Coleman Technologies Blog

Mobile Device Use

When working from home, the reasonable threshold for mobile device use is significantly different. Theoretically, you could talk to someone on speakerphone with the phone across the room (although you shouldn’t). However, there are other people with you in the office that you could potentially distract.

Take a moment and remind your team of this. Instead of holding long conversations at their desk, make sure they try to keep their calls brief and that they do whatever they can to avoid disturbing others—including leaving the area, if necessary.

Instant Messaging Use

Again, we have the kind of situation where the standards in the office are much different than those for a remote worker. When working remotely, your team needs to be able to communicate and should do so in both a professional and social manner. This is not so much the case in the office.

Allow me to clarify. When a team is working remotely, some socialization via instant messaging can be considered appropriate, so long as it is not interfering with the workday’s processes. This is simply because they are working remotely and can’t socialize with one another face-to-face. In the office, your team can—and almost certainly will—socialize throughout the day amongst themselves. Again, if done in moderation this encourages cooperation, but it can become a hindrance to your productivity if it goes too far. There is also the risk that if your messaging solution is used too much as a stand-up special your team will be less likely to read the important messages that are shared.

Moderation is key, so make sure your team is aware of that as they come back in.

Proper Communications

With so many working from home, remote conferencing solutions have seen a lot of use in recent months. While it may have been out of necessity at first, many users have begun to see the value of the integrated webcam on their laptop when it comes to holding a virtual meeting.

Of course, if these technologies are so helpful to us now, why should that change once people are back in the office? Communications with prospects and clients alike can be improved through a good conferencing solution. Continuing to embrace their options will only help to make the business and its processes more agile.

Whenever it is that people finally get back to the office for the long term, there’s a good chance that some bad habits may have developed by that time. Make sure that you address your expectations in a comprehensive written company policy. Reviewing these policies with your team, along with your privacy and security standards, will help smooth out the transition process and make your expectations clear.

If you’ve already transitioned back, tell us, how has it gone? Are there any challenges that you didn’t expect? Share them in the comments and reach out to Coleman Technologies for any technical assistance needed. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn how we can help your team remain productive, wherever they’re working.

Let’s review what true collaboration is, and how you can lead your company towards more collaborative behaviors in your day-to-day undertakings.

Teamwork and Collaboration Aren’t the Same Thing

First, it is important that we define the difference between these two seemingly synonymous terms. While it is possible to work as a team without collaborating, collaboration requires some element of teamwork to be present.

Consider it this way: by definition, teamwork is the combined action of a group of people. While this could mean that each member of the team is contributing to each step along with their teammates, signifying collaboration, it might instead signify that the task and its requisite responsibilities have been divided up amongst the group.

Teamwork, yes. Collaboration? No.

Other differences between these apparent synonyms:

• There is a tendency for a team to have a set leader to set the course of whatever project is being worked on, while collaboration thrives in an egalitarian group setting.
• Teamwork can be effective in completing a business’ short-term goals, while long-term goals are better served by collaborative behaviors.
• As we hinted at, teamwork requires someone to be in control of the group. Collaboration requires the group’s members to trust one another.

Collaboration Can Benefit Your Business and Your Team

Embracing the cooperative elements of a collaborative work environment can have universal benefits to those involved. For instance:

Your Operations

As the saying goes, two heads are better than one. However, if you have a whole team’s worth of heads, why not make the most of them to help advance your business? With collaboration instilled in your workplace culture, you will find it easier to come up with solutions to your operational challenges. Furthermore, your employees will be more engaged in their work, which itself brings considerable benefits, including increased revenue growth, diminished turnover, fewer accidents, and heightened productivity.

Your Employees

When it comes to the people you’ve hired to work for your business, collaboration can improve their experience as well. In addition to the shared knowledge that can benefit everyone’s quality of work, collaboration can improve the relationships between your employees. This is particularly important, as a study has shown that office friendships are the most important facet of work satisfaction for 70 percent of employees. Fittingly, collaboration leads to increased morale, which positively influences productivity and employee retention alike.

Encouraging Collaboration

So, with so much riding on your office collaboration, it is important that you endorse it in any way you can and actively encourage it amongst your workforce. But how does one do that?

There are a few strategies that you should adopt to accomplish improved collaborative habits.

Unite the Team with a Mission and Establish Expectations

It is important that your team understands how crucial they each are to your company’s success, as this can give meaning to their responsibilities in the context of your company’s shared overarching goal.

This goal is essentially your company’s mission. Once your mission is clarified, it becomes easier to set benchmarks that need to be met and what each team member’s individual role will be in accomplishing it.

Reward Collaboration and Innovation

Naturally, a positive response to collaborative efforts is going to provide no small motivation for your team to adopt them. A similar attitude toward new approaches in the office should also be in place. Risks can often lead to rewards, which means that an employee who is willing to try something new might discover a better method to fuel productivity. At the very least, they’ll confirm that you’re on the right path if your current methodology proves more effective.

Foster your team’s creativity and embrace input.

Support Your Team with Collaborative Tools

Here’s the hard truth: your employees are bound to have varying skill sets. Brian may be a brilliant writer, while Beth may have an affinity for customer service. Allowing your employees to work at those tasks they excel at will only benefit your outcomes. These outcomes can be augmented further using collaboration tools. With more people than ever before working remotely, these tools are more crucial than they have ever been. Make sure that your team is equipped with the technology solutions to collaborate even while distant from one another.

Coleman Technologies is here to help your business collaborate as effectively as possible, with the tools and resources your team will need at the ready. Learn more about how we can help sustain your effective operations through our managed services by giving us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Why Effective Communications are So Critical

There are a few reasons that you want your business’ internal communications to be clear and effective.

Fewer Errors

Miscommunication is rarely a good thing, but in the business setting, it has the potential to be crippling to your operations. If the correct information isn’t shared at the right time, with the right people, productivity will suffer. On the other hand, proper communications can help minimize, or even avoid, many potential workplace errors.

Increased Accountability

When an organization keeps its communications open across the board, it is prone to see an associated increase in companywide accountability. From owner to intern, being responsible for (and being held responsible for) certain milestones in a process keeps each member of a team on-task and motivated.

Improved Teamwork

Naturally, when members of a team communicate properly, they are better able to work cooperatively. As a result, problems often become easier to solve, as ideas may more easily flow and develop. Additionally, potential issues between departments are more easily resolved, preventing interpersonal concerns from affecting the work.

Efficient Problem-Solving

The ability to communicate clearly enables a team to better pool their talents to much more efficiently overcome any issues that may arise. Whether a problem is strategic or technical, having the capability to swiftly solve it will only benefit a business’ operations.

