Productivity is a buzzword among employees and organizations these days but with good reason: Maximizing it is the key to achieving our goals. Improving productivity helps individuals and organizations reach their targets, both professional and personal.
By understanding the importance of productivity and implementing effective solutions, we unlock potential and reach new heights – both for ourselves and the companies we work for. In this post, we’ll discuss seven productivity solutions to empower you and your team to reach your goals.
What is a productivity solution?
A productivity solution helps people and solutions improve their work output. These include project management tools, note-taking and to-do list apps, apps to improve focus, tools for communication and collaboration, financial apps, scheduling apps and productivity monitoring software. Many of these are used for individual productivity or to improve productivity for entire teams.
Benefits of using a productivity solution
Every organization has different business needs when it comes to productivity solutions. For instance, not every business needs expense management tools, and some may need more robust communications solutions than others. But organizations see a number of general benefits from using productivity apps and solutions, regardless of which types they implement.
General benefits of productivity solutions include:
- Improved collaboration: By giving your teams the tools they need to communicate and work together, they more efficiently accomplish tasks and mark them as done.
- Smoother operations: Many productivity tools provide organizations with better structure for assigning work, moving it down the pipeline and completing it, which can mean smoother operations for everyone.
- More interesting work: Automating repetitive or uninteresting tasks opens team members up to do more rewarding and interesting work.
- Saved time: With the right productivity tools in place, employees can more easily find information and accomplish tasks faster.
- More opportunities for flexibility: Whether your team is fully remote, hybrid or in-office full-time, today’s productivity tools can help them be more efficient wherever and whenever they work.
7 productivity solutions to help businesses improve performance
With so many productivity solutions on the market today, it can be difficult to determine which ones are most helpful. Here’s a list of some to look at for improving productivity in your business.
1. ActivTrak for productivity management and measurement
Whether you want to see when employees are working their best, which employees may need more training or if employees may be heading toward burnout, ActivTrak’s productivity monitoring platform gives you insight into workplace productivity. Our dashboards provide real-time data on what employees are doing, from how much time they spend on apps to how much time they spend on tasks and more. The platform integrates with many other tools and provides data visualizations to help you make informed decisions on issues that may hamper productivity.
2. Asana for project management
If you’ve worked with kanban-based project management tools, you’ve probably seen Asana. The project management tool allows you to assign tasks, monitor progress and find bottlenecks to productivity. With flexible visualization tools including lists, timelines, calendars and Gantt charts, Asana is highly customizable for different individuals in your team to use it however it suits them.
3. Todoist for making lists
As its name suggests, Todoist is a list tool that allows teams and individuals to create to-do lists of personal and professional tasks. It can also be used as a project management tool with due dates, priority-setting features and labels. Plus, it can read your lists and give you ideas on when to do your tasks using the Smart Schedule feature.
4. Expensify for expense management
With intuitive features and automated expense creation, Expensify helps businesses manage expenses quickly and easily. Team members upload expenses through apps on their phones and track receipts, mileage and more. The app integrates with other solutions such as travel booking apps to automate receipts as well.
5. Slack for collaboration
Slack integrates with systems like Google Drive and email services to streamline communication and collaboration for your team. You can even add non-staff members to your company Slack channel, which can increase collaboration for contractors or freelancers. The app includes a chat function to use on desktop or mobile devices, file sharing and project management integrations and generative AI to help teams be as productive as possible.
6. Google Calendar for scheduling
To help your team schedule meetings, tasks and reminders, Google Calendar offers an intuitive interface and a lot of functionality. Calendars sync automatically, allowing team members to easily find the right time to schedule meetings. The app also syncs with emails to automatically create calendar events from third-party groups, like airline tickets or event tickets.
7. Tide for staying focused
Distraction is a big hurdle for productivity in the workplace, and Tide offers calming background noise and music to help employees stay focused. The app also includes timers to alert you when it’s time to take a break or switch to another task. Employees can also use the app for personal time management, such as falling asleep or as an alarm to wake up. As an added bonus, the app is free.
Get a demo of ActivTrak’s productivity solution
If you’re ready to see how ActivTrak helps your organization manage productivity, schedule a demo today. Optimize your business processes and learn which technology solutions help employees or where employees may need more training with intuitive dashboards and real-time data. Check on employee workloads to see where you have capacity and where employees may need a break to avoid burnout. See when and where your employees are most productive to help make policy decisions – all without putting their privacy at risk.
Schedule a free demo today!