Using Technology to Create a More Productive Office
Boosting productivity is one of the primary roles of technology. What it does is allow us to do more in less time and with less effort or even achieve tasks that would otherwise be completely impossible to tackle. Sometimes, this can be achieved with the use of software, sometimes a hardware innovation is in place; yet, there are some occasions where in order to achieve a productivity boost an entrepreneur needs to embrace a tech-based trend. With all of this in mind, here are seven simple technology-based methods that can help you create a much more productive office.
Table of Contents
#1. Collaboration tools
The first thing that your office needs are a collaboration tool that can help you with setting tasks and deadlines. The first benefit of using a collaboration tool for this task is transparency when it comes to task delegating and ease of tracking these tasks later on to be productive. Second, all of these tools are cloud-based, which means that your employees may check them even from home. Still, the technology is not self-sufficient and when setting the above-discussed headlines, you need to have in mind the Parkinson’s law. This law of productivity states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So, never push the deadline further than necessary since you’ll otherwise hurt your productivity.
#2. Telecommuting
There are a lot of people who would simply be more productive if they were allowed to work from home. The bulk of these people are introverts but even extroverts could use a collective-free day every once in a while. Due to the fact that the majority of the tools you use are cloud-based, this shouldn’t be an issue. Nonetheless, you need to make a logistical decision of whether you’ll employ a number of telecommuters, telecommuters exclusively or give people a chance to opt for a flexible work model. Each of these solutions has its own advantages and downsides.
#3. Bring your own device
The concept of bringing your own device (BYOD) is a fast-growing trend in the present-day offices around the globe. Apart from being quite cost-efficient and even outright frugal, there are more than a couple of ways in which this reflects positively on the productivity of your staff. First of all, as many as 47 percents of executives believe that the BYOD model increases the employee being productive. As for the validation of this claim, as many as 73 percent of businesses did see a productivity increase after adopting this model. Other than this, we’ve already discussed the prospect of telecommuting and allowing your employees to use a personal device gives this concept an even bigger boost.
#4. Silent peripherals
Noise is by far the biggest culprit when it comes to a productivity drop and by providing your team with silent peripherals, you can drastically reduce its impact in the office. For instance, by providing every single member of your staff with noise-canceling headphones like Shure SE846, you’ll give them a chance to work in complete silence.
Second, by finding the right silent keyboard and mouse and ensuring that every single office worker gets one, what you’ll create is a scenario where your office becomes a lot more silent, even without the need to muffle the noises with headphones. Still, keep in mind that noise-canceling is still the best move, seeing as how keyboard slamming and mouse clicking aren’t the only ambient noises in the office that cause distractions.
#5. Wireless charger
Your team already uses a plethora of devices for work, however, the heavier the use, the quicker the battery will become empty. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this problem available. A device like a wireless charger can be used to charge all the devices in the room simultaneously.
One such device is the amazing Wi-Charge’s in-room wireless charging concept. This means that your charging abilities won’t be affected by the number of sockets in the room or by the proximity to the given charger. Instead, it will allow your staff to use any of their devices at any time and from any place in the room.
#6. Immersive technologies
Perhaps one of the biggest problems when it comes to productivity (at least in tasks that require some creativity) is the lack of immersion by people performing tasks. Fortunately, with the help of AR and VR technology, this might soon change for the better. By giving your employees better insight into what they’re doing, as well as a better image of the overall model that they’re creating, they’ll be more focused on the task at hand and achieve much better results. This is particularly true in the field of 3D modeling, where AR and VR provide a better insight into the quality of the end product.
#7. Office light adjustment
The last thing we need to discuss is the issue of light in the office and there are two major areas in which this should be examined. First, you have the issue of the overall office lighting, what this means is that you need to set the optimal visibility, yet, avoid keeping the light too bright in order not to make it agitating. Second, the brightness of the screen is also quite relevant, seeing as how the human eye makes some adjustments over the course of the day as a result of thousands of years of exposure to the day-night cycle. Therefore, a tool like f.lux might be quite helpful in achieving optimal visibility.
Conclusion
As you can see, there’s a variety of tools, trends, and devices that can help you make a more productive office. Seeing as how they range in cost and complexity of implementation, you have the privilege of choosing those that you find the most fitting. On the other hand, implementing them all and finding some additional methods to use wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
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