Five practical productivity tips for businesses

Overview

• Technology is one of the key drivers of productivity in business, and also makes it easier to measure your output.

• The right digital technology can help you to automate processes, plug skills gaps and measure employee satisfaction, all helping to boost your productivity as a business.

• Vodafone Business has a range of solutions to help your business make the most of digital technology and power up productivity.

Understanding productivity

The term ‘productivity’ can feel abstract – but looking at key areas of your business through the lens of productivity can make a huge difference to performance.

Let’s explore how productivity can help you achieve tangible, positive and measurable business outcomes. We’ll also outline the pivotal role of technology in unlocking productivity gains – and highlight opportunities to measure productivity, so you can tell if your efforts are making a difference.

How can we improve productivity?

The Productivity Institute identifies three key drivers of productivity in business: organisation, people and technology. Over one third of organisations identify technology as having the greatest potential to improve productivity.¹

Digital technology now reaches almost every area of business. This creates major opportunities to connect people, processes and assets in ways that can transform organisations. With that in mind, here are our top tips for improving business productivity:

1. Make more effective use of your time

Technology is key to improving communication and collaboration, helping teams and individuals work more productively. The right software as a service (SaaS) tools can help you facilitate remote working and cut down on travel time – enabling things like real-time virtual huddles to accelerate decision-making.

It’s all about reducing the time spent on low-value, administrative or non-chargeable tasks – and making sure technology itself doesn’t get in the way. 83% of UK workers believe that the right technology can speed up mundane tasks, allowing them to contribute more meaningfully to their organisations.²

2. Accelerate your digital transformation

90% of UK businesses are embracing cloud and digital transformation³, integrating digital technology into all areas of the business. This creates flexible technology environments that boost individual productivity. What’s more, the cloud-based tools and platforms at the heart of digital transformation can uncover a wealth of data for analytics and productivity measurement.

By combining and analysing data from multiple sources, you can improve decision-making, flex IT resources up and down, prioritise IT workloads, and allocate extra resource when needed.

3. Boost employee satisfaction

Happy employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy ones.⁴ While employee output is reasonably straightforward to measure, employee satisfaction and morale often needs a more nuanced approach.

Employee surveys can help you understand how your people are feeling and identify where technology can improve both employee satisfaction and productivity rates.

4. Adopt automation for better processes

Tools that make your back-end operations more efficient can help you get products and services to market faster. Automating and streamlining processes in areas like research and development, sales and marketing, warehousing, logistics and fulfilment will help you drive down operating costs and reinvest your resources elsewhere.

Automation can also help reduce human errors, improving output quality and reducing the need for remediation. Digitised and automated processes are typically more agile, enabling you to dynamically respond to market demands and opportunities.

5. Upskill your employees

Skills shortages are a longstanding productivity blocker. Generative AI tools enable businesses to rethink how technology can plug skills gaps and complement existing capabilities. For example, 28% of businesses now envision AI chatbots and virtual assistants covering their customer support roles.⁵

It’s important to be mindful of employee’s anxieties around roles being made redundant by AI. Emphasise how AI tools will enable your employees to move towards more rewarding, strategic and value-added work.

It’s time to turn up the dial

There’s never been a more empowering choice of productivity-boosting technology to complement your employees’ strengths. People can focus on tasks where emotions, intuition and creativity are key, while AI can focus on tasks where speed and volume of output exceed human capability.

We’re ready to help you make the most of the opportunity with our end-to-end connectivity and security services. We have a proven track record in helping businesses drive digital transformation, increase output, boost growth and extend competitive advantage.

Ready to power up productivity in your business? Contact Vodafone Business today.