Instant Messaging in the Workplace

Naturally, all of the above outcomes can (and often do) result from the use of an instant messaging application… as long as it’s the right one.

You need to make sure that your chosen solution is intended for business purposes, which means you need to use an enterprise-grade instant messaging application. In addition, you also need to be sure that you and your staff are properly leveraging your solution. Try to encourage the following practices and behaviors in your staff to ensure that your instant messaging solution doesn’t turn into an instant messaging problem:

• Keep it in check. You don’t want a solution that is meant to be a productivity booster to actually harm it. There’s a very real difference between your staff properly leveraging instant messaging capabilities, and aimlessly chatting all day. Encourage your staff to keep their conversations pertinent to the workplace and the task at hand (at least as much as possible).
• Remain professional. Again, conversations on your instant message solution should be far and away focused on workplace matters. It is important that your staff knows this, and resists using the solution to share jokes, GIFs, or memes excessively. Moderation is key.
• Don’t rely too much on it. Not all conversations are appropriate for an instant messaging platform, especially those that contain sensitive or overly complicated details. Some conversations are better shared in person, or in an email, where lengthier messages can be sent.

Have you ever utilized instant messaging in the workplace? Share your experience with us in the comments!

The holidays are fast approaching and that means people are going to miss work for one reason or another. If you can get away from the office for a little bit, you’ll want to set up an out-of-office message to ensure that others know you will get back to them when you get back to the office. Here’s how you can set up an autoresponder for an out-of-office message in Microsoft Outlook.

How to Set Up Your Out-of-Office Message

Setting up an autoresponder in Outlook is simple. To get started, open up Outlook and select File.

Under the Info section—the one with the Home icon—make sure you have your account selected. You should see an option underneath it for Automatic Replies.

In the box that appears, you will see an option for Send Automatic Replies. You can configure your auto replies to send only during a specific timeframe using the drop-down boxes and date ranges. Once you have the dates determined, you can use the textbox beneath to enter your auto reply message. This will be sent to anyone who sends you an email while you have your autoreply active.

It’s also worth noting that you have a lot of control over the text that appears in this box. You can include links to resources, contact information for who they might want to contact while you are out of the office, and so on. We recommend that you don’t just leave your contacts with a simple “I’ll get back to you.” If you do leave the office for an extended period of time, be sure to give your contacts some direction, as it could make all the difference for a prospective client, annoyed customer, or other disgruntled auto reply recipient.

We hope you found this tip helpful! If you have any suggestions for future tip blogs, be sure to sound off in the comments below.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the better your relationship is with your employees, the more your business will benefit. Despite this, many businesses today lack trust between their organizational levels. Let’s go over a few simple tips that you can use to help maintain positive feelings amongst your team.

Communicate

Just as in any relationship, cultivating a positive rapport with your team members is critical to making things copacetic in the workplace—even if that workplace is dispersed, as remote work is apt to do. Therefore, it is in your best interest to keep the lines of communication between you and your team members wide open, both in terms of the group and as individuals.

Not only should you ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for your team members to speak with you, you should encourage them to do so about a variety of topics, including non-work-related ones. Getting to know them on a more personal level and speaking to them from that perspective will not only give you the information to communicate more effectively, but will help encourage them to be more communicative.

Show Your Appreciation and Respect

Working for anyone, regardless of how nice they are, can be a lot to deal with at times, so make sure that you prioritize showing your employees your honest (and that honest part is key) appreciation for their efforts toward your business. Acknowledging their hard work is one of the simplest things you can do, but it can be the difference between an exhausted employee mentally checking out at 3:45 and an exhausted employee rallying and putting in their best effort to finish out the day strong.

On a related note, it is just as important to show your team members enough respect to hear their opinions and input, even if you disagree or there are reasons that their input wouldn’t work effectively. In fact, hear them out and acknowledge the valid points they make before sharing how circumstances might make them impractical.

Embrace Any Opportunity to Learn

Continuing this line of thought, you also need to acknowledge that the role of “boss” makes you the authority in the business’ concerns, but not necessarily the authority on all the goings-on in terms of its operations. There are going to be certain aspects where your employees do in fact know more and/or better than you do, and there’s always more information than any one person can keep up with. Acknowledging this is a good first step, and is best followed through actively trying to learn as much as you can.

Allow Autonomy

Finally, it is important that your team members have the freedom to conduct themselves as they see fit as they work to meet the goals you have set for them. Not only will this help them feel more trusted and validated in their input, it can often result in more effective outcomes in their tasks and ultimately for your business.

It’s on you to get the most out of your staff, but we can help you get the technology in place to make that easier. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 today to learn more about how we can play several roles to help get your business where you want it to go.

1. Prioritize

One of the biggest time sinks to be found in any business is the simple act of deciding what to work on next. We’ve all been there at some point: having finished one task, we suddenly reference our to-do list and encounter the same problem as a kid has in a candy store… too many options.

Taking a few moments at the start of every day to organize these tasks can greatly improve how you spend your time throughout the rest of the day, and can ultimately lead to far less waffling later on. With a set process laid out, you no longer have to make the decision over what to work on next - it has already been made.

To create this order, look at everything you have to work on and establish how urgent each task is compared to the others. Deadlines are a handy way to help establish this, or if someone else in your organization needs it before they can continue their work. Identifying these qualities and ordering your tasks accordingly from the start is a small time investment, especially when you consider the impact it can have on your productivity later on. Utilizing a communications and collaboration solution can help you establish the organizational priority of each of your tasks with the help of your team.

2. Habitually Limit the Time You Spend on Rote Tasks

There are always those tasks that pop up throughout the day that seem insignificant at the time. Take checking your email, for example… how long does it take to do that? However, checking email and a variety of other tasks can quickly grow from a momentary activity to an extended process.

After all, there’s always the chance that briefly responding to an email could pull you into an extended and time-consuming debate.

Furthermore, some of these tasks carry the expectation that you will immediately drop what you’re doing to take care of whatever’s needed. Emails are notorious for communicating this urgency, whether or not it was intended. Regardless, it puts pressure on the employee to switch their focus, which hurts productivity.

Instead, establish a practice of setting a concrete period out of your day where you will check and respond to your email, or whatever task it is that applies to your situation. Actually schedule this time into your day, using the business management solution that your company has in place to control schedules. Outside of that time, leave that task alone… if an email’s contents are truly that important, you’ll find out about them some other way before long.

3. Delegation and Outsourcing

We get it, business matters and activities tend to be kept close to the chest. After all, if you can’t trust yourself to do something right, who can you trust? Who else has the incentive you do, to do the best job possible?

