When it comes to your workforce, you want things to click for them all day, every day. Unfortunately though, things don’t always work this way. Why? Well, they’re human of course. They want to talk, eat food, go to the bathroom, watch a funny cat video and stare off into nothingness for five minutes straight. But all these “extracurricular” activities during the work day make for a highly unproductive staff.
Obviously.
So how do you keep your staff human, yet capitalize on their most productive time periods? Simple. Keep your technology dependable and the communication flowing like the Mississippi River.
Technology
If you’re looking for a quick way to create an unproductive staff, then give them some really bad, old, and outdated technology. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even have to be that incredibly bad. It just has to give out on them every now and then. Once you manage to do this, just sit back and watch absolutely nothing happen.
Workstation shuts off in the middle of a task Susie had been working on for an hour. She’s now done for the day.
Or Joe’s email inbox refuses to sync. Instead of trying to do other things, he’ll just click around his inbox for a few hours thinking really hard about why it isn’t working.
Too many open applications and everything suddenly becomes “unresponsive.” Prepare yourself for a sudden attack of a clicker-crazed employee, who will simply make the unresponsive even more unresponsive.
Your CRM takes an eternity to load. Mary will take this eternity and use it to check up on her kingdom in Clash of the Clans. Your database may have loaded ten minutes ago, but she’s highly invested in an all-out battle at the moment. See ya, Mary.
Communication
Strong communication builds up your competitive edge and keeps your staff on the same page. But the trick is to keep things instant and synchronized. This is where modern technology has worked its magic.
Once you start using apps like Office 365 and Dropbox, you’ll begin to wonder how you ever did anything before. Work on the same document at the same time as another staff member and see each other’s edits in real-time. Take a step away from the back-and-forth emails and start moving faster than a slug on a hot day.
Old way:
Bob sends an email to Matt. “Hey man, take a look at this attachment. I made some minor edits to the first paragraph.”
Bob sends another email to Matt. “Sorry. Forgot attachment. Here it is.”
Matt sends an email to Bob. “Took a look at your notes. Here are my changes.”
Bob sends an email to Matt. “That looks great Matt. What do you think about changing the word amazing to brilliant in that last sentence?”
Matt sends an email to Bob. “Sounds good. Any other changes? FYI, I made a few tweaks to the title.”
Nine days later and 37 emails sent, forwarded, received and read, Matt and Bob finish their one-page report.
New way:
Matt sends Bob and instant message: Hey, let’s work on that report.
They both hop on Dropbox and 15 minutes later the report is edited, approved, and sent.
Wow. So much time saved.