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How to Improve Employee Productivity Through IT Improvements
IT departments juggle many responsibilities, keeping organizations secure and efficient. But many people fail to realize that IT improvements have the