Frankly? Someone you’ve hired to do a job.

Delegation can be difficult, of course, but only if you don’t trust those around you. However, there are plenty of resources out there, both inside your business and available through outsourcing, that could do exactly the job that needs ro be done. As a result, you can divert your focus to tasks that need it more, trusting the resource to produce.

You may have to put in a bit of time picking the best resources, especially when outsourcing, but the results will be well worth the time.

Coleman Technologies can help you put these practices into action, with the added effects of the solutions that can be implemented to make these practices easier. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to further discuss any of the solutions we’ve described here, and for more handy tips that could help you better leverage your time, subscribe to our blog!.

Why a Hardwired Connection?

Security

The fact is that a direct connection is inherently more secure than one that is broadcast over the airwaves, as these have the potential to be snagged in transit much more easily. Therefore, if security is paramount, a wired connection is the better option by default. That said, there are ways to secure your wireless connection, utilizing a VPN.

Speed

Wired connections are also much faster than a wireless one, whether data is being communicated within your business network or to and from the Internet. In terms of efficiency, the wired connection comes out on top.

Stability

Save for a case of infrastructure failure, the only way you could lose a wired connection would be if the wire were to be unplugged. This stability not only makes them more reliable; it contributes to the consistency of the aforementioned higher speeds.

Why a Wireless Connection?

Convenience

The lack of cables that a wireless connection requires just makes Internet access so much simpler for a business to implement. Without the need to adapt any existing infrastructure to run wires and such things, it is far easier to add, subtract, and move users around as need be.

Mobility

Wi-Fi’s inherent mobility works so well for businesses because a user can pick up what they're doing and bring it with them if they have the right device. This makes it much more practical to implement in the workplace, especially if collaboration requires meetings to happen in various places in the office.

Scope

Speaking of the right device, a wireless connection enables work to be done on a much wider, and yes, more mobile assortment of solutions. On a related note, businesses that interact with the public regularly can configure their Wi-Fi to offer guest functionality. This enables these businesses to offer their patrons a convenient perk.

Why Hybrid May Be Best

This is the real important takeaway: you don’t have to choose between wired and wireless connectivity.

Embracing both options can effectively negate the shortcomings of either, ultimately improving your business’ capability to get work done—large tasks performed over the wired connections, with communication and collaboration sticking to Wi-Fi. It all comes down to your business’ individual needs and situation.

Whichever option works best for you, you can count on Coleman Technologies being the best resource you can turn to. Find out what we have to offer in terms of assistance and support by calling (604) 513-9428.

At first glance, cybersecurity might seem incredibly complicated and difficult to understand, but even a baseline understanding of some of the principles of cybersecurity can go a long way toward protecting your business. Let’s discuss some of the common-sense ways you can keep your business secure, even if you don’t have an internal IT department to ask for help from.

Keep Your Antivirus and Security Tools Updated

What’s better than eliminating a threat from your network? Stopping it from getting that far entirely. With antivirus, firewalls, and other security measures in place, you can keep your business secure from the majority of threats before they even become a problem in the first place.

Use a VPN

In case you or someone else on your team has to travel, or if you have a team that works remotely, a VPN is incredibly valuable. Public Wi-fi is notorious for being quite dangerous, and a virtual private network can offer a safe haven for you to access the Internet without fear of being observed by any onlookers.

Utilize Multi-Factor Authentication

You can take your security practices to the next level through the use of multi-factor authentication. A password can only do so much in today’s threat landscape, so you should back it up with biometrics, generated PINs, and other secondary measures that can make things much more difficult for any would-be hacker.

Use a Password Manager

We know you’ve heard it a thousand times; “always use a different password for each and every one of your accounts to maximize security.” While this should be practiced, it can be difficult to observe if you don’t have a password manager keeping tabs on each of your credentials. Plus, let’s face it, you don’t want to rely on your browser’s password management options if you can help it. 

Avoid Phishing Scams

While it would certainly be amazing to win the lottery, a free vacation, or catch some juicy gossip in your email inbox, the fact of the matter is that phishing emails know that these kinds of temptations make you want to click on links in emails, regardless of how likely you think they might be. Other tactics used include fearmongering and threats, which aren’t nearly as fun to receive, but are equally as effective, if not more so under the right circumstances. Either way, you should use extreme scrutiny when navigating messages from unknown or unsolicited sources—especially if they contain links or attachments.

Let Us Help Your Business Keep Itself Safe

While you can certainly do all of the above on your own, why not work with a managed service provider like Coleman Technologies? We can take the stress out of managing your network security. To get started, call us at (604) 513-9428.

When taking stock of your business assets, technology is particularly critical to pay attention to. Let’s discuss why this is and what you must do to manage it properly.

You Rely on Your IT Infrastructure, So Treat It as Such

There’s a lot that your IT enables you to accomplish every day—for most businesses, it’s the majority of their processes. This means that a lot is riding on your technology.

Resultantly, it needs more maintenance than just a scan here or an update there.

To properly take care of an IT infrastructure, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of every component involved. You also need the tools required to keep track of these components and how well each is functioning—hardware and software alike—to ensure your productivity isn’t suspended needlessly.

As you do so, recorded documentation of your inventory can prove to be significantly valuable.

What Should Your Documentation Include?

Generally, it is a good idea to keep track of a few variables and details:

• All network-attached devices, from the network infrastructure to every endpoint and peripheral
• The date when each component on the network was added
• How each device is configured
• Every license your business holds, with their status
• A comprehensive service history

Having this information at your disposal will enable your IT administrator—whether they’re a part of your in-house team or a part of an outsourced team like ours here at Coleman Technologies—to be more strategic about your IT infrastructure. This includes how you plan out your future investments as well.

If you’d like to learn how we can provide this kind of service to you and your team, don’t hesitate to give us a call at (604) 513-9428 today!

Study after study has been performed over the years about the impact of workplace wellness programs, producing various results. Some have indicated health improvements and cost savings, while others haven’t. However, the studies that were performed in the past had a high rate of issues. Whether there was no comparison group, or the chance of personal bias influencing signups, these studies simply didn’t provide reliable data.

Now, however, researchers from the University of Chicago and Harvard have conducted a large-scale study that meets the requirements that such a study is usually beholden to.

The BJ’s Wholesale Club Experiment

This experiment began by selecting 20 of the big-box retailer’s outlet centers to offer an employee wellness program. 140 additional BJ’s locations did not offer any such program. Across the 160 clubs involved, there were almost 33,000 workers employed.

Participants filled out a health risk questionnaire, took health classes, and had basic medical tests performed. After 18 months, their progress was evaluated...and that’s where things got interesting.

