Boost Your Employee Productivity With Automation

In this 21st century, growing employee productivity has been the key to organizational success. Though AI, automation, outsourcing, and other technological advancements have significantly impacted the work culture, most jobs still require people. You may find it difficult to motivate your employees to boost increase their productivity in this challenging time of pandemic and new norm of remote work. As per the statistics of Owllabs, ever since the Covid-19 outbreak, more than 70% of employees worldwide are working remotely, and for many employers, this is their first experience leading remotely. Thus, employee productivity has become a hot topic. 

Having enough capital, as well as a production-oriented and talent-filled workforce, are the two most valuable assets a company can possess. But today, the traditional approach of telling workers to stay more productive won't work anymore. Instead, employers need to be vigilant in their approach. They must ensure employee productivity by inspiring and guiding them to maximize their productivity. 

What is employee productivity? 

Employee productivity measures the performance and effectiveness of your team. It is employee productivity that drives a company's success. More productive employees mean a more successful company. It can be defined as the quantity and quality of work an employee produces at a particular time. 

When you lead a team, it's important to know how long it takes your teammates to finish particular tasks and whether the bottlenecks or distractions they face need to be dealt with. 

Read More: A Guide to Improving Employee Experience post-pandemic era 

Key Factors Affecting Employee Productivity

Do you know the average employee is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes per day? It might seem strange that an employee can be so productive for only a few hours when he works 9-10 hours a day. What is the exact bottleneck that is preventing our employees from reaching their full potential? In fact, the answer has always been right there before us, but we overlook it. There are various reasons why employees are distracted every day, which decreases their overall productivity. In an organization, each employee is assigned different tasks to complete; however, these tasks can become tangled throughout the day, such as attending meetings, answering emails, performing repetitive tasks, etc. 

Among the dozens of factors that affect productivity in the workplace, there are some that could easily be changed. 

• Unpleasant work culture
  
  
• Heavy workload
  
  
• Disagreements and conflicts
  
  
• Physical and mental stress
  
  
• Lack of team spirit
  
  
• Poor motivation and confidence
  
  

We will discuss these issues and analyze how "Automation" can act as a one-stop solution to all these problems, thereby increasing employee productivity. 

How automation can increase employee productivity 

"Automation" is the hot topic of the 21st century. From multinational companies to emerging startups, everyone is relying on dedicated automated solutions to get their routine tasks completed. But why take so much hassle when you can get all of this done by your existing employees and that too at no additional cost? Well, the answer is quite simple; it’s something on which every company spends a considerable chunk of its capital, “employee productivity.” 

However, poor employee unproductivity is quite inevitable since we are here dealing with humans with a range of complex emotions. Thus, no technique can be used as an assurance of 100% productivity. But this doesn’t mean that productivity cannot be increased.

Here’s a list of capabilities of “automation,” making it the ultimate savior of employee productivity: 

1. Lengthy email processes are no longer needed.
   
   You might be unaware that an average employee spends almost half of his work time reading and responding to emails, most of which are unrelated to work. Usually, after going through and responding to a work email, an employee gets distracted in reading other promotional and social emails; this eventually leads to a poor productivity rate as the time could have been utilized to do some other essential tasks.
   
   But how does “automation” solve this problem? The automated service desk software provides live chat 24/7 so that employees do not need to resort to email, thus preventing some distractions caused by it.
   
   
2. Improving the work culture
   
   Study results conducted by FastTrack360 indicate that 71 percent of team leaders believe that employee engagement is among the most critical factors affecting every company's success.
   
   However, gone are when employees got happy just by a mere increment or some additional bonuses. But today, most of the employees are looking for something more. They want a healthy, hassle-free work environment where they don’t need to continuously go back and forth to get their work done, get their training, or even smooth the onboarding process.
   
   The automation feature enables employees to create tickets from the convenience of their own time and get expert assistance for pretty much any task they require. Moreover, a smart ticketing system can track all communication between the IT team and the other employees and resolves the issues faced by the employees.
   
   
3. Instant collaboration
   
   While working, an employee has various things that they might need to communicate and collaborate with their colleagues or team leader. However, going separately to each one’s desk to convey your message for every other message can be a tiring process. It also takes a lot of time and effort to write each separate email for every message. Thus, it would be best to have collaboration platforms like Google Meet, MS Teams, Zoom and Slack where instant communication is possible without going through these lengthy processes.
   
   By utilizing automated service desk, not only can you connect live via chat within team collaboration tools, but you can also receive detailed answers to questions frequently asked, without the need for someone to explain the concept repeatedly to you.
   
   
4. Get rid of repetitive tasks
   
   Employers hire employees to carry out a range of tasks in their areas of expertise. Due to the fact that these tasks require the expertise of someone in the same field, they are generally of greater value and much more critical for the company. Some of these tasks include coding and managing workflows.
   
   However, many times, employees get tangled in routine operations that they are left with only a little time to pay attention to these much more important tasks. Filling spreadsheets, filling performance report and solving everyday queries like password resetting, onboarding employees, managing email lists etc. are some of the routine tasks.
   
   An automated service desk caters to all these problems by automating these repetitive tasks, thus cutting down the overall time an employee spends on completing them and increasing the productivity rate. Automating repetitive business processes frees humans up to do more valuable, less mundane, or less time-consuming tasks. For HR departments, automating processes such as tracking down potential applicants and arranging interviews frees up time for HR agents to examine potential hires and assess the best-fit candidates.
   
   Read More: Top Five Business benefits of automated service desk
   
   
5. Improved training
   
   According to Gallup, 88% of employees believe the company failed to provide adequate training and on-boarding. Employee training and onboarding are essential for employee retention and productivity. A team's training plays an important role in how prepared they are for their position. In this unprecedented time of the pandemic, almost all the businesses have gone online, people are working from home, and there is very little personal communication within employees; in such a situation, how would the company train its newly recruited employees?
   
   Training and learning for employees can be made more effective in your organization with automated services desks like Rezolve.ai. It is a conversational microlearning platform that delivers a quick and simple interactive learning process to the employees.
   
   

The Final Word

A happy employee builds a happy company. Businesses encounter a drop in employee productivity during this difficult time, but it does not have to last forever. It would be best if you determined the root cause of low productivity in the workplace. Once you find out the factors affecting the productivity of your workforce, you can take the necessary steps to address the issue and provide employees with the right solution. 

By implementing automation or automated modern service desks into your company, you make some of your employees' work more accessible and provide them with an unparalleled experience in the form of a massive AI-powered knowledge management system, smooth employee onboarding, and easy recruiting and much more.