A gallup revealed that an organization with active employee engagement can be 22% more profitable than others. This explains the paradigm shift in business strategies in contemporary times.

Speaking of driving forces behind high engagement, motivation takes the top spot. But what are the driving forces behind high motivation in the workplace? What makes employees feel motivated to display exorbitant commitment and diligence? Well, there could be different answers to these questions.

However, one determining factor that plays a vital role in driving motivation in the workplace is employee recognition. Appreciation from superiors, managers, and co-workers stimulates great zeal and motivation among employees.

In fact, as per HubSpot, 69 percent of employees assert that they will invest greater commitment in the workplace when they receive genuine appreciation. Besides,  a report by Randstad concluded that 27 percent of employees tend to quit in the absence of appreciation.

So, as you can see, from the motivation of employees to high engagement and retention among employees, employee appreciation is indispensable. In the absence of virtues of appreciation, recognition and other fringe benefits, employees can get demotivated and disengaged.

To help you find ideas, this article puts forth some unique and innovative ideas for employee appreciation. Without further ado, let’s jump in.

1. Award flexibility and autonomy

Speaking of employees’ expectations in this reinvented corporate space, flexibility is what they desire the most. Employees will be more than happy to continue remote work even after the pandemic is long gone. They are of the view that flexible working arrangements facilitate a better work-life balance. So why not make flexibility a reward they can win with exemplary performance?

As per CompareCamp, 73 percent of employees assert that flexible work arrangements are vital for greater job satisfaction. Having said that, they seek flexible working styles and flexible working hours. Moreover, they desire autonomy to work in their own way and on tools of their choice.

Therefore, offering greater flexibility and autonomy to your top performers can be a brilliant idea. When you recognize your employees by empowering them, it will set a performance benchmark for the entire workforce.

Everyone would love to work their way to winning more flexibility and autonomy, isn’t it? Let autonomy be a metaphor for employee appreciation and recognition.

 2. Cultivate a culture of gratitude

Appreciation and gratitude are quite complementary to each other, aren’t they? Given that, it is better if both appreciation and gratitude co-exist in the workplace.

Here is a fascinating insight on workplace gratitude! Research by Harvard University concluded that gratefulness in the workplace can amplify employee productivity by 50 percent. To add, 81 percent of employees opine that they would be happy to go the extra mile for a grateful boss. Are you a grateful boss who believes in the simple art of thankfulness?

When there is a natural culture of gratitude in the workplace, appreciation is facilitated better. A sense of thankfulness will further promote the need for appreciation. However, it starts with you and you need to lead by example. When you start thanking people and appreciating them for their contributions, it will become a natural virtue in the workplace.

Now it makes complete sense why you should be a thankful boss, isn’t it?

3. Offer personalized rewards

It is obvious that your employees will have varied interests and passions. Having said that, awarding fancy trophies to your employees may not be the most innovative idea.

Give them something valuable to them and they can use it to their advantage. That will be a much better reward than a trophy to keep in the cabinet or a framed certificate to be hung on the wall. Personalized rewards would be great as tokens of appreciation!

If someone is a fan of binge-watching, buy them a Netflix subscription instead of a trophy. Similarly, if someone is a fitness maniac, show appreciation by awarding them a gym membership. Also something for those that love to learn new things, like a new language, you can provide them with access to language learning resources.

On similar lines, you can take the help of the HR department to explore the interests of your employees and exhibit your appreciation via customized rewards. Your employees would absolutely love the idea! Besides, they feel far more motivated than receiving gift hampers or certificates of appreciation.

Besides, such personalization in rewards will further foster a sense of belonging in them. This feeling of belonging will have its own role to play in the motivation of employees. A study by BetterUp revealed that a strong sense of belonging can enhance job performance by 56 percent.

So, you better start working on promoting greater belonging in your employees! Personalized rewards based on their interests would be a great way of achieving that.

4. Leverage social media for employee appreciation

We all know how powerful and charming social media is in this era of overwhelming digitalization. Do you know that as per projections by Statista, the number of global social media users will reach 4.41 billion by 2025?

Given the colossal outreach of social media, you should look to leverage it for your business in all plausible ways. One of the greatest benefits social media offers is that it gives you a perfect platform to appreciate your employees.