Despite the workers who were participating in this program reporting healthier behaviors than they once exhibited, almost all other factors were left unchanged. Blood sugar levels, job performance and attendance, and employer health care spending all were unaffected.

Why This Might Be

There’s a good chance that the results of this study were skewed by the incentives offered to participants. Participants were given gift cards for attending wellness courses, for a total incentive of about $250. According to founder and CEO of Bravo Wellness, Jim Pshock, this may just not have been enough. According to Pshock, any amount less than $400 is only going to be enough to incentivize people to do what they were already going to do anyways. As Pshock put it: “It’s simply too small to get them to do things they weren’t already excited about.”

Another study, published in 2018 by the University of Illinois, essentially debunked the idea of the workplace wellness program, concluding that it neither reduced costs or impacted behaviors - although this study also found that participants of wellness programs were those who were already healthy and motivated. This potentially suggests that the true benefit of these programs isn’t to make their existing workforce healthier, but to attract and retain healthier employees.

There are other potential contributing factors as well. A recent survey indicated that 84 percent of employees saw their wellness programs as “one-size-fits-all,” a concept that doesn’t really work will all of the various factors that contribute to health. Eighty percent of respondents to that same survey claimed that more personalization would contribute to their participation in wellness programs.

Why You Want to Adopt a Workplace Wellness Initiative

Admittedly, we’ve provided a mixed defense for these kinds of activities, but it cannot be denied that anything you can do to promote the health of your employees will only benefit your business - healthy employees tend not to call in sick, after all.

There are other benefits to these programs as well:

• Reduced Stress - The stress management benefits of healthier behaviors have been well documented. By adopting these healthier behaviors, you and your staff can reduce the stress that comes from the office and approach the source issues more effectively.
  
  
• Community Building - As the boss, you want your entire team to work as, well, a team. Unfortunately, if certain departments don’t work together much, this kind of relationship can be hard to develop. However, many activities that would fall under a workplace wellness initiative can help cross departmental lines, drawing your team closer together.
  
  
• Better Moods - Wellness programs allow employees to try out new activities, which can not only add to their wellbeing, but can also keep them engaged and productive. Plus, studies have indicated that employees who participate in these programs were generally happier with their work situation.

What have you done to cultivate a more health-conscious workplace? Share your strategies in the comments!

With collaboration playing center stage for most businesses, it’s no small wonder that file sharing is such a priority for SMBs. If you want to establish solid file-sharing practices, you need the right solutions. Today, we want to explore four ways you can establish an efficient and secure file-sharing platform.

Share with the Cloud

The cloud feels tailor-made for collaboration and file sharing.

With the ability to access files anytime, anywhere, collaboration can occur whenever and wherever is most convenient. All you need is an Internet connection and an account. Cloud-based solutions also often come with security measures that mitigate data theft and loss, so they’re not just functional; they’re also secure.

The cloud should be your go-to if you want a solution built for multiple-user collaboration.

Implement an Enterprise File Sharing Platform

Power users of file-sharing platforms can also implement an enterprise-sharing platform.

This is especially helpful for those who need to share files outside of their organization. It provides more security and functionality to control data flow. Furthermore, these platforms offer a centralized location to store and share files, making them easier to secure than other tools.

With advanced security measures like encryption and access control, you’ll never be left wanting for security.

Structure Your File Names

File naming systems offer surprising benefits for file-sharing purposes.

For one, they’re more efficient, as they will allow your team to find files more easily. This strategy clears up potential errors before they even occur, especially for those who work with a lot of files. Collaboration is fueled by efficiency, after all, and anything you can do to make it easier will be welcome with your team.

A good naming convention can also make your systems more searchable, an additional plus.

Back Up Your Files

No matter how much you prepare, accidents and unplanned incidents can happen at any time.

A backup plan will go a long way toward mitigating the damage done by these unexpected situations. Your file-sharing system should be hooked up to your backup plan to fight back against corruption, deletion, or theft. You never know when it might come in handy, and you know what they say: better to have it and not use it than not have it at all.

Plus, you might have some compliance obligations to adhere to, so it never hurts to be prepared.

File sharing is hard, but we make it easy. Call us today at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

1. Adopt Technology Solutions

Regardless of your industry, who your business serves, or even where you operate, there are some universal changes that technology has brought to how the average small-to-medium-sized business functions. Methods of collaboration have shifted to digital formats, “coming to work” is no longer a prerequisite to working, and the filing cabinet has been rendered woefully obsolete by other, better options. Cloud solutions are a major contributor to this. I want you to take a moment and consider something: why were any of these changes made in the first place?

It is for the same reason that the assembly line process was adopted, or why we cook our food before eating it: it provides greater benefits than the old way. It is the same with business technology, and you will see this as a common theme throughout these tips. Don’t disqualify yourself from competing by removing your ability to do so.

2. Don’t Shortchange Email

Email is now the gold standard for business communications, for numerous reasons. While a small business might find it redundant to email an announcement, doing so can prove useful to their operations. For instance, let’s say Mary manages a small office with four or five employees. She could easily just announce an important message to the room, but what if James was at the dentist that day, or Rob had excused himself to the bathroom just before? What if Ellen had just connected for an important phone call?

Email provides an easy way for you to communicate with others in your workplace that ensures everyone gets the message, without disrupting operations too much.

3. Go Mobile

While we’re on the subject, let’s consider Ellen for a moment. In the past, making a phone call would tie her to her desk, so any distractions in the office would be an unavoidable issue. Nowadays, there are many ways that Ellen could hypothetically remove herself from the situation while still fulfilling her responsibilities. For instance, a Voice over Internet Protocol solution could allow her to make and take calls from anywhere she could establish a connection, so she could presumably find a quieter area to work without sacrificing her ability to do so.

Other solutions also offer some form of mobility, assuming they are backed up with enough security. For instance, if James was unable to get to the office after his dental appointment, he could still work on his assigned tasks from home with the right cloud-based solutions.  Again, this helps eliminate his reliance upon getting to the office in order to produce.

4. Don’t Underestimate the Cloud

We’ve already touched upon how the cloud has shifted businesses, primarily focusing on how useful it is for hosting and storing data. However, this isn’t the only thing the cloud can do. Cloud technology enables today’s businesses to make use of tools that would ordinarily be out of reach. Yes, its storage capabilities can help make data more accessible to team members who need it, but it can also assist you in preserving your data in case of some disaster, give you access to computing resources that you couldn’t procure yourself, and provide you flexible access to your business applications.

