When it comes to the productivity of your staff and business, communication is key.
Think about it, if you’ve given your employee a task to go away and complete, but the task wasn’t communicated thoroughly, it’s likely that the employee will spend longer getting it done due to going back and forth trying to gather information.
Communication hurdles such as this are a waste of time and money. They can often mean the difference between success and failure, which is why communication is possibly the most important part of efficiently running a business.
The problem is, communication overkill can hinder productivity too.
According to a Fonality/Google Consumer survey, workers spend an average of around two hours 12 minutes a week trying unsuccessfully to communicate with business stakeholders.
The reason? Having far too many means of communication.
Whether it’s email, phone calls, social media or Skype, using various separate channels can serve up a whole host of issues for your business, from mixed messages received by your customers to updates between colleagues that are missed completely.
In addition to this, the survey found that employees spend an average of almost 13 minutes a day trying to schedule meetings or conference calls, with 12.5% admitting they spend over an hour per day on such tasks.
So, what’s the answer?
Unified Communications (also known as UC) can help to solve these issues and keep your business interactions balanced.
It seamlessly integrates all methods of communication (messaging, phone calls, video calls, social media, online chat, etc.) into one easily-manageable system to help make your business more responsive, more agile, more consistent and more efficient.
With a real-time method of communication that can be accessed by staff, customers and suppliers alike, you can close the gap on wasted time and keep your business running smoothly.
Most importantly, it can help to motivate your workforce and increase productivity across the board. Here’s how:
Personal productivity
Unified Communications provide your business with a quick and simple way to connect with every single employee. It lets you know their current status, what device they’re using, where they’re working from and how to contact them. This saves you the time you’d usually spend chasing them up or trying to get a message to them, so you’re freed up to focus on what really matters – tackling the workload!
Thanks to UC, any messages you send to colleagues will reach them immediately, regardless of what device they’re using. You can send and receive emails, share documents, access up-to-date project management and even hold meetings and conferences, from laptops, smart phones and tablets.
This means that if an employee is working from home or heading to a trade show, they will still have full access to the system, as long as they’re connected to the internet. In effect, this will help staff feel more organised and empowered to work efficiently from any location, as well as giving them the confidence to secure faster sales and make effective decisions while working away from the office.
In the office, UC gives your employees the freedom to hotdesk, where they can relocate to another workstation without giving up their personal settings and phone access. They’re able to sync their devices and use the same voicemail across the board so that everything works remotely. This allows for productivity to remain unaffected by unforeseeable circumstances such as computer issues, which would usually stop workflow in its tracks.
Team productivity
A report from Sonus Networks states that 18% of projects are delayed due to poor team collaboration, with 16% delayed because the decision maker can’t be reached in a timely manner.
Unified Communications offer a more efficient way for colleagues to collaborate. With real-time communication, high definition video chat and the ability to work from anywhere on the same applications, teams don’t necessarily have to be in the same room to work together effectively. Ad hoc meetings are never a problem, and any new team members can be added quickly to conversations, without feeling as though they’re out of the loop.
Furthermore, instant messaging, email and file sharing is easy with UC. The ability to update the system with all relevant project details makes it so that you won’t have to waste time holding meetings to catch everyone up on the latest developments. Thanks to this, downtime is reduced, giving you and your team more time to be proactive, without any inconvenient delays.
When utilised well, UC can be a powerful tool that will help your business thrive. Not only does it give you more control over your company, but with its ability to increase productivity, it can help position your business as fast, professional, responsive and reliable, putting you light-years ahead of the competition.
If you’re interested in hearing more about how Unified Communications can boost your performance and help your workforce prosper, get in touch with our team today.