Celebrate the persistent hard work and excellence of your employees through social media shoutouts. Post the pictures of your top performers on the social media handles of your business and express gratitude and appreciation through heart-warming captions. Let everyone connected to your social media profiles know who your top performers are.

Employees would find themselves brimming with confidence and motivation to be at the receiving end of such appreciation. Besides, it will also enable their peers and co-workers to congratulate them by posting comments. As a result, it can bring more likes and higher engagement rate that can help your business growth, too.

Needless to say, employees would love every bit of such special mentions on social media. They would want to win more social media mentions in the future and for that, they will keep their productivity upbeat. Quite a smart and social way of exhibiting employee recognition, isn’t it?

4. Feature appreciation in internal newsletters

If your company has gone completely remote, there may be a certain deficit in employees’ access to the latest company information and developments. This is where digital internal newsletters can be of great help.

Internal newsletters can serve multidimensional purposes in an organization. They can be used to keep employees in remote jobs updated with the latest events in the organization. Besides, you can also extend appreciation to your best performers by featuring them in the internal newsletters.

You can dedicate an entire column in the newsletter to employee recognition and appreciation. In this column, a detailed account of the achievements of the employees can be given. In this way, everyone in the organization will know who the top achievers of a specific month or quarter are.

Moreover, the top management of the company can also share their vision and strategic plans for the coming quarters through internal newsletters.

6. Create an exclusive achievers’ club

Let the highest form of recognition in the workplace be in terms of privileges offered by an exclusive league of achievers. An achiever’s club in the workplace should be about exclusive benefits for performers who settle for nothing less than excellence.

An achiever’s club can offer the following exquisite benefits to the top-performing employees as an expression of your appreciation for employees.

• Exclusive mentorship programs for career development
• Health and financial wellness programs
• Sponsored vacations
• Health insurance and telemedicine benefits
• Monetary incentives and attractive perks

The list is inexhaustible and you can add as many exclusive privileges as you may think of. Of course, they have to be in line with the budget you want to set for employee appreciation. In fact, an achievers’ club can be a fabulous idea for motivating employees.

Those who get an entry into this achiever’s club and get access to these privileges will be able to derive massive motivation. Besides, for others who see their co-workers being a part of this superlative league, they too would want to put in greater commitment and make their way to this club.

All in all, such a league of achievers will set a fine performance benchmark in the organization. It will act as a perfect motivation for employees who would then want to realign their goals with the objectives of the organization in a more worthwhile manner.

Besides, of course, it will also be a creative way of extending recognition and rewards to employees. The impact such a framework will have on employee engagement and retention will also be incredible.

7. Celebrate your people

The idea of employe appreciation should not be limited to celebrating achievements. You also need to appreciate the effort and the persistence invested by your employees in every task. Sometimes their efforts would translate into accomplishments and at times they might not.

This is where you have to be more flexible with your idea of appreciating your employees. To keep your team motivated, celebrate your people. Celebrate their contributions, accomplishment of small goals, and their allegiance to your organization.

Let them know that the celebration of diversity in the workplace, birthdays and even the smallest milestones are all part of an inclusive culture of appreciation. When you organize such celebrations in the workplace, be vocal about the idea behind it.

Tell your employees that these gestures are in lieu of their undying commitment and the value they add to the company. See how they would respond with enchanting smiles and greater motivation to keep the positivity going! Everyone deserves a nice break full of great things to stay motivated after all, isn’t it?

Always remember, celebrating your people and their little acts of goodwill is one of the best tactics for high employee engagement.

8. Give bonus paid leave

If you ask your employees to tell you their top three wishes, additional paid leaves would most certainly be one of them. Employees always find themselves in a crunch situation when it comes to paid leaves.

Most of them seek some extra time off from work to get a better work-life balance going. Moreover, they feel that some extra paid leaves would be great for their mental health and work motivation.

Hence, offering some bonus paid leave to employees for exemplary performances will be a good idea. Let’s say in the usual sense, your employees are entitled to two paid leavers per month.

However, if someone has performed well in the last month or quarter, you can offer them to avail a few additional paid leaves. When you do that, remember to tell them that it is a token of appreciation from the organization.