5. Improve Your Security

A small business’ size once protected it from cybercrime, but nowadays, all businesses are fair game. In order to remain secure against these attacks, the right defenses need to be put in place. Things like firewalls, spam blockers, antivirus, and assorted other solutions help to reduce these risks. Additionally, any employee could potentially let in a significant threat, so all need to be educated on how to spot them, and the proper procedures to dealing with them.

Coleman Technologies is here to assist you in implementing these modern IT essentials, as well as maintaining them for you through our remote monitoring and access capabilities. To learn more about how else we can help your growing business, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Consolidate Your Email with the Clean Up Tool

Businesses will often use email to communicate between groups of people, which is a really useful practice for keeping people apprised and in-the-know of what’s going on. However, these messages can quickly become repetitive, incoherent messes--especially in chains made up of larger groups--as participants reply to them, duplicating the thread within itself. Outlook includes a utility known as the Clean Up tool to fix these problems in your email conversations, and even in entire email folders.

By finding the Clean Up icon in the ribbon at the top of your Outlook window, you can access a drop-down menu. This menu offers to Clean Up Conversation, Clean Up Folder, or Clean Up Folder & Subfolders. Once you’ve confirmed your choice, you can access Clean Up settings, which allow you more granular control over how the tool sorts through your existing conversations.

Schedule Out a Message with Future Delivery

Sometimes you’ll have an opportune moment to send an email, but it isn’t the right time for this email to be received. For instance, if you want to share something with your employees to keep in mind throughout the next day, it doesn’t make sense to distribute it at the end of the day before for it to be forgotten. Outlook allows you to use your opportunity to your full advantage with Future Delivery.

Once you’ve written an email, click on Options, and then Delay Delivery. This opens a Properties box for that specific message, including Delivery Options that include a checkbox labeled “Do not deliver before.” Selecting this option and specifying a time and date will prevent your recipient from receiving your message before that point. Once you’re satisfied, close the Properties box and send the message just like any other.

Taking Advantage of Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are used to simplify access to commonly-used functions in many computer programs and applications, and Outlook is no exception. For instance, Outlook features shortcuts for a wide range of its functionality - covering the basics (like composing a new message by pressing Ctrl+Shift+M), organizational tools (like moving a message with Ctrl+Shift+V) or annotating your messages (like adding flags to important ones with Ctrl+Shift+G).

This is really just the start of Outlook’s capabilities to help your operations. Subscribe to our blog to find out whenever we post other tips or IT blogs.

Have Them Socialize Outside of the Office

Let’s look at how kids behave for a moment… if told to partner up, they—almost automatically—gravitate toward their friends, the people they are comfortable spending time with. Your employees will do the same, both in and out of the office.

Collaboration greatly relies on some level of trust and familiarity, which is most effectively developed outside of the professional environment. Encourage your staff to socialize outside of work hours, or even treat them on occasion, on one condition: no shop talk. While your employees may not all be fast friends afterwards, they’ll understand one another much better and be able to work more effectively.

Tell Them What You Want

Speaking of efficacy, make sure your team understands what you expect from them in terms of results. This goes double when collaborative work is involved. A clear understanding of a task makes it easier to determine how to accomplish it, and how their combined efforts can best serve their purpose.

Walk the Walk

If you really want your team to work collaboratively, make the first move and involve yourself in the process. “Rank” or “position” should have no bearing on how able someone is to participate in a collaborative process, and there is no telling who could be struck with inspiration. Actively seek input from your team and demonstrate how you want your employees to work together.

Use Your Resources Wisely

While there’s a time for either, there is a difference between combining your resources to accomplish a given task and having your employees collaborate. The former is great if a lot of a single task needs to be finished quickly, but if a complicated process needs to be completed, it helps more to give the task to a group of people who have different proficiencies. This way, you have a better chance of the necessary skills being present in the group.

Acknowledge Accomplishments

A team that doesn’t feel appreciated is a team that won’t accomplish much. Why would they, if it doesn’t seem to matter whether they excel, or put out a thoroughly mediocre performance? This is especially the case if a single member’s performance is publicly singled out, as though they did all the work.

To encourage your team to perform well as a group, make sure that the entire group receives some recognition of their combined efforts.

Make Collaboration the Easy Option

Regardless of how motivated your team may be to collaborate with one another, it just isn’t going to happen if they don’t have the opportunity or means to effectively do so. While this may have been a more reasonable obstacle in the past, today’s available technology invalidates any excuse your team may have… mostly due to the Internet serving as the greatest collaborative tool the world has ever seen. The easier the collaborative process is, whether you lean on an Internet-based application or an internal resource or both to simplify things, the more likely it is for your employees to work with each other.

We’re Here to Help.

Coleman Technologies is ready and willing to deliver the solutions you need to promote collaboration among your staff. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to hear more about your options.

Monitoring Employees Without Their Knowledge

We figured it would be most appropriate to discuss the no-go option first, which would be to start monitoring your employees without their knowledge or consent. As you would imagine, this is the shadier side of the monitoring spectrum, and is actually illegal in most cases. Unless you have reason to believe an employee is actively acting out and are investigating them, you are not allowed to use monitoring software to keep an eye on your team without telling them.

So, as much as I hate to have to say it, don’t do that. Instead, inform your team of your intention to monitor their systems, what you will be monitoring, and—most crucially—why. This is the real key. Transparency is the most important thing to have with your employees. Studies have even shown that this kind of transparency makes your team more comfortable with these kinds of arrangements.

Monitoring Employees While They Aren’t Working

Again, with so many employees working remotely, it may be tempting for many employers to just continue monitoring these devices even after work hours have ended. It’s one less thing to worry about that way, right?

Wrong. 

What if the employee ends their day or takes a break, and decides to log into their bank account to check in on their finances? You could easily capture sensitive information without meaning to, putting you on the hook in the legal sense. To avoid this, you have a few options you can exercise. Your first option is to simply ban employees from using work technology for personal matters. Your second option is to enable your team members to turn off the monitoring software when they are not actively working.

Not Making Use of Your Monitoring Data

A big part of ethically monitoring your employees comes down to your intent, your motivation for doing so. Are you looking to improve productivity by identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks? Great. Are you ensuring that there are no data leaks that need to be mitigated? Fantastic. Are you simply using it to make sure that your employees are at their desks working? There are better ways to account for that.

Employee monitoring should always be a means, not the end. Whenever you implement it, it needs to be in service of a specific goal. When used in this way, and not just because you want to keep a closer eye on your team, it can bring some significant benefits.

Coleman Technologies can help bring these benefits and more to your operations. To find out how our team can help you implement and manage the technology your business needs supporting it, give us a call at (604) 513-9428 today.

