity and optimize the work processes including communication, collaboration, work management and employee engagement.