They would feel great to hear that and the feeling of appreciation behind this special entitlement will rejuvenate their motivation. In fact, additional paid leaves are among the best non-monetary rewards you can give to your employees.

9. Order surprise meals

Who does not like food? So, if you have to think of some nice gestures for appreciating your employees, order surprise meals for them. Even if your team members are working from home, you can have a surprise meal delivered to their doorstep with a small appreciation note.

Your employees would adore such sweet acts and the appreciation note would be the cherry on the cake. All you need to do is pick up your phone and place an order for the favorite meal of the employee you want to reward.

Quite a convenient and cost-effective way of appreciating someone, isn’t it?

10. Conduct virtual coffee breaks

As per Forbes, 70 percent of the global workforce will be in remote arrangements by 2025. We all know how remote and hybrid workplace cultures are becoming a hit in contemporary times.

Having said that, the bright future of remote work is well known to us. Telecommuting is the way forward and we need to adapt briskly.

What this means is that employers and managers need to find some unique ideas to appreciate employees virtually. Besides, it is a well-known fact that employees prefer recognition in front of their peers to receiving appreciation in private.

Hence, the need of the hour is to find some brilliant ideas for virtual appreciation. Well, virtual coffee breaks can be an amazing idea to serve this purpose. Whenever there is a need to extend recognition to employees, you can conduct a virtual coffee break using virtual escape rooms.

A virtual coffee break means that everyone breaks at the same time and connects through video conferencing software. The virtual coffee breaks can be about relaxing and candid conversations outside the ambit of work.

Moreover, during these breaks, you can take out a moment to appreciate your employees and let everyone know of their accomplishments. A lot can happen over a cup of coffee after all! Doesn’t it make a fabulous idea to recognize prodigious performance?

To conclude, it is interesting how the expression of appreciating employees is becoming a competitive advantage for organizations. Companies are now acknowledging the quintessential link between employee recognition and motivation. Better appreciation leads to greater motivation and engagement which are paramount to an organization’s success.

However, better employee appreciation in contemporary times is synonymous with unique ideas to reward employees. This blog for sure sets a perfect template of innovative and novel ideas for employee appreciation.

The post 10 Unique Employee Appreciation Ideas appeared first on Fleep Blog.

In 2021, productivity is all about automation and integration. The tools that offer the broadest range of seamless integrations and the most effective automation rules increase your efficiency levels and enhance your value.

With this in mind, take a look at the top 10 productivity tools for 2021.

1. Gmail

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As one of the most widely used applications on the internet, it’s no surprise that Gmail is a productivity tool that everyone should be using in 2021.

In addition to secure and professional email management, Gmail offers a range of features that streamline workflows and increase efficiency.

Smart features and personalization ensure you can customize your Gmail account to suit our needs and access intuitive controls at any time. When you’re invited to an event via email, for example, Gmail automatically adds it to your Google Calendar.

Similarly, the Google app uses the information stored to provide you with valuable, time-saving reminders, such as Google Maps showing exact travel times and directions to upcoming appointments.

Helpful nudges even keep you up to date with correspondence and remind you when an email appears to require a reply or when to follow up if you have received a response.

While Gmail’s in-built features certainly go a long way to making your email communication effective, you can integrate several other tools to increase its functionality.

With Slack, Asana, and Google Drive add-ons, for example, it’s easy to combine your most-used tools into one centralized hub.

2. Hugo

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 To achieve maximum productivity levels, you need to be highly organized, and that’s one reason why Hugo is a must-have tool for 2021.

Instead of meetings resulting in potential actions, unconfirmed collaborations, and confusion, Hugo allows you to keep clear, concise notes in one location.

By connecting your meeting notes, calendars, tasks, and most-used apps, Hugo simplifies your virtual workspace and allows you to function with increased efficiency.

Multi-user note editing in real-time facilitates instant collaboration, even if your workforce is distributed across different locations.

Currently, you can integrate Hugo with more than 20 apps, including posting ‘next tasks’ to Asana, syncing agendas via Slack, and transporting Google video calls straight into the Hugo platform.

With connections to both Office 365 and Google Calendar, it’s easy to update your schedule as new events are organized.