You might have noticed that some of your younger workers are leaving your business much earlier than you might expect them to. This could be because of a phenomenon called “shift shock,” which examines employee engagement and satisfaction. Let’s consider how shift shock could potentially harm your business.

Defining Shift Shock

The term shift shock was first coined by Kathryn Minshew, the CEO and co-founder of The Muse—a values-based career platform. Minshew explains shift shock as a new employee's feeling when their new position is not what they hoped it would be.

The Muse further surveyed their audience members and found that 72% of respondents had experienced this lack of alignment at some point.

If these numbers worry you, get a load of these other ones:

• 29% of respondents said that their feelings of shift shock included both a job’s responsibilities and the company itself
• 41% would tolerate shift shock for two to six months as a new hire
• 48% indicated that shift shock would inspire them to try returning to their previous job

Getting Down to the Bottom of Shift Shock

Various factors contribute to shift shock in the workplace, including:

The Workplace Culture Doesn’t Match Worker Mentalities

The people who can adopt the mentality that work is a part of their personality tend to eventually overwork themselves. When a workplace actively encourages this type of behavior, this type of culture can lead to employee absenteeism and lower retention rates, forcing employers to find new hires once again.

Young workers, on the other hand, are fighting this workplace mentality by establishing that they will not tolerate this type of working environment. They are much more interested in meaningful work and maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

Skills and Talents Are Being Underutilized

Most young workers are eager to enter the workforce and put their degrees and proficiencies to the test. However, those who cannot find and secure positions in their areas of expertise might be disheartened when the job doesn’t utilize their degrees at all. About half of degree holders hold positions that don’t require a degree, and employers take this to mean that there is a talent shortage.

There is Little Transparency with Hiring Practices and Workplace Culture

Many individuals look at the job interview as a potential employee trying to make a good impression, but in reality, it takes two to interview. The employer also needs to make the effort to attract top talent, and if their hiring practices are misleading, the new hire will find out quickly and leave just as fast as they accepted the offer.

Policies Promised are Barely Present, If At All

Remote work is hardly a perk anymore. These days, if anything, the younger generation has come to expect it. Despite recent events showing that it is possible and beneficial to allow remote work in some capacity, many companies still resist it. If an employee applies for, interviews for, and accepts a job that is advertised as remote-eligible, they will be shift-shocked and burned when they discover that it is, in fact, not.

Your Business Can Avoid Shift Shock

If you want to limit the effects of shift shock on your business, you need to work to provide as much transparency throughout the hiring process as possible. If you offer your new hires a clear vision of what to expect, you'll have won half the battle. Be sure to establish realistic expectations right from the start, though.

Of course, you must also follow through on your end of the bargain. If you promise something, then work to make it happen. Proper technology and training can enable much of what you promise to your younger team members, including remote work.

If you’re ready to take the next step and ensure that your team has all the technology you promised them, then don’t wait any longer. Get started by calling us today at (604) 513-9428!

First of all, it’s important not to panic. Many organizations have been offering work-from-home perks for years. Not only is it entirely possible to keep business running, but many businesses see a boost in productivity. A two-year Stanford study shows that in general, remote workers are as productive, if not more so, than those confined to an office.

Double Down on Good Communication Habits

Although we’re all supposed to be social-distancing ourselves to prevent our friends and loved ones from spreading and catching COVID-19, communication is still incredibly important. Managers and supervisors need to be kept in the loop from both sides: team members need to report up to them, and company updates need to be communicated downstream. Regularly scheduled department meetings and staff meetings should still all happen. Department heads should check in with their teams regularly.

Of course, business owners may get the intuition to check to make sure their staff is “on seat” and working, but if possible it’s better to show you trust your employees, and address problems with specific staff, have managers focus on them instead of the entire workforce as a whole.

Fortunately, there are plenty of applications available to make communication easier. These range from instant messaging tools like Google Hangouts and Slack, to video conferencing solutions like Zoom, Webex, and GoToMeeting. For businesses that utilize Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams is a solution included with each license. G-Suite users can use Google Hangouts for group chatting and internal conferencing. Coleman Technologies can help you set any of these up with your staff.

One final thought: remember that many of your employees may be feeling pretty isolated, and even lonely. Keeping that structure with regular staff and department meetings can help keep people feeling connected.

Staff can Make and Receive Work Calls from Home

Beyond communicating internally, you’ll likely want your workforce managing the phones even from home. Fortunately, with many VoIP systems, this is relatively easy to do. Every VoIP solution is going to vary a little, but most offer the ability to make and receive business calls from any computer, laptop, or smartphone. It doesn’t require additional hardware (other than perhaps a good headset) and it gives your staff the ability to make calls from their work number instead of a personal one. 

They still get the same capabilities they would at the office: call recording, forwarding, voice mail, conferencing, and more. The key is they can handle it all from their personal device. Of course, traditional desktop phones and handsets are available too. On top of that, VoIP can often save a little money when compared to traditional phone systems.

If your business isn’t using VoIP, it’s time to consider making the switch. 

IT Security is More Important Than Ever

Let’s say you have 25 users and 25 workstations. You control those workstations; you have them monitored and maintained, and you have network policies pushed to them to prevent things from getting out of control. If those 25 users start working from home, suddenly you are contending with at least 25 endpoints that you don’t control. 

There are a lot of variables at play here. Who uses the computer at home? Are kids on it? Is it the family computer? What kind of security does it have? It’s impossible to say, but it’s more than likely things aren’t as sterile as they are at the office.

Secure Remote Access via a VPN
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is one of the best ways to protect your company’s data, and it is useful in a lot of scenarios besides just working from home. A VPN allows users to remote into the work network securely from anywhere with Internet access. It encrypts the traffic so data sent to and from the office can’t be intercepted. The VPN also gives users access to all of the applications they would normally have while they are at work. 

Upgrade the Free and Consumer-Based Antivirus
Home antivirus solutions aren’t as hardened as centralized enterprise-level solutions. Sure, they do the trick when a family member picks something up while surfing the web, but if your business is trying to meet industry compliance standards, you’ll need something better suited.

You might want to consider extending your company antivirus to home systems that will be accessing the network. This may also include rolling out firewalls to ensure each user has the same security they would normally have while at the office. You’ll want to talk to the IT security experts at Coleman Technologies to determine what you really need to do.

Issue Out Company Hardware
You might even want to consider giving certain individuals (or your entire staff) work devices. This may sound like a drastic, costly move, but many organizations supply mobile employees with a laptop that the company controls and manages. We’ve seen organizations offer compensation if an employee buys their own personal device and allows the business to set it up like a work device.

This might not be a great option for the pandemic that we’re in the middle of, but something to consider for the future, if working remotely is something you want to offer for the long term.

