How to Make Your Tech Tools Work for You Technology is meant to make your workday more productive and efficient. It's time to reevaluate the tools you're using, and how you're using them, in order to make sure they're helping you meet your goals.
By Hila Levy-Loya Edited by Chelsea Brown
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The tools we use to get our work done should, at their core, do two things: increase our productivity and help our teams find more time for meaningful work. Instead of letting tools bog you down, you need to find ways to make technology work for your specific needs. Here are some ways to make the most of the tech tools you use most frequently, in order to help your teams avoid technology burnout and get more creative in their jobs.
Automating busywork gives employees more time for meaningful work
It can be easy to get caught up in busywork. It starts to pile up, and before long, you're spending valuable time organizing files on your desktop, inputting information into a spreadsheet and checking off tasks that take a lot of time but, ultimately, don't use your skills and creativity. Now, don't get me wrong, this work can be important and necessary to keep a business running, but if your team is constantly getting caught up in the small tasks, they're not making the most of their workday.
Even more, if someone's workload feels unmanageable, it becomes a leading cause of stress in the workplace. When an employee feels like they actually have enough time in the day to handle all of their tasks, they're 70% less likely to experience burnout. In our current burnout-ridden work culture, helping teams manage it is a huge — and necessary — win.
This is where technology can be your friend. By automating the more mundane workplace tasks, you'll free up your team to focus on the more high-value and impactful work that they were actually hired to do.
This will look different for every company, but it can be everything from automatically sending email updates to customers, to auto-filling information into a spreadsheet, to sending text updates to customers for quick product announcements.
Beyond cutting down on employee burnout, this can save teams up to 3 hours per day to focus on the creative and strategic work that they had to put on the backburner.
Related: How Technology is Evolving to Make Companies More Productive
Embrace the low-code, no-code software market
In today's world, every company needs to operate like a software company. As work becomes more and more digital and customers are online now more than ever before, both internal and external online experiences need to be top-notch. In short, this means that in order to achieve business objectives, companies need a full arsenal of enterprise applications to support internal functions and external outputs.
This is where low-code/no-code software comes into play. These technologies empower organizations with accessible and customizable ways to work faster and more efficiently, without needing deep technical expertise. The low-code/no-code market is growing, with Gartner forecasting that it would grow to $13.8 billion by the end of 2021, a 22.6% increase from 2020, so now is the perfect time for companies to embrace this innovation.
By embracing the low-code/no-code software available, companies can create an organization that will grow and change along with technology, instead of one that remains stuck in the past or one that needs constant updates to keep up. Beyond keeping you up to date, this is a way to allow team members to take the reins on your company's technology and create processes that work for their specific team or customers, even if they don't have a background in engineering or development.
Related: How to Use Technology to Increase Productivity, Not Distract You
Technology should make your work more asynchronous
As companies across industries become more hybrid and remote, the way we work (and the tools needed to continue doing that work) has drastically shifted. Technology can be great and extremely helpful to stay connected to coworkers and organized around the tasks you need to get done. However, that same technology can also become a burden when all of your work is done online, and in-person communication is few and far between. In fact, we're still seeing people across the workforce suffering from burnout and "Zoom fatigue," with nearly half of remote workers reporting that they are exhausted by constant Zoom calls. So how do we fix this?
One way is to make your tech work for you and use it to become a more asynchronous organization. Instead of feeling the need for teams to be "always on," an asynchronous tech stack can empower teams to get their work done without constant Slack pings or email reminders.
For your company, this could mean setting clear rules around how (and when) people should use the tools available to them. It could also mean creating a collaborative online workspace where teams can provide updates on their own time, so everyone is aligned on what needs to be done and what their role is on each individual project.
By using your tech to become more asynchronous, teams will be able to truly connect around what's most meaningful for their work, and this will make your teams more creative and collaborative, without being bogged down.
No matter what tools you employ at your organization, it's important that they work best for the way your team works. If the tools you're using are hindering your success, it's time to reevaluate and make a plan for updating your technology or the ways you're using that technology.
Take the time to figure out what's working and what's not for your employees, and find ways to fill in the gaps so your company is working at the most optimal level, for both employees and customers.