3. Miro

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Designed for teamwork, Miro’s visual-based collaboration platform makes working with colleagues simple, straightforward, and highly productive.

When millions of employees are working remotely, Miro’s real-time collaborations, presentations, and video calling ensure seamless connectivity and enhanced productivity.

You can use whiteboards, flow charts and a range of other graphical features to compile and present data within the Miro framework, add comments in the same way as you would in Google Docs and even save time with an ‘omnifeed’ that shows comments across all boards.

The Miro Apps Marketplace offers more than 90 app integrations, which means you can connect Miro and its features to your most-used tools and platforms to create cohesive workflows.

4. Asana

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Known for its first-class integration, Asana is a task and workflow management platform that’s used by millions of people worldwide.

Asana incorporates a range of complex methodologies but successfully presents them in easy-to-use features.

Compared to similar tools, such as Trello or Wrike, the capabilities, simplicity, and enhanced integration ensure that Asana comes out on top. It is also ranked as one of the top project management tools by TechnologyAdvice.

With an interactive Slack plugin, you can turn Slack messages into Asana tasks, create new tasks and action existing tasks from within Slack, view Asana data in Slack, and much, much more.

Similar integrations ensure seamless connectivity with a wide range of apps, including Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Jira Server, and Zoom.

Android and iOS apps show you a daily digest of your Asana workstreams, so you manage your workload and stay productive when you’re on the go.

Furthermore, a Premium subscription enables you to begin external guests into your Asana workspace to view and collaborate on projects.

5. Google Workspace

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The perfect tool to use a centralized platform, Google Workspace incorporates a wide range of features, including Docs, Sheets, Data Studio, Forms, Calendar, and Google Meet.

As you might expect, you can use Google Workspace alongside Gmail and the Google App to streamline every aspect of your work management.

Virtual Data Rooms allow you to group and store documents according to custom parameters, which means you can share, collaborate and update information in real-time.

With upcoming changes to Google Meets, such as attendance tracking, ‘hand raising’ and recording, virtual meetings can be conducted in a fraction of the time, with better outcomes.

6. Zapier

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If integration is a critical element of today’s productivity tools, there’s no doubt that Zapier is a must-have piece of software. With more than 3,000 app integrations, Zapier can be used to increase the functionality of your favorite apps.

Designed to facilitate automation between apps, Zapier streamlines your working methodologies and saves you a significant amount of time.

When a new email is received from a particular subject, Zapier integrations facilitate automated task creation in Asana. They will even insert a new row in an existing Google Doc.

What’s more – when a new row is created in a Google Doc, it can be automatically added to other Google Docs in a different format or place, depending on the criteria you set out.

Similarly, when a Slack message contains the term ‘meeting’, you can set up an automation rule that sends the Slack message, along with the preceding five or 10 messages, to the meeting moderator or note-taker.

When used for lead nurturing, Zapier integrations identify prospects who have reached certain trigger points and executes custom actions, such as sending welcoming emails or newsletters.

Additionally, you can:

• Automatically create Basecamp To-Dos from incoming emails
• Create Jira Issues from Asana Tasks
• Add tasks, project events, and milestones from a range of data sources into a single, universal calendar

While Zapier is great, it can get pretty costly and complicated in some cases. If that’s the case, you can always consider a number of Zapier alternatives as well.

7. Toggl Track

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If a lack of time seems to eat away at your productivity, Toggl Track can transform your working day. It’s an awesome free tool for small businesses, a leading time-tracking tool: it ensures you can track any type of work and get more done.

As well as using the platform to manage your own time, supervisors, managers, and business owners can manage teams via Toggle Track and improve efficiency organization-wide.

Automated time-tracking means you won’t have to action time management. Instead, you can rely on Toggle Track to:

• Pull data from open pages
• Implement popular time management techniques using the Pomodoro Timer
• Use automation rules to instantly add time-based information to Toggl Track from apps, such as Google Docs and Asana

8. Loom

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Effortlessly simple yet remarkably effective, Loom transforms communication and saves you time. Instead of sending text-based emails, Loom enables users to create and record video messages of your camera, screen, or both.

Delivering increased accuracy, speed, and engagement, Loom allows you to get your message across faster and with greater clarity.

