Five HR tools to help boost productivity

Boosting internal productivity is a challenge for many organizations, especially small businesses with

 little budget or limited time to determine the best resources for making things more efficient. Economists at the University of Warwick have found that happy employees are approximately 12 percent more productive—demonstrating the need to ensure employees have what they need to do their best. 

With new digital communication tools and management platforms arising, streamlining processes and tasks is becoming more manageable than ever. To assist in the search, below is information about five tools all with an aim of making internal tasks more productive and efficient for teams. The tools listed are usually not top-of-mind for HR departments but are unconventional platforms for strengthening the efficiency of a process within a company.

Slack

Helping to ease communication and minimize the void between international teams, Slack is designed to enable seamless and faster communication between employees. 

The platform assists in greater sharing and collaboration and works to reduce the influx of chain emails and threads across the company. The greater ease in communication via Slack helps employees get in touch more efficiently and more productively.

Slack works by allowing employers to send direct messages to individual employees, public channels for teams or private channels for sensitive topics.

Typeform

By eliminating time spent on collating employee feedback, Typeform's communication tools allow employers to collect and share information. The company is working to improve productivity by reducing the time and spend on paper processes—something that can be automated and optimized through the use of Typeform.

Typeform has endless use cases—everything from microsites for small businesses to internal surveys for collecting employee feedback. Available in both free and pro versions, it allows users to simply sign up and start building on their own, or by using a template.

Thrive Day Planner

Designed to help entrepreneurs map out their road to success, Thrive Day Planner organizes the goals and tasks needed to meet a certain objective.

The planner enables entrepreneurs and employees alike to project a timeline for achieving certain goals within their organization. Effectively prioritizing objectives, Thrive Day Planner is a more productive tool in creating a roadmap to success. Thrive Day Planner works on your phone or tablet, wherein you can insert daily tasks and priorities. It also provides space to add extra commentary for reflection. 

Trello

Trello is a platform intended for team collaboration on projects. By showing progress and enabling interactive engagement from the entire team, Trello helps teams stay productive and continue to keep on top of managing their projects.

Trello is especially useful for global companies and allows teams to plan upcoming resources and tasks to better prioritize internally. Trello works by organizing various cards on specific tasks and projects. Once a card has been started, comments, attachments, and due dates can then be added to each individual card.

Experts Exchange

Experts Exchange is an online tech community helping companies with any IT or technical related issues they may have. Useful for those who use technology on a daily basis, Experts Exchange improves productivity by sourcing problems to the cloud without needing to call customer service.

Experts Exchange is a simple solution to solving everyday tech problems that reduces employees’ time spent searching online or on hold. It is available in a Basic Free version, as well as a plus version. Users can login and ask different technical questions and view solutions, articles or videos for different inquiries.