Security Education is Critical
Your staff will still run into the same pitfalls at home as they would in the office. This includes spam and phishing attacks, poor password hygiene, and traditional user error. Make sure your workforce understands the threats out there and how to circumvent them. No amount of security infrastructure is going to stop a user from reusing a password or falling for a phishing email other than training, training, training.

This Pandemic Is a Disaster That Your Business Needs to Overcome

We talk about disaster recovery and business continuity all the time. We always use examples like floods and fires to represent a disaster, but COVID-19 fits the definition as well. It’s disrupting work and putting a huge strain on business in general. Business continuity is more important than ever.

It’s critical that you take preventative measures to minimize any additional risk to your business. That includes ensuring that your data is backed up and stored both onsite and offsite and is tested.  

In fact, being able to send your employees home to work is part of a solid business continuity plan. The whole idea behind a business continuity plan is to keep the lights on during any type of unforeseen disaster, and being able to walk away from it intact. 

Equipping your workforce with the tools and best practices to keep operations running is critical, and we are here to help. Give Coleman Technologies a call at (604) 513-9428 and ask how we can help equip your workforce to safely, securely, and effectively work remotely.

How to Minimize General Exposure in the Office

Based on what is currently known about the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have some recommendations as to how to keep the potential impact of coronavirus to a minimum:

• Encourage employees who are ill to stay home. This will help to minimize the spread of infection within your business. Make sure that your employees are aware of this policy by reiterating it verbally, and by posting notices around the office encouraging them to stay home if under the weather.
  
  Emphasize hygiene and etiquette. Properly stifling coughs and sneezes and keeping hands clean are surprisingly effective ways to keep your workplace healthier. Rather than using their hands to catch a cough or sneeze, your employees should use a tissue or--if unable to do so--use the upper part of their sleeve.
  
  The CDC recommends that tissues and alcohol-based hand sanitizer should be made readily available. Make sure your employees are washing their hands with soap and water for the recommended 20 seconds.
  
  

• Engage in keeping the workplace clean. There is a chance that coronavirus (and other illnesses) could be spread via infected surfaces. Make sure that all surfaces that are touched frequently, like desks, workstations, and doorknobs, are kept sanitized. Provide your employees with disposable wipes so they can proactively disinfect these surfaces before use.

If you find that one of your employees is confirmed to have been infected with coronavirus, make sure that you inform their coworkers of their possible exposure while still maintaining the confidentiality that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires. These employees and those who are living with a sick family member should assess their risk of exposure using the CDC’s guidelines.

Coronavirus as a Cyberthreat

Unfortunately, coronavirus will also require you to also keep an eye on your network security, particularly if you operate within the healthcare industry. Hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of the widespread concern that the disease has caused. For example:

• Scammers have phished healthcare providers with updates that appear to have come from the World Health Organization or hospitals local to their area, but actually introduce keyloggers into their systems.
• Those involved in the medical supply chain have been targeted with emails referencing the coronavirus that install malware to steal information.
• Ransomware has been introduced into consumer systems by promising recipients of an email information about COVID-19’s spread.

While the current climate may not make it easy, these emails and other threat vectors can be overcome through the same best practices that foil other cyberthreats. In addition to comprehensive digital protections, training your employees to spot these threats will be crucial.

Of course, you should also maintain a comprehensive backup in case you need to recover from a successful attack.

How to Maintain Productivity with Your Team at Home

With today’s technology, sending an employee home sick doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be sacrificing that employee’s productivity. We now have many ways that your team can work effectively from home, still contributing to your organizational agenda without exposing their coworkers to their illness.

Equipping Your Employees

Remote access solutions, paired with virtual private networking technology, can allow your employees to securely continue their work from home, safely accessing the applications and data their tasks require through an encrypted connection. As collaboration will certainly be necessary, you will want to be sure that your employees are also equipped with the communication tools that facilitate this collaboration as well.

Network Protections

You will also want to thoroughly secure your network infrastructure to help prevent threats like phishing attacks and other methods from being successful… as well as preparing for a potential breach or emergency with data backups and disaster recovery policies and procedures (including contact information for your employees) to help mitigate a worst-case scenario.

Employee Awareness

Finally, make sure your employees are on the lookout for any suspicious activity that could be a cybercriminal’s attempt at using the coronavirus as a means to an end. Not only should your employees know how to spot these attempts; they should also know the proper procedures for reporting and handling them.

Is the coronavirus scary? At this point, it is safe to say that it is, but does it have to interrupt your business operations entirely? Not if you are properly prepared.

For more assistance in preparing your business for any kind of disaster, reach out to the professionals at Coleman Technologies by calling (604) 513-9428.

What is COVID-19?

COVID-19, better known as coronavirus, is a respiratory illness that first appeared in Wuhan, China, and was reported in the United States on January 21st, 2020.

As of March 3rd, 12 states have reported 60 total cases of coronavirus and six confirmed deaths, with no vaccines or specific antiviral treatments for the illness. Symptoms of the virus include fever, shortness of breath, and a cough, while those with complications from the virus can experience pneumonia in both lungs, failure of multiple organs, and death. 

Whatever your industry, there are going to be processes that need to be followed, and this will require no small amount of organization to keep all the moving parts in tandem with each other. Fortunately, tools that can help with your project management needs are readily available, so long as you take advantage of their capabilities.

Take Google Sheets, for instance.

It’s true! Not only does Google Sheets offer fully customizable templates intended specifically for project management purposes, there are a lot of other features that are conducive to the kind of processes that should make up your project management activities.

For instance:

Google Sheets Allows You to Create Custom Dropdown Lists

With all the standard updates that proper project management will require—for instance, the status of certain goals and initiatives within your process—having the ability to select from a preconfigured list is hugely helpful. 

The existing templates that Sheets offers give you the opportunity to edit the drop-downs they come populated with. All you have to do is click the small downward arrow in the cell, select the pencil icon in the resulting menu, and edit the rules for the dropdown. For added visibility, you can even apply different colors to the different options. 

However, you won’t be able to add new options to your dropdowns or change the order in which they appear if using a preconfigured option. That will require you to create a dropdown menu from scratch. Once you’ve selected the cell or range of cells you want the dropdown to appear in, click Insert and then select Dropdown. A sidebar will appear for you to populate the data validation rules you want… or in other words, what options you want your dropdown menu to include. Once you’ve added and arranged your options, click Done to complete the process.

The Inherent Collaboration within Google Sheets Makes It Easier to Fully Plan a Project

Today’s workplace is increasingly built on collaborative work, which means that it is all the more important that the tools used therein are conducive to this kind of collaboration. Google Sheets, just as with the rest of the Google Workspace offering, is built to help you accomplish just that. Adding contributors to your spreadsheet is a simple matter… all you need to do is click the Share button at the top right of your page, select who you want to grant access to and specify the level of access and permissions you want to provide.

Once you’ve done so, others will be able to interact with a given Sheet at the level you have permitted them to—and you’ll still be able to adjust these permissions as needs change.

Google Sheets Allows You to Tag Your Collaborators

Google Sheets offers a feature called smart chips—small interactive widgets that can be embedded into your documents that link to pertinent information. You can tag different collaborators directly in the spreadsheet, and from there, email them, kick off a video chat, or (most applicable to our purposes today) assign a task to them.

We Can Help Outfit You with Proper Project Management Software, Too

Of course, you may prefer to use a dedicated software to help organize your company’s activities. Turning to us means you’ll have someone in the wings to help you procure, manage, and maintain all of the tools that your company uses.

Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

1. Prioritization

One of the keys to productive work is to work smarter, not harder. By identifying what is most pressing to accomplish or otherwise needs to happen first, you can inherently increase your productivity.

Ignore Inspiration

For instance, one of the biggest causes of procrastination is taking in a project in its entirety. Seeing the entire scope of an undertaking can be intimidating, which often makes people feel as though they need to be “inspired” before they will be able to accomplish anything.

This is untrue, but can be a difficult impulse to resist. If you catch yourself falling back on this excuse, try focusing specifically on a certain aspect or piece of your greater responsibility. Once this portion is completed, you’ll most likely be motivated to continue. In essence, don’t wait to be inspired… inspire yourself through what you accomplish.

Leverage Prioritization Strategies

Another common cause of procrastination is indecision as to what aspect of a project to tackle first. Again, identifying the most important or pressing activity makes it much easier to make this decision, and there are a few ways that you can do so.

One way is to leverage something called the Eisenhower Matrix. It can be used to sort tasks based on their urgency and importance, advising you on how a task should be approached - if it should be done now, planned for, delegated to someone else, or eliminated. This tool can help you avoid spending time on activities that ultimately don’t matter as much as others, optimizing how you spend the time you have. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule, is another means of spending your time more intelligently. By identifying the most important 20 percent of their tasks and minimizing the remaining 80 percent, many people use this principle to spend the most time on their most impactful activities.

Save Distractions for Later

We’ve all experienced that moment where, in the middle of one task, we suddenly have an idea for another. While this new task may be valuable or important, it can also hurt your operations by interrupting the one you’re engaged in at the moment… but again, this thought also needs to be addressed. Many people resolve this dilemma by creating a distraction list. Rather than suspending what they are working on, these people simply take a moment to jot down this idea for further consideration after their task is done. This means that they aren’t jumping between unfinished tasks each time a new idea pops up.

2. Preparation

Once you have your tasks organized properly, you need to ensure that you have properly made preparations to attend to them. Some of these preparations may sound counter-intuitive, but are no less crucial to your efforts.

Make Sure You’re in Order

If you aren’t ready to be productive, you aren’t going to be no matter what you try. Therefore, you need to be taking care of yourself, as well as your technology. You need to be healthy and rested to reach your potential, which means that self-care is a must. This also means that you should be strategic in how you approach your responsibilities. If you know that you tend to have a period of low energy in the late morning, it’s probably beneficial to avoid scheduling intensive tasks for that time. In addition, you need to be sure that you’re up-to-date on how things are done. The more knowledgeable you are, the more efficiently you’ll be able to make decisions, and the faster processes will move along.

Expect to Be Interrupted

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as they say. This means that you should anticipate other things to interfere with your established work schedule. What if another task pops up, or a task takes longer than anticipated? Taking these kinds of challenges into account will allow you to figure out a solution preemptively, or at least a plan that allows you to adjust and adapt.

Learn from Everything

We’ve all been taught the value of learning from our mistakes - examining situations in which things went wrong, identifying why, and avoiding those circumstances in the future. However, this is only half of what you should do to optimize your productivity. You also need to identify why your successes were successful.

Once you have completed a project or process, take some time to examine it. What about it worked well, and how could that be made better? Was every aspect necessary, or could some of it be eliminated or streamlined? Doing so will allow you to further optimize your procedure to be even more productive the next time.

3. Cheating!

In fairness, these strategies aren’t “cheating” so much as they are methods of working smarter. This way, you can make sure that your tasks are accomplished without expending more resources than they need - including your energy.

Subdivide Your Tasks

Remember the prioritization strategies we discussed above? This is a similar activity, in that you take a larger concept and divvy it up into each step that needs to be completed. Instead of putting them into a matrix or focusing on a specific set of them, the idea here is to simply make your tasks appear more achievable.

Let’s say you have to plan a work event. This alone is a significant responsibility, and can be overwhelming to approach as a whole - where to start? However, you can make your process much more comprehensible by going about it piece-by-piece, effectively expanding your task into a complete to-do list. While this does give you more tasks, they will be much easier to attain and progress with. So, instead of “Plan Party for Greg’s Retirement”, your list might include:

• Buy decorations
• Buy card
• Buy ice cream cake
• Hide cake in freezer
• Have team sign card
• Put up decorations
• Take out cake
• Send email to team to gather

More tasks, but much easier to follow nevertheless.

Leverage Shortcuts

There are a great many ways that your technology can offer an easier way of doing things. Naturally, keyboard shortcuts are one example of this, but so is automation. Let’s face it, any time you can save by having your technology handle something is time that you can then spend being productive elsewhere.

Eliminate Inefficiencies

How much time do you spend debating your options for truly inconsequential decisions during the day? Chances are, it’s more than you’d like to admit. The fact of the matter is that many of the choices that we are faced with aren’t all that impactful. Eliminating as many of these choices as possible will allow you to reserve your decision-making skills for the times that you really need them.

Email is another notorious source of lost productivity, simply because people don’t use it as efficiently as they could. It is too common for what should be a very brief and simple correspondence to take far longer than anticipated. Ironically, this is often because the people involved are trying to be brief.

Instead of cutting corners on your next email, invest a few minutes into including more specifics. Don’t just say you want to meet - identify the topics to be discussed. Don’t leave the time of the meeting open-ended, offer a few availabilities. While it takes longer to write, one email written this way will keep you from having to read, write, and send a few more.

Finding Your Groove

Clearly, there are many aspects to consider when you’re trying to be more productive, and some may be more effective for one person over another. A bit of experimentation will help you to land on the approach that works for you.

Coleman Technologies can help by providing the solutions that enable some of these methods. Reach out by calling (604) 513-9428 to learn more about these solutions.