With Loom, you can forget lengthy walls of text and embrace a new era of efficiency with video messaging instead. A desktop app, iOS app, and Chrome extension ensure you can use Loom across devices in the way that’s most convenient for you.

9. Markup Hero

Markup Hero is making a name for itself as the best in class screenshot and annotation productivity tool. It quickly allows you to take a (scrolling) screenshot and share unique links, while also letting you add always editable annotations. You can even upload images, PDFs, or captures websites directly and add annotations all from you web browser and on any device.

Features included:

• Screenshot – Screenshot Tab, Scrolling Screenshot Tab, Screenshot Desktop
• Uploader – Upload images, PDFs + Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
• Annotation Tools – Text, Arrow, Line, Rectangle, Oval, Blur, Pen, Highlighter
• Editing Tools – Colors, Font Size / Line Thickness, Move, Scale, Rotate, Undo / Redo, Delete
• Insert Images – Add images to any page to enhance your feedback or message
• Share Link – Copy and share a unique sharable link for your image, screenshot, PDF or markup

Moreover, the tool already has a host of useful integrations, including Google Drive, Slack, and even a Chrome Extension if you don’t want to use their desktop screenshot app. The team has even released an API that you can use to add annotations with your own app.

The tool is free to use and doesn’t even require you to sign up to give it a spin. They also offer a pro plan starting at $4/month if you need unlimited usage and access to all the advanced tools (including custom privacy settings)

10. Fleep

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Fleep is known for its instant messaging features, but, in reality, it’s far more than merely a messenger. It’s the connective tissue that brings all of your work team communication together.

The software supports rich text, tasks, pinned messages, file-sharing and integrations that save you time and make your work life easier.

One key feature that sets Fleep apart from other workplace messengers (and makes it a great Slack alternative) is Presence. These days, being online doesn’t mean you’re available. Fleep’s Presence features share key important information about everyone’s participation in the conversations.

Simply check anyone’s profile to see when they were last active in Fleep. You can also see who has read your messages with our Seen-by (Read) indicators. Additionally, you can see if someone’s busy writing a reply with the Writing indicator.

11. Avoma

Known for its ease of use (ranked no.1 on G2 Crowd) and its AI-powered technology, Avoma is a Conversation Management Platform that helps customer-facing teams capture important customer information, before, during, and after important meetings.

Avoma goes beyond the general set of conversation intelligence tools. It analyzes conversation insights, and intelligence to help reps shorten sales cycles and delight more customers.

With Avoma, you can automatically record all your meetings, get full transcripts and summarized notes, and actionable insights synced directly to your CRM. Review calls and meetings faster by searching directly within transcripts and using identified topics to find exactly what you’re looking for.

The platform integrates with all major CRMs, dialers, conferencing tools and calendars. Avoma also offers a pretty flexible pricing model that starts at $15.

Find the Best Productivity Tools for Your Teams

With so many programs out there claiming to increase productivity, you could spend weeks merely trying to gauge which one is right for you.

Fortunately, our handy roundup of the top 10 productivity tools for 2021 makes it easy to identify the most effective software for your needs.

Whether you’re working from home, managing a remote team, or operating on-site, using a combination of these top tools can help you evade productivity killers, increase efficiency and enhance your success.

The post Top 11 Productivity Tools For 2021 appeared first on Fleep Blog.

Greenice is a web development agency that specializes in developing custom feature-rich apps and websites with a complex back-end. Their story started in 2007 with two freelancers that decided to join their forces. Now they are a team of 35 people with a portfolio of hundreds of projects and clients from around the world.

We spoke to Kateryna from Greenice about her team’s experience with adopting Fleep and bringing all work communications to one place.

Read on, if you’d like!

Convenience of having all work-related contacts in one place

Before Fleep, the Greenice team was using another messenger that got discontinued. One of their project managers then researched team chats and found Fleep. He suggested using it instead of the discontinued messenger and they never looked back!

Now, the entire Greenice team is using Fleep, as well as some of their contractors. For example, they communicate with their designers and accountants on Fleep. “It is very convenient to have all work-related contacts in one place.” says Kateryna. We agree!

