Increasing productivity is, of course, an important goal for every company including startups. But when the working day is already jam packed full of meetings, consultations, administration and paperwork, how do you find the time to think about, let alone implement, any new initiatives to improve productivity. Well, here at MyHub we understand that the demands on your time are great and so in this post we identify some quick and easy ways that you can increase productivity in your organization with the help of the cloud intranet.

1. Automate Office Processes

Email is a great form of communication and it certainly has a place in the modern office. But it can also be a great time waster. How many minutes and hours have you wasted searching through your inbox for that key piece of information? And let’s be honest, how often have you left an email unopened because you simply never got around to it?

The intranet has the potential to do away with the over reliance on email and paper processes to achieve key business tasks. Whether it’s an employee wanting to book annual leave, sharing a product update with onsellers or placing an order with suppliers, the intranet makes it a smooth and seamless process. Using the intranet’s fully customizable and intuitive forms builder, you can easily create your own forms and do away with paper and email systems for good. Alternatively, you can use the embedded Google Forms app to automate processes and the intranet will automatically route the form to the right member of staff for action. And external parties – like your suppliers and onsellers – can be given restricted access to your cloud intranet to facilitate better joint working.

There’s no doubt about it – automating business processes will save you time and money and will also reduce the possibility of annoying or even potentially expensive errors.

2. Provide More Opportunities For Employee Engagement

When it comes to getting the most out of your workforce, research has consistently demonstrated that engaged employees are more productive. In fact, engaged employees have 31 percent higher productivity and companies with high rates of employee engagement outperform their unengaged counterparts by an amazing 202 percent. Now, enhancing employee engagement is a pretty meaty topic in itself and so you’d be forgiven for putting it in the too hard basket. However, there are some quick-fix solutions that you can implement now which will have a positive effect on employee engagement and productivity in your organization.

The first is to make use of the blogging function on your intranet. Giving employees a voice and, more importantly, actively listening to and acting on the suggestions and feedback of staff is an important foundation of employee engagement. Blogs allow for staff to share views and insights with each other and with management. And so, say for example, your organization is looking to review the customer experience, instead of a select few employees going away and developing a new strategy in isolation, why not involve the wider staff body by setting up a blog. Staff can contribute their ideas and suggestions and you’ll be surprised by how many innovative ideas come out of such a communal brainstorming. What’s more, it sends a valuable message to employees that their involvement is important. Be sure to feedback to staff on the outcome of their suggestions as simply asking for views and not acting on them on or reporting back is not genuine employee engagement.

Another quickfire way to enhance employee engagement is to use the quizzes and surveys function on the intranet. Again, with just a few clicks of the mouse, it’s a simple process to set up a quiz or survey on the intranet. Staff can be invited to participate by highlighting the survey on the log in page and the results are automatically collated by the intranet. You can canvas views on a range of issues and topics, from the new logo to suggestions for the office Christmas party, and at the same time, enhance the overall level of employee engagement and productivity in your business.

3. Facilitate Flexible Working

Employees that are given some flexibility and control over their working lives tend to be happier and more productive than their counterparts chained to their desks with rigid 9 to 5 schedules. In fact, achieving a work life balance is often more important to workers than monetary rewards. And so, one way to improve staff morale and enhance overall productivity is to be more flexible.

This doesn’t mean that duvet days become the norm. What it does mean is allowing employees to work from home occasionally when the electrician is coming to attend to a fault. It means letting an employee finish early one day to collect their kids from school so long as they make the time up later in the week. And the 24/7 open all hours nature of the intranet facilitates this flexible working as employees can be productive even when they are working from home waiting for that service technician.

What’s more, your staff can also be productive while they’re commuting to work or on the road visiting clients. And if a customer has a tricky question about a product, your staff member can give an immediate response by logging into the intranet and checking the product’s specifications rather than having to get back to the client at a later date.  So not only will your staff be productive while out and about in the field, they can also offer a more responsive and knowledgeable service there and then to customers.

4. Recognize And Reward Hard Work

Most of us are hard wired to respond to positive feedback and recognition. It’s part of what makes us people. And employee recognition schemes are the perfect way to recognize and reward those employees or teams that go the extra mile. Use the intranet to put the spotlight on the employee of the month, salesperson of the year or the team that put in all those extra hours and effort in representing the company at that recent trade fair. All employees will appreciate the extra encouragement for a job well done that a simple public thank you on the intranet will bring. Employee recognition schemes are a simple, low-cost way to recognize and reward hard work, but the benefits in terms of increased all-round productivity are potentially much more significant.

Are you finding it a challenge to set aside the time and resources, let alone generating the ideas, to increase productivity in your business? Then utilize your cloud intranet and achieve some quick wins with these straightforward and easily achievable ideas.

Interested in finding out more about intranets? Get in touch with us here at MyHub to book a free demo or take advantage of our 14-day free trial.

All Shutterstock pictures are used by permission.

Intranets, MyHub, Startup Intranet

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