If you’ve poised 2018 as a major year for your business, there are two key components of your company that you need to focus on.
Data and technology.
Specifically, how data and the myriad of software solutions out there can help you streamline your business. From digging deep to prevent potential legal problems to better communication among your coworkers, there’s a go-to solution to help you improve just about every aspect of your business.
But with so many options out there, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So, what areas of any given company deserve the most attention? Where should you start?
We’ve broken down six key areas of focus for companies both big and small looking to make greater gains in 2018.
Team Collaboration
Especially given the popularity or remote work, team collaboration software is becoming an expectation to keep companies connected at all time. That’s why services such as Slack represent some of the fastest-growing and widely adopted business solutions out there, with well over 5 million active users.
Slack no only offers a straightforward interface for collaborations, but also add-on bots that help companies conduct meetings, set up office outings and aggregating important company content.
Compliance and Risk Management
Avoiding legal issues, acting with confidence and avoiding security snafus are all essential any business “behind the scenes.” As such, the importance of robust compliance and risk management solution such as the one supported by Reciprocity Labs can’t be overstated.
Streamlining risk management puts your entire organization at ease and makes decision making less daunting. With built-in reports and a detailed dashboard to monitor any hiccups, such a solution is a cornerstone of modern enterprises.
Employee Engagement
Companies today are more concerned than ever with how engaged their workers are. According to Gallup’s employee engagement stats, most companies are totally out of touch with how their employees feel and are suffering in the form of lackluster productivity and high turnover.
As a result, employee engagement platforms such as OfficeVibe have emerged to help managers and HR better assess how their employees feel. From anonymous surveys to soliciting feedback from employees who may otherwise never hear from anyone, a dedicated engagement platform covers every corner of your office digitally.
Project Management
You can’t get much done internally if you never know where everyone’s time is going. Forever-free services such as Trello represent prime project management platforms for minimalist managers who want to hold their employees more accountable on a day-to-day basis. Assigning roles, duties and projects to individual cards, there are fewer question marks over who’s pulling their weight.
Time-Tracking and Productivity
Speaking of which, loss of productivity plagues so many offices without anyone even really realizing it.
Implementing a time-tracking solution such as ClickTime represents something more intensive that Trello, keeping a literal report of users’ daily activities which managers can look at later. Effective adoption of such software requires smart framing by higher-ups, though. The key is to stress to employees that you’re not trying to look over their shoulders, but rather ensure that everyone’s time is being managed effectively.
After all, productivity software should be anything but a distraction. Seeing where your employees time is being spent doesn’t necessarily label how valuable they are to your organization, but does provide objective insight on who your top performers are. At the of the day, the goal is to understand how you can improve and push people to work toward their strengths.
Pulse Surveys
Piggybacking on the importance of employee engagement, frequently picking the brains of your coworkers via surveying is a smart yet simple way to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Surveys such as those offered by services like TinyPulse only take a minute or so to complete. By asking “yes” or “no” or scale of 1 to 10 questions, you can gather quick metrics on the morale of your workers day after day.
Some common pulse questions to ask day after day include the following:
- Do you feel supported by management right now?
- How do you currently feel about your coworkers?
- How happy are you at work?
Knowing the answers to these questions can help avoid bigger problems between coworkers and basically keep your employees happy as they understand you’re listening to their concerns.
Streamlining your business means finding bottlenecks and inefficiencies internally and attacking them accordingly. Whether it’s swifter communication, having a better pulse on company culture or ensuring that you aren’t opening yourself up to legal battles, each of these tech investments can save you some major headaches down the road.
Given how reliant we are technology these days, smarter tech flat out makes sense for businesses looking toward the future.