Organizing work communications

“Losers have goals. Winners have systems.”
― Timothy Ferriss, “Tools of Titans“

There is no one single way to organize your work communications in Fleep. But we have found that having dedicated conversations for different recurring topics is what works for everyone. The Greenice team is no exception in this. Let’s take a look at the setup that works well for them.

The Greenice Fleep setup has a few general conversations for everyone in the team. For example, there’s a conversation named “Official”. Kateryna explains: “It is for letting everyone know if you are going to be late or unavailable at some time period.” Another general conversation is “Talks”, a group conversation for all informal conversations about anything and everything.

In addition to the general team conversations, Greenice has created group conversations for everyone who share responsibilities. So, they have conversations named “Sales”, “Project Managers”, “Team Leaders” and so on.

Favorite features

All teams have their favorite functionalities for work communication. Let’s dive into Greenice’s favorite Fleep features now.

First and foremost, the team loves pinned messages. “We pin files that are commonly used and messages with information that we know we will need to refer to later,” Kateryna explains.

Our “seen-by“s are another favorite that many other work communications tools miss. Kateryna says: “We love being able to see who has already read a message.” We agree. Sometimes such a small thing is a key part of communication.

Other functionalities that the Greenice team highlighted: @mentions — “Tagging people is useful when you need to call attention to a particular person”. Some of their team members also use the Monologue functionality to take notes and most all of them like the ability to react with emojis to messages.

What matters in choosing a work communications tool

How do you choose the tools that you use every day? Sometimes, it’s a rational decision, sometimes it’s emotion and sometimes it’s completely random.

Besides the features listed above, the Greenice team is pretty unanimous about liking Fleep for its simple interface. “It is intuitive and easy to find your way around right away,” says Kateryna. Now you’re making us blush!

We also asked Kateryna how we fare against our competition. After all, there are a lot of messengers for work communication out there. We will leave you with what she said:

“Compared to mainstream messengers like Skype, Google Hangouts, Whatsapp, etc., Fleep allows for a much better organization and separation of personal and work contacts.

Compared to team messengers, it has the best price-quality ratio. And Fleep also works with Linux really well.”

Further Reading:

• How to Improve Team Communication: The Ultimate Guide
• Adduco Makes Internal Communication 2X Faster With Fleep
• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team

The post Greenice Brings All Work Communications To One Place With Fleep appeared first on Fleep Blog.

In most cases though, even if you can’t get rid of every productivity-sapping issue your team faces, there are still steps you can take to minimize the negative impact on your team and business.

These are eleven of the biggest productivity killers you can never fully eliminate.

1. Distracting Environment

It should come as no surprise that an interrupted task takes longer to complete than an uninterrupted one. Few people can return to their work and begin immediately at full pace again; on average it takes about 25 minutes to return to a task.

Interruptions can come in many forms, such as impromptu discussions and phone calls, but it is also important to consider the distractions that don’t stop your work, but sap your concentration, reduce your focus and slow down your tasks.

These could come in the form of background noises such as office chatter, traffic noise or road works, visual stimuli such as flickering lights or people moving around, or even a bad smell. There’s a reason you don’t cook smelly food in the office microwave!

As a general rule, in-office workers suffer more from environmental distractions than remote employees. Remote workers often have more control over their environment and don’t share their workspace.

73% of remote workers say they are more productive when working from home. They are not free from distraction however, with outside noise and interruptions still being potential issues.

2. Travelling

Travel is an often unavoidable fact of working as a professional or running a small business. Team members can’t work on their usual tasks while driving, and flights and train journeys can still cause losses to productivity through interruptions and stress caused by the trip. Additionally, travel delays are beyond your control.

With a laptop and mobile phone it is still possible to get tasks done while on the move, working from hotel rooms and co-working spaces. The disruption to routine and distractions mean this work is likely to be less efficient however.

Staying in touch with the rest of the team is always a concern when travelling. Incorporating an SMS app into your communication tools helps you keep track of text conversations by recording all messages and enabling team members to reply in one place via the app.

3. Health and Well-being

The physical and mental health of you and your employees have a major impact on productivity that should not be ignored.

A work schedule that has you regularly sitting at a desk all day causes not just short-term attention-sapping discomfort, but can also lead to longer-term health issues. Orthopedic issues caused by long hours at a desk, and stress-related mental health problems, are the two largest health conditions suffered by small business owners, at 35% and 17% respectively.

