Work management and productivity solutions are creating better workplaces

According to recent research by HubSpot, 82% of employees are losing hours every week managing and navigating multiple tasks, different business apps, information and communication channels, and various reporting systems. This grappling with numerous aspects of work has taken an unnecessary toll on mental well-being, and people have started feeling burnt out.

To overcome that, “work smart, have fun” is the business discipline most companies aspire to adopt. The two years of COVID has changed the way people perceive work and as companies struggle to hire, reskill, upskill, and most importantly, retain talent, giving people what they need has become a priority. More so, with Gen Z coming into the workforce, the focus has shifted from deploying just business applications to providing the right productivity solutions that enable people. Today, people desire a workplace that provides meaningful work, learning opportunities, flexibility, the opportunity to work from anywhere and to collaborate in real-time. All this, while ensuring productivity and excellent customer experience. That means, creating an environment that aligns with the needs of all the stakeholders- owners, employees, and customers!

Preparing for the new normal

The pandemic and the subsequent shift to hybrid work has forced many organisations to adopt the digital transformation at an accelerated pace. Organisations are realising that to stay ahead of the competition and attracting and retaining the best of talent, they need to adopt work management solutions and practices that empower its people.

A survey shows that almost 47% of the workforce has reported being distracted while working from home and experienced declining output. At the same time, a recent study published in the Economic Times reported almost 82% of the people surveyed preferred working from home. This makes the use of productivity tools imperative. While organisations do want to provide the flexibility to people, it is also important for them to remain productive to gain a competitive edge.

Productivity and managing time and work efficiently are considerable aspects that allow organisations to perform and provide a better customer experience. Productivity apps make it easier to set goals, assign tasks, track progress, create reports, and communicate with employees in real-time.

Today, many work management and productivity solutions are available to help optimise operations, engage customers, and empower employees to perform tasks in real-time from anywhere. They provide the teams the much-needed flexibility to plan and manage their deliverables better.

Technologies such as Microsoft Teams help people connect and collaborate at work. SharePoint and OneDrive make file storing and sharing seamless. There are purposeful and unintrusive time-tracking and time-management apps that can increase productivity by up to 30%.

CRM and ERP systems elevate productivity across the organisation with a 360-degree view of customers and all the other processes.

Meaningful metrics can be extracted with integration of task and project statuses, workflow data, production and financial information, etc. Interactive, real-time dashboards help the management track the important KPIs, thus eliminating countless hours spent in meetings to get the updates.

Learning management apps help people work on their skills gaps and help organisations create meaningful learning paths, thus facilitating growth of its employees.

Apart from overarching enterprise and team level solutions, personal productivity apps help people to plan their work better, thus ensuring they prioritise activities and focus on the most critical deliverable first.

Many of these apps help people identify activities consuming more time than actually needed and help provide the flexibility to resources to plan their work schedule.

The integrated task management, communication, file storage and sharing, time management, resource management, and reporting apps facilitate not just productivity but overall collaboration. They help the generation of social media to stay connected, share accolades and cheer their colleagues, all without necessarily getting up from their desk.

Creating a better workplace

Driven by digital transformation over the last few years, industries are optimising the work-management processes, changing business models, and are reinventing themselves. And the pandemic, which accelerated the adoption of technology, has fuelled this fire. This has in turn enabled the organisations and the workforce to focus on what is important, enabling flexibility and employee well-being.

The shift in focus from technology first to people first has prompted organisations to adopt solutions that facilitate employee engagement and experience; help people stay connected and collaborate uninterrupted from anywhere. Such organisations continue to be the desirable workplaces and attract and retain talent.