7 Tips to Have a More Productive Workday
A recent West’s Unified Communication Services study found only 36 percent of all workers actively contribute in all the meetings they attend, indicating a productivity issue for businesses. By evaluating if your presence is necessary and if you can afford to put other priorities on hold, employees can determine if a meeting is necessary or not.
A Harvard Business Review post showed that multitasking leads to a 40 percent drop in productivity, increased stress, and a 10 percent drop in IQ. By limiting yourself to one task, employees can work through tasks more efficiently.
Distractions are everywhere from coworkers, to technology to personal conversations, negatively impacting productivity. To avoid distractions, block off sections of your calendar that are email and meeting free so you can devote yourself to distraction free work. We also recommend you only sign on to collaboration tools for a few select periods of the day. If you do this though, make sure to alert your coworkers to when you’ll be available on these apps.
Standing meetings have a time and place. However, it’s important to periodically re-evaluate whether these meetings are still necessary at their current frequency and canceling any that are no longer needed.
People tend to over invite and under prepare for meetings. When hosting a meeting, take a second look at who you invite and determine if they’re really needed or if an email update will suffice. At the same time, check what meeting invites you have that may not be necessary. If you’re needed to discuss only some of the agenda items, consider excusing yourself from the meeting when your portion is over. This is a great way to save time while still participating in meetings that require your input.
The IT powerhouse more closely integrated its Dynamics 365 and Teams applications.
According to CEO Satya Nadella, Teams will function as the “organizing layer” for Microsoft’s technologies. As a result, Dynamics 365 will include features for Teams communication and collaboration.
Jeffrey Schwartz covered the update.
Meetings without an agenda can easily stray off track and often end up taking a lot longer. This is a huge time suck and can easily be avoided by implementing mandatory agendas for all meetings. It only takes a few minutes to make an agenda and can ultimately save twenty minutes from being wasted on an unnecessary topic.
Meetings without an agenda can easily stray off track and often end up taking a lot longer. This is a huge time suck and can easily be avoided by implementing mandatory agendas for all meetings. It only takes a few minutes to make an agenda and can ultimately save twenty minutes from being wasted on an unnecessary topic.
All too often, we reach the end of the workday and feel frustrated at all we didn’t get done. From avalanches of email to endless (often pointless) meetings to the arduous process of making decisions “by committee,” the modern workplace can feel like it’s designed to keep you from checking things off of your to-do list.
We sat down with Dennis Collins, senior director of marketing at West’s Unified Communication Services, to get some tips on how to maximize your nine-to-five every day. In its two decades providing UC services, the company has amassed quite the collection of market research, thought leadership and customer use cases. Click through to see the top things Collins says we can all do to create a more productive workday.
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