While this problem can be tackled by breaking up the day with exercise and having the option of a standing desk, there are many other health and diet issues you and your team could face which can’t be controlled or prevented.

It is therefore important to make sure you take the time off to recover, instead of struggling through an illness leading to reduced productivity over a longer period. Giving your team the time and resources to recover is equally critical for mental health problems to avoid long-term wellbeing and motivation issues.

Check in regularly with your team members and make sure everyone feels comfortable flagging problems with their wellbeing and taking the necessary steps to recover.

4. Repetitive Tasks

The average office worker spends 520 hours a year performing simple, repetitive tasks. Automating these processes frees your time to be spent on more important tasks that cannot be performed by software. Simple tasks such as data entry may seem like just a matter of copy and paste, but your time spent doing this adds up and would be better spent on more pressing issues. These kinds of tasks can also have a demotivating effect, as tedious, repetitive work can stifle your creativity.

The average office worker spends 11 hours a week using their email. In many cases, these are routine tasks which could be automated. This extends beyond just writing and sending emails however. Simple email tasks such tagging emails, sorting messages to different folders and assigning emails to team members may only take seconds, but those seconds quickly add up. Email automation tools allow you to create rules for automate your email management, saving valuable time.

5. Missed Contacts

Whether you’re making appointments to meet clients in person, calling on the phone or even just sending a message, failed customer contacts cost time that adds up. You can’t control whether your clients respond promptly when you get in touch, but you can still reduce your lost productivity here.

In many cases businesses can improve their productivity simply by picking a better time to get in touch. A study by CallHippo has shown that for most businesses, contacting leads between 4pm and 5pm on a Wednesday have a significantly higher success rate.

Managing your emails via a CRM can cut the time you spend sending follow-up emails and reminders to clients, by automatically scheduling and sending your messages at the right time. Additionally, your team can make use of a shared inbox, enabling faster responses with less chance of a conversation being left forgotten in a single team member’s inbox. This can reduce the time you spend checking for replies from clients and tracking your conversations with leads.

Using SMS to arrange calls and appointments can also cut your wasted time here, allowing you to make arrangements with busy clients who can’t always be available to answer the phone.

6. Disorganised Team Communication

Without the use of communication tools to organise team discussions and updates, you can waste a significant amount of time simply finding previous messages or needing to clarify instructions that can’t easily be found. For example, if you communicate with your team via a chat app but also send project updates and briefs via email, your team members have two different places to check for information and old messages.

Integrating all your internal communications into a single tool can save a huge amount of time by letting your team receive and send workflow updates, direct messages and email notifications without remembering to check multiple apps.

7. Too Many Policies and Protocol

Keeping your employees safe and in compliance with regulations is vital for every business, and it will always necessitate creating policies and protocols for your employees to follow. Many businesses go completely overboard with this idea however, creating strict procedures that must be adhered to for every task and interaction in an employee’s workday.

In addition to creating potential stress and confusion, this can have a negative impact on productivity as team members spend significant amounts of their time checking they have followed the correct procedure instead of being trusted to know how to perform their jobs.

8. Unnecessary Meetings

According to a recent survey, almost half of office workers view pointless meetings as the biggest waste of time in their workplace. In addition to costing productivity, these can sap motivation and have a further impact on the rest of your team’s tasks.

Try to make sure all your team meetings are short and stick to the objectives of the meeting. Besides the obvious steps, such as preparing an agenda and notes beforehand, allotting time for each point on the agenda and making sure you start and finish on time; there are a few tricks that can also boost your productivity.

For example, starting meetings at an unusual time instead of on the hour or half-hour makes your team more likely to remember and show up on time. Keeping everyone standing for a meeting helps keep meetings short and focused on their purpose. Finally, keeping a space for attendees to note ideas and comments which aren’t relevant to the meeting prevents these comments and discussions from derailing the meeting. Getting an off-topic discussion back on track can cost valuable time.

9. Time

The most productive schedule and work timing can vary wildly from person to person. Research by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that the average employee is only productive for less than three hours each day. Some get their best work done early in the morning, while others take time to build up momentum.

