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5 Tools to Have in 2022 to Boost Employee Productivity

Contributed article by Manpreet Singh Chawla

When it comes to hiring, promoting, and terminating employees, their productivity is a critical factor to consider. However, determining whether or not an employee is functioning to their total capacity is challenging.  

We're not talking about how many hours employees work when talking about productivity. It's all about how much of that hard work yields valuable outputs. Unfortunately, the efficiency of employees who work overtime or double shifts is frequently subpar. 

Therefore, it is critical to evaluate the output of an organization's employees and constantly analyze it to increase employee efficiency. To this end, organizations employ employee productivity tools to track employee productivity and improve their efficiency. 

According to a recent survey, over 55% of employees waste 16 hours checking emails, filing documents, and double-checking papers each week. That's almost 3 hours per day for the course of a 40-hour workday stretched out across five days. However, multiple tools can help organizations improve employee efficiency. This blog will discuss five tools that every support organization should consider investing in 2022 to boost employee productivity.

Using Technological Tools to Boost Employee Productivity

In an era of fast-paced technological development, technology-based tools are helping us ease the difficulties we confront daily at work. They facilitate streamlining of processes and simplifying of procedures, thus helping in enhancing employee productivity. The keys to building a highly engaged and competent workforce are selecting the correct people for each job and using tools to eliminate factors that can make an employee less productive or lose time over trivial tasks.

Let's look at the top 5 employee productivity software and tools

 1. Trello

Trello enables employees to collaborate more effectively and complete more tasks. It empowers individuals and teams (from various places) to efficiently and flexibly prioritize tasks and projects. Trello's basic version is available for free. Large enterprises can also use Trello Gold and Trello Business Class, premium versions with several extra capabilities.

It aids in managing a to-do list for remote personnel. Furthermore, it is the most basic project management application that employs the Kanban paradigm. It's ideal for most corporate procedures. Trello's different products serve as a collaboration platform that aids in organizing projects into boards. It tells you what's being worked on, who's working on it, and which tasks are in progress.

Employees can check in on their workload and finished work, utilizing Trello's various boards and simple procedures. Furthermore, anyone on the team can apply personalized tags to the tasks to determine their importance. Finally, it ensures that you do not miss any deadlines.

Trello works well in any work environment, whether at the office or home. It is adaptable to every work situation and produces excellent results. You have the option of using it for strictly work-related or personal affairs. Because Trello is a complicated tool, it's best to start by learning how to utilize it successfully. A step-by-step guide can help you get started in the right direction.

2. OnTheClock

Employees can keep track of their punch locations with OnTheClock, an online time-tracking service. Supervisors can use this web- or cloud-based program to figure out who is punching in and out at work.

The tool can be integrated into any workflow in just 3 minutes and includes smart capabilities such as payroll data connection, a smartphone time clock application for workers, time off monitoring, and a free trial

An online time clock system can be viewed as a large, invisible cloud that stores all the data related to the tracking of employees’ productive hours. It records everything, when an employee punches in or out, their location, and the number of hours they had worked. It will help you be more precise with your payroll budget.

Other advantages include reducing the likelihood of partner punching and saving time on your end when calculating your employee's timesheet totals. In addition, if you ask your workers to work overtime or provide them compensatory off, it will directly get documented on their timesheets.

3. BaseCamp

Basecamp is a project management software solution. The tool's creators claim that it can help improve responsibility, improve communication, and keep everybody on the same page.

A supervisor can use BaseCamp to assign and track assignments, as well as participate in centralized discussions. It can help him boost the team's productivity, as a result, enhance employee productivity.

Teams become more productive and streamlined after shifting to Basecamp. They become better communicators and hold fewer discussions. They end up becoming more efficient and delivering greater output than before. The tool lets you divide your work into projects. Every project contains everything connected to the activity, including all participants, discussions, documents, files, tasks, and important dates. Unlike emails, which start messy and require continual management, Basecamp programs keep everything organized by default.  

 4. Knowmax

Knowmax offers multiple solutions that are perfect for support organizations and can help them boost their employees' productivity. Its cognitive decision trees, AI-powered chatbot, knowledge management software, and learning management system, offer excellent results in enhancing the productivity of customer support agents.

With the implementation of solutions from Knowmax customer support agents no longer will have to repeatedly respond to the same inquiries from different consumers. Instead, you can answer simple questions and address common issues with chatbots without the need for human agents to be available all the time. Consequently, you can allocate better responsibilities to your employees to raise productivity levels, and your AI investments begin to pay off.

A unified knowledge base integrated with your knowledge management software would empower your support agents with the correct information. They would, therefore, be able to offer a precise solution to customers without any delays. Well-designed decision trees for customer service also render a clear path to a possible explanation for different types of issues a customer may be facing. As a result, your support teams can offer a resolution to customers quickly, using the well-defined flowchart of the decision trees. It will, in turn, result in a higher customer satisfaction rate. 

Contact centers could consider introducing a call center scripting software that can help at any time to boost agent efficiency and offer a first-call resolution. 

When hiring new staff, many firms grossly discount the value of onboarding. As a result, employees are less productive and more inclined to hunt for a job elsewhere. On the other hand, effective onboarding boosts employee engagement and results in a happy team. One of the solutions offered by Knowmax is a robust learning management system (LMS). It facilitates an improved employee-onboarding process and renders comprehensive knowledge to the support agents. In addition, it improves information delivery and empowers the agents with the right information.

 5. Rescue Time

Although this tool resembles the Time Doctor, it is not the same. 

RescueTime helps businesses uncover trends of employees' productivity using level productivity statistics and key tool reports, rather than simply watching the employees' work.

This software tracks how workers spend all their time using various tools and platforms to identify patterns. Team managers can identify areas for improvement using the information supplied in these reports. In other words, this technology enables you to assist employees in adjusting and optimizing how they spend most of their time at work. Another critical element of Rescue Time is that it aids in the blocking of distractions from specific sources.

Management and employees can also select different levels of privacy during and after work. Consequently, you can avoid being distracted by an endless stream of alerts that undermine productivity. This function alone distinguishes Rescue Time from many other employee management software.

You can also use RescueTime to create your task goals to keep track of your progress. For instance, you can construct a task list and a schedule for these projects, which will help you stay on track while being more productive.

RescueTime is a personal time planning tool and efficiency tracker for individuals and employees. RescueTime lets you monitor your time with its goal-setting and daily scheduling features. On the other hand, this app will not be the most incredible time activity tracking for companies who want to keep track of their employees because it does not constantly send alerts to management.

Conclusion

It is essential to understand that employees' performance is crucial to the company's success. Therefore, a successful entrepreneur is always ready to provide the finest tools to boost the productivity of support agents. You can find an "n" number of intriguing tools that will assist you to increase your staff performance, ranging from knowledge management to project management to time management software. 

You might want to start with the ones listed here. The advantages may not be apparent right away. However, the genuine benefits of innovative productivity tools frequently surpass the costs in the long term. With the help of these tools, you and your organization can get answers to employee engagement problems that are limiting overall productivity. In fact, these tools can also help improve employee satisfaction, boosting their productivity.