Richard Branson famously said, “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
While many companies put a lot of effort into employee well-being programs, they don’t always think of them first when it comes to the software they choose or their internal business processes and workflows.
Choose the right digital tools and you empower your workforce. Choose the wrong ones or don’t upgrade to keep up with changing technology and you could be stagnating your productivity and causing employees to go elsewhere.
74% of employees say their companies don’t give them access to the latest technology to help them do their job more effectively and efficiently.
The technology your staff has to work with directly impacts your bottom line. 87% of CIOs say that digitally empowering your workforce can add 5% or more of additional revenue growth.
What does “digitally empowering your workforce” actually mean? We’ll go through several examples below that you can use to guide your own technology choices in the future.
Empowering Your Employees with Smart Tech Choices
If your accounting person is struggling with a sluggish QuickBooks program that takes longer than it should to backup so a copy of your books can be sent to your tax accountant, not only does that drain productivity, it also causes frustration and drains your employee’s spirit.
A simple change like moving to QuickBooks online that offers an easy sharing interface for your tax accountant could make all the difference in your accounting team’s workday and mood.
That’s just one example of an area of technology that directly impacts your employees, their productivity, and how good they feel about working for your business in general.
When taking a look at how technology could energize your team and help them do their jobs more easily, there are several categories of digital tools to consider.
Training Tools
A whopping 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if they invested in their training and development.
Many companies use an ad hoc cross training or on-the-job training policy at their office without putting any detailed planning into how to develop their talent from the time they’re hired. This is often because they don’t realize all the software options out there to streamline their employee training and growth process to make it easier to administer.
Today, there are multiple learning management systems (LMS) out there that can make it easy to set up an employee enrichment and education program. They incorporate videos, online and mobile access, and modules that allow employees to train at their own pace.
Team Chat/Collaboration Tools
Going through email inboxes can take up 20-25% of a day, and it’s not exactly “exciting” to read through and reply to emails. Team collaboration software has completely changed the way offices communicate, offering real-time collaboration and a much more connected feeling than email can provide.
Some of the popular tools are Slack and Microsoft Teams, and in addition to text chat, they also make it easy to make a voice or video call to touch base. These tools help employees (whether they’re in the next office or across the world) feel connected and included.
Cloud Subscriptions vs Static Software
If you’re trying to save money by keeping your employees on an older version of MS Office or another static non-cloud software, you could actually be losing money instead due to lost productivity.
Using older software means not taking advantage of newer workflows that can include automation. Automation can drastically reduce manual data entry and other repetitive tasks, and free up your staff to work on more business-driving tasks.
Subscribing to a cloud service, like Office 365, also means that the software your employees use is always updated so they can take advantage of the newest features, plus can access their work from anywhere on any device.
Customer Support Software
If you’re still using one webform that comes into a general email inbox for your customer support, you could be making handling customer requests more difficult than they need to be for your customer support staff.
Using a CRM program, like Zendesk for example, offers more streamlined workflows with time-saving features like:
- Preset macros that can auto-fill answers to common questions
- Tracking of all customer interactions for visibility to all agents
- Ability to upload attachments that eliminate problems emailing large files
- VoIP capabilities so phone calls can be made right inside a customer ticket
- Ability to sort customer tickets by status, date, or tagged parameters
- Connects to sales platforms where CRM agents can click a button to instantly transfer a sales lead.
- Access from browser, desktop app, or mobile app
File Storage and Sharing Apps
Using a cloud-based application like Dropbox or OneDrive can significantly reduce the time it takes for employees to search for files, file versions, and save and share files.
Having all your documents saved in an online storage platform means that no files at stuck on “who’s computer?” and you can easily set security permissions to ensure that only those authorized have access to sensitive files.
File sharing is also made much easier. No more wondering if an email attachment made it through or was too big. Files of any size can be quickly shared with anyone via a link.
Improve Productivity this Year with the Right Applications
Genuine Technology Group can help you understand the types of challenges your employees are facing and find the right software solutions to address them and boost productivity.
Contact us today and to schedule a technology consultation. Call 971-288-0880 or reach us online.