6 Tools to Amplify Your Team’s Productivity
Research from Salary.com found that two-thirds of employees waste at least half an hour at work every year. Unfortunately, the study understated the problem, because many employees stay on task but don’t work productively. Their actual productivity scores are much lower.
Choosing talented employees for your team is important, but boosting team productivity should be another priority. Fortunately, there are many great tools that project managers can use to boost team productivity. Here are some of the top tools available.
1) Stayfocusd
Stayfocsd is a free Google Chrome extension that keeps employees from wasting too much time on certain websites. When you install the plugin, you can provide a blacklist of domains that you don’t want employees spending too much time on. If employees go on a blacklisted site, the timer will start counting. After it reaches the limit you set, they will be barred from going on any of the sites on the blacklist.
2) Evernote
Evernote is a popular notetaking app that can be connected on several devices. You have to pay a subscription if you plan on using three or more devices, but can sync between two devices for free. You can take both text and audio notes on Evernote. You can also set reminders and upload attachments.
3) SELF journal
Every member of your team needs to learn to balance short-term and long-term goals. The SELF Journal is a great tool for this. This journal provides a hierarchal structure, so you can see how more immediate tasks fit into the big picture for your organization. Before downloading the SELF Journal, you need to make sure all of your goals are clearly defined.
4) Workfront
Workfront is a popular project management tool. Here are some of the key solutions it provides:
- Centralizing all of your projects
- Managing all of your digital work processes
- Performing QA checks on all of your team’s work
- Overseeing all compliance standards are met
Thousands of global organizations rely on Workfront to streamline their project management processes.
5) Slack
Keeping track of communications between team members is overwhelming at times. Slack is a great tool that makes every project manager’s job a lot easier. Here are some of the key benefits:
- You can make sure employees are actually staying on topic with their messages. You can see if they are wandering with any of their communications.
- You can easily organize communications by topic. You can break them down by client, department or long-term, internal projects.
- You avoid the gaps caused by deleted email chains, dropped emails and other problems.
Slack is used by countless organizations to streamline internal discussions on important projects.
6) Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media aggregation and analytics tool. Any team members that are responsible for social media marketing should have access to it, especially if they need to manage multiple platforms. You can use Hootsuite to connect to nearly 40 major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Equip Your Team with the Right Productivity Boosting Tools
Keeping your team on task can prove to be difficult at times. Fortunately, there are plenty of great tools and apps that make the job easier. Many of these tools are free, but you may need to pay for a premium account, depending on the number of people on your team.
