How To Minimize Productivity Failures

In my last post, a few weeks ago I spoke about Increase Your Productivity In 2010.  When anyone mentions ways to increase productivity, most people jump up and show their PDA/iPhone/smartphone or whatever method they use to plan their days, meetings, keep in touch with the office etc.,  But beyond these basic tools, there are other measures to increase productivity that are sitting under your nose.

Managing a call center, you quickly learn what these productivity enhancers are — and if you haven’t figured it out yourself, then most certainly your staff will tell you (very LOUDLY).

There are some simple enhancements that you can make you your users workstations, depending on their function and what they need.  Other enhancements are as simple as ensuring that they keyboards work, the mouse works and they can start their computer up in the morning without waiting for 30 minutes.

Quick Fix #1

Function keys on the keyboard don’t work.

Most managers will roll their eyes at this, and chalk it up to yet another complaint – but until your function keys DON’T work you will never know how important they are.  Much of what I do involves accessing multiple websites (internally hosted, of course) so access to the F5 key (refresh) and F6 key are crucial.  When my keyboard stopped (well the function keys stopped working) it means that I now need to use my mouse or hit tab a gazillion times to perform the same function.

So you might be thinking to yourself – it’s only a few extra seconds – but could those seconds up and it could end up to be15-30 minutes per day in lost time.

If you’ve got an IT support team - make sure you use them to fix these types of minor irritants.

Quick Fix #2

Multiple monitors.

Who doesn’t want multiple monitors – but most IT departments won’t spend the money on them.  They also won’t support multiple monitors for one or two people, because soon everyone will want one because its essential to their jobs.

Sorry but that argument does not hold water.

As a manager, if you can make a solid business case for your staff to have multiple monitors and you can make the case for an increase in productivity via smoother workflows then what’s holding you back.  Though an expense, depending on how many systems your agents need access to, and how many applications they keep running at anyone time on the dekstop a second monitor might be an expense that will pay off in smoother workflows for your staff.

Quick Fix #3

Equipment that WORKS.

Whether this is printers, faxes or simple stuff like mice and keyboard – make sure equipment works.  If not, replace it FAST.  We’ve come to depend on the mouse, and when it doesn’t work – it puts people into a state of disarray.  I “grew up” in the DOS days and when I had to switch to a mouse, it was terrible!  I hated it.  But like everything else, I got used to it and now can’t imagine how I’d manouver applications like Microsoft Office, or the browser any other way!

Mice and keyboards are cheap.  Keep a few on hand, and everyone is happy should one cease to function.

You may even want to consider wireless mice and keyboard for key individuals on your team.

Quick Fix #4

The minor details – foot stools, good chairs and as ergonomic workarea as you can reasonably accomodate.

Some of these items may seem odd - like a foot stool; after all your staff is there to work – not sit and relax.  But simple additions like these to those individuals that needs them results in increased productivity from those individuals.  Something simple like a $20 – $40 foot stool may save a $200+ purchase in an ergonimic chair for someone.

Do you have any productivity failures in your work area?  What are they?  Share them with us, along with your solution!

Increase Your Personal Productivity With A NetBook

It’s no secret to friends and co-workers that I’m a gadget freak.  I find that technology helps me stay organized and keeps me  in-touch with what’s happening around me.  You can use technology to work more effectively.

A couple of gadgets that I feel are well worth the money are the iPod Touch (or the iPhone) and the netbook.

First the netbook.

Typical netbooks will have a screen around 10″ in size and are very portable – in fact, it makes the traditional laptop look and feel like a desktop!  I purchased a couple of netbooks over the last two years and use both to the max.

I most recently purchased two different HP netbooks:

Both are great netbooks, the differences between the two:

The 110-1030C comes with Windows XP, has 1gb memory whereas the 2140 comes with Windows Vista Operating System and has 2gb memory.  You could upgrade the 1030C for about $50.00 and add an additional 1gb memory.  Running Windows XP 1gb should be enough, but it’s always nice to have more.

Other than that and some technical specs, they are almost identical.  The displays are very clean, and bright and I’ve been able to get anywhere from 6-8 hours of use out of the battery depending on how I use it. 

The one drawback with netbooks in general is that they do not come with a CD/DVD drive.  So you need an external one, here is the one that I purchased:

I am really happy with the Sony DVD – it is slim and can fit into the same sleeve that I purchased for the netbooks.

I opted for a slightly more expensive, slim drive – why would you want to lug around a HUGE CD/DVD?  The slim drive is also USB powered so feeds off of the netbook (this is where you may draw more power if running on battery alone).

Although netbooks are only intended for surfing the web and light applications, I’ve really maxed both netbooks out and run full versions of Microsoft Office Professional on them in addition to several other CPU intensive software packages in addition to an older version of JASC Paint Shop Pro (now owned by Corel and re-packaged as a Corel product).

Running graphics intensive applications does suck power and pushes the netbook to its maximum potential but to now I’ve not run into any significant issues.

The 160gb drive is ample, but I have also purchased a new external hard drive plus I have an older external hard drive from an old laptop that I took apart to make a digital picture frame (here is part 2 of the same post – digital picture frame).

Whatever you decide to purchase, ultimately you want something that helps you become more productive.  I truly find that I can get caught up on personal work with my netbook – I can take it anywhere and combined with internet access I am truly mobile.