Any successful organization understands the value of productivity in the workplace. When the company is productive, easier it is to create profit-generating opportunities and improve business relationships. As the industrial age progresses, finding ways to work quicker, more collaboratively, and effectively have driven organizations to know how to use technology to improve productivity.
Forbes reports that installations of productivity and business apps have increased 35% in the past year and is expected to continue growing as the world grapples with the workplace changes brought by the pandemic. With a dynamic productivity solution in place, leaders can streamline processes, simplify communication, and ensure effective collaboration between teams segregated in several geographic locations. This can be especially crucial in moments like these when profit margins are lower, the workforce has decreased, and there is added pressure on workers at all levels to deliver more.
However, it is worth noting that having a productivity app will not magically turn your organization into a machine turning in tasks like a house on fire. You have to effectively introduce the software in your workplace, which can be incredibly challenging and requires massive investment in terms of time, budget, and effort. We’ll discuss several tips you can use to ensure the successful implementation of the best productivity apps in a changing work environment.
1. Define Objectives for Introducing Productivity Software
Understanding your goals and objectives for introducing a productivity tool should be on top of your checklist. More often than not, business leaders make the mistake of getting prematurely excited about the benefits of a productivity tool that they dive right in and implement the solution into their processes without considering the issues it will solve. Ultimately, this can result in employees failing to see the rationale of using a new solution when the existing ones are still doing the job for them.
As the age-old adage goes, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. However, this mindset can be dangerous and may stunt the overall growth and result in your business missing opportunities of improving current processes. By establishing a clear goal for using the productivity solution, you can answer employee questions comprehensively and make them feel more receptive to the idea of how does technology increases productivity in the workplace.
It also allows you to create a plan of action wherein you identify the most excellent way to implement the solution. This way, you can make timely adjustments and ensure that employees can learn to use the productivity tool at their own pace. Moreover, understanding your goals will also help outline critical factors that will ensure success as you progress through the implementation process.
2. Create a Communication and Awareness Plan
Getting everyone aligned for successful software implementation can be challenging, especially without employee buy-in. Therefore, establishing a clear communication and awareness plan is critical in educating everyone on technology capabilities and business expectations. By creating and communicating the clear mission and vision statements regarding the software implementation, you can reduce employee resistance and misaligned expectations.
Usually, employees reject change in the workplace because of their lack of understanding how productivity software solutions can make processes easier and improve their lives. Recent data reveals that approximately 70% of change projects and software implementations fail because the management cannot convince their employees to get on board with the process. By creating a communication and awareness plan, you can reduce the feeling of uncertainty in the workplace and create a culture that is receptive to change.
A communication and awareness plan will also help you determine who you need to reach, what you want them to understand, and how you will reach them. This can be especially critical if you are building a champion team to advocate your productivity software and reduce workplace negativity. With a comprehensive communication plan, you can highlight the advantages and intended outcomes of the productivity tool, which in turn, will make it easier for them to demonstrate it to their fellow employees.
3. Train Employees
Conducting training sessions to showcase the productivity tool’s ability is among the crucial things to consider before using productivity apps in the workplace. By providing comprehensive training, you can provide employees with adequate knowledge to maximize the benefits of the solution and reduce frustration. Often, employees resist the adoption of the new solution for the fear of looking incompetent in front of their colleagues.
As technology continuously evolves, there is a good chance that they may not be able to use the solution correctly. When conducting software training sessions, you should create and evaluate training objectives before the training itself. This allows you to establish the desired outcome and ensure that you cover areas for concern during the training.
You can also test how your employees use the software to perform existing business processes. This enables you to determine weaknesses and create necessary training measures to improve their abilities to maximize the productivity tool. By creating a culture of continuous learning, you can also improve the likelihood of your staff becoming more well-equipped for upcoming business changes.
4. Encourage Employee Feedback
Using technology to improve efficiency in the workplace can bring incremental changes to employee workflows. By encouraging employee feedback, you can signify to your employees that you are implementing the software to help them be better at their jobs. This also allows you to gauge the employees’ understanding and ability to navigate the productivity software platform.
It is not uncommon for leaders to choose a productivity solution that works wonders for them but may not deliver the same result to their employees. With continuous employee feedback, you can establish a strategic approach in determining the aspects that your productivity solution needs to improve. Through this process, you can either sunset the solution and process that goes with it or perhaps change your software provider altogether to ensure seamless adoption.
What’s more, it also creates an avenue internally which ensures that questions and concerns are addressed accordingly. Start by individually taking feedback from each employee who will be using the productivity solution. Although this might seem like a lot of work, doing so will help you pinpoint every possible issue and determine the learning curve it takes for everyone to get started.
5. Pick the Right Software
Introducing productivity solutions is a lot to take for every employee which means that you don’t have to complicate things even further by choosing the wrong platform. One way of doing that is to opt for easy-to-use productivity software that would require minimal technical skills and computer scientist requirements to navigate. However, choosing a tool suitable to your company’s needs can be difficult as leaders are often faced with an explosion in the choice of productivity applications.
A rule of thumb in navigating the sea of productivity solutions is to analyze your teams’ workflows. You may also have to talk to the future users of the solution because they are familiar with the issues related to your current way of working. Using these insights, you can determine specific requirements and features that your ideal productivity software should have to become more effective in your existing and future working environments.
Asking for a comprehensive product demonstration and a sufficient trial period from your provider is also recommended to avoid committing to a solution that does more harm than good to your operations. It should be noted that while productivity solutions are flexible, there are some platforms which are specifically tailored for a particular industry. This means that what might work for the information technology sector may not deliver the same result in the accounting industry. By asking for a trial period, you can evaluate how technology can increase efficiency in a business while allowing you to resolve pain points and empower you to be successful.
Ensuring Successful Implementation of Productivity Software
As mentioned earlier, choosing the right productivity software ensures successful implementation. One of the premier productivity solutions used by cutting-edge organizations is nTask, which is a project management software solution that allows teams to collaborate, plan, and handle tasks effectively. nTask offers a product demonstration and a free trial on top of its Premium, Business, and Enterprise packages.
Post By: CompareCamp
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