“Improved productivity means less sweat, not more.”- Henry Ford
A productive workforce is one of the biggest assets your business organization can possess. Productive employees accomplish more, deliver better quality of work, and lead an organization to success. As a result, you make every possible effort to cultivate a productive workforce. But, have you tried using the best Kanban boards project management tools in your organization? If not, it might be exactly what your employees need to function as their best productive selves. Following are five ways project management tools can improve the productivity of your employees.
5 ways project management tools can improve employee productivity:
- It automates tasks:
Task automation is one of the biggest benefits of using project management tools. When your employees don’t have to do repetitive tasks but the tool is there to perform those tasks instead of them, their productivity will naturally improve. It is like they’ll have a personal assistant to handle repetitive tasks for them, which will free them to focus more on other important tasks. This will reduce their stress levels, which further improves productivity. When we feel stressed, we cannot perform at our best and our efficiency drops as there is an inverse relationship between stress and productivity. So, project management tools can help your employees with stress management and enhance their productivity.
- It improves team collaboration:
Projects require teamwork and effective collaboration can improve the overall productivity of an entire team. With the availability of project management tools, teammates no longer have to depend on email to communicate with each other and discuss updates. Rather, they can easily track the status of the tasks that were assigned to their teammates via the project management tool. This saves their precious time which otherwise gets lost in sending emails and calling their teammates. Moreover, switching from doing a particular task to emailing often disturbs focus. When employees can know the updates without making the switch, their focus remains intact. This leads to a significant improvement in their efficiency.
- It helps prioritize tasks that prevent multitasking:
“Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.” These words by Marilyn Vos Savant represent the truth that we often fail to see. When we are multitasking, we are distracted rather than being productive. If we are working on two tasks simultaneously, how can we be well-focused on one? When we aren’t properly focused on a task, we cannot function as our best productive selves. Project management tools can help your employees prioritize tasks and avoid multitasking. They can start with the most important task, complete it and then proceed towards the next task.
- It makes file access and sharing easier:
When working together, employees often have to share files with each other. Project management tools make this process easier for them. They provide a secure space where users can easily share feedback with each other and make the desired changes in the shared documents and files. Moreover, the project management tool also maintains a changelog which is a tracker that keeps a record of any change that impacted the scope, schedule, or cost of the project. This helps maintain transparency within the team, which prevents misunderstandings and conflicts. When there are no conflicts, teammates develop good relationships with each other, which increases their happiness and leads to improvement in their overall efficiency.
- It improves time management:
Productivity measures the amount of work that gets done within a given duration of time. To improve productivity, it is crucial to increase the amount of work that gets accomplished within a particular amount of time or we can say that the duration of time needed should be decreased. This is possible only with proper time management. By managing every minute of their work time well, employees can certainly achieve more in a given amount of time than earlier. But, time management is a challenging task and we all know that. Project management tools (such as the Tomato Timer, which utilizes the Pomodoro Technique) make the challenging task simpler. It helps set timelines for each task, track task progress, time spent by workers on different tasks, and so on. All these things help improve time management, which ultimately improves productivity.
Project management tools are immensely beneficial in enhancing employee productivity. The above-mentioned points elucidate the same in detail. If you are also eager to improve your workforce’s productivity, you should try to use a project management tool in your organization. Now, wishing you All the Best and immense success in all your endeavors.