This can be tackled to some extent by matching your schedule to your natural work pattern, for example by scheduling your most demanding tasks for the part of the day when your performance is at its peak. Alternatively, schedule more simple and repetitive tasks for the times you expect more interruptions.

This approach is not perfect, however. Your workload won’t always fit into your preferred working pattern, and in a team you will need to compromise to collaborate with colleagues.

Besides considering when you work, how long you work for also has a significant impact on productivity.

While some people need frequent breaks to stay motivated, others prefer to get stuck into a task for hours at a time. A study by the University of Illinois has shown that for most people, brief hourly breaks increase productivity. Again, there is no perfect answer as unexpected tasks will disrupt your schedule.

Enable your team to work in patterns that suit them, but it is also important to accept compromises to your schedule to allow collaboration within your team. More flexible scheduling encourages employees to be healthier and more productive.

10. Taking On Too Many Responsibilities

For most people, it takes at least a little time to get up to full speed on a task. Switching between tasks or handling too many tasks at once can reduce your overall productivity. Multi-tasking is to some extent unavoidable, especially when running a small business or working in a small team, but overloading yourself with numerous tasks at a time is not helpful.

Smart scheduling using a scheduling app that allows time for unexpected issues reduces the lost productivity here, by creating time blocks for each task. By scheduling time for specific responsibilities, it will be easier for team members to manage their time across different duties and know when to expect responses from colleagues.

11. Social Media Stress

Many businesses underestimate the time and effort it takes to maintain an effective social media presence for your organization. The need to post and answer messages throughout the day can drain your productivity through constant distraction. In addition, while social media is an invaluable source of feedback, constant exposure to customer complaints and issues can sap the motivation and attention you need for your other responsibilities.

Furthermore, social media can be addictive. It is important not to view the time you spend on your business’s social media accounts as an opportunity to also check in on your own notifications and messages. Social media platforms are extremely effective at convincing you to spend ‘just a minute or two’ scrolling through your feed. These little unplanned breaks quickly add up to hours of wasted time.

Posting and replying on social media is a much smaller task when it is organised and scheduled as part of your daily workflow, instead of letting it cut into your free time or other tasks. Getting into the habit of scheduling all your social media activity takes the pressure off by planning your posts in advance and giving you much-needed offline time.

Conclusion

Both your working environment and lifestyle can have major impacts on your productivity. Additionally, a poorly planned schedule can lead to stress and inefficient task switching. By improving your communication and reducing the time you spend on repetitive tasks, the impact of these productivity killers can be minimized or even avoided entirely.

Not all productivity killers can be avoided; however by providing your team with the tools to manage their workload and the flexibility to work in a way that suits them, you can help reduce the factors that reduce your productivity.

Further Reading:

• Productivity Tips For Small Business Teams
• Working at Home Boosts Productivity
• 15 Myths about Productivity

The post 11 Productivity Killers Out Of Your Control appeared first on Fleep Blog.

Overview of Fleep’s new pricing

Here’s an overview of Fleep’s new pricing.

Functionality available for Basic (free) users:

• Create unlimited 1:1 conversations
• Create up to 3 group conversations
• Participate in unlimited group conversations
• Admin roles in conversations (but no rights to delete other members’ content or remove access to conversation history)
• 10GB storage

Functionality available for Business users:

• Create unlimited 1:1 and group conversations
• Admin roles in conversations and teams
• Premium conversations (where admins can delete anyone’s content and remove access to conversation history)
• Teams
• User account management
• Organization settings
• File retention policy
• Customize Fleep with your logo
• My tasks
• Status message
• 100GB storage

Read more about our new pricing: fleep.io/pricing
Start your 30-day trial of Fleep for Business: fleep.io/admin

What does this mean for your account?

If you belong to any Free Teams, then you have until April 1st, 2019, to upgrade to Fleep for Business and convert these into Premium Teams.

If you sign(ed) up to Fleep before April 1st, 2019, then the 3 group conversation creation limit does not apply to you. We have granted all existing users unlimited group conversations, as a thanks for being a Fleep user!

If you have any questions or feedback for us, don’t hesitate to get in touch via support@fleep.io.

Thank you for being a Fleep user!

The post Fleep’s pricing is changing appeared first on Fleep Blog.