World Productivity Day is happening on June 20, 2021. Perhaps you were too busy to notice? The day is designated to remind people that there are few things more important or more directly tied to business success than its productivity.
This includes areas like the employee experience, types of technology, and so on. Yet is every work task necessary? Staying productive requires a business to focus on keeping things efficient, on stripping out the waste, and finding ways to streamline processes.
Gina O’Reilly, COO, Nitro sets out to Digital Journal, why productivity is important, yet the challenge is with identifying what actually matters.
O’Reilly puts productivity in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, stating: “Working remotely over the past 16 months has certainly not been without its challenges.” She relates this to recent data that her company has collated.
“We conducted a survey last year and found that only 20 percent of workers felt extremely productive while working from home, and 40 percent felt very productive”, explains O’Reilly. “The stress of the pandemic, including the “juggle struggle” between work and home life, and a lack of face-to-face interactions certainly has had an impact, but productivity issues can also largely be attributed to inefficient workflows.”
This is where digital solutions can play a part. O’Reilly says: “Surprisingly, many companies still heavily rely on paper-based processes, even with most people not physically in offices.”
As an example, she finds: “According to our recent research, around 30 percent of employees and decision makers are still using physical documents in the same way as pre-COVID times. How is anyone expected to be productive when you have to spend hours printing, signing, and scanning documents every week?”
As to the solutions: “New digital tools are required to keep teams productive in today’s remote-first world. In fact, 3 in 4 employees and decision makers think that their productivity would increase with a standardized PDF editing and/or eSigning solution in place for their teams. Working from anywhere is the new norm, and if companies want to stay ahead, it’s time to say goodbye to paper, and ultimately, unleash productivity for employees who can then focus on what matters most – driving business performance and key deliverables.”
Smart changes to what may seem like trivial work processes can oftentimes offer the most immediate and dramatic improvements to productivity levels and office efficiency — that in turn, enable your business to get more work done, in a shorter period of time, while reducing the amount of time spent on unnecessary tasks.
When IT and business leaders embrace a productivity-first mindset, they are able to increase output and drive top-line growth — all while increasing employee satisfaction as well. In other words, productivity equals profitability, today and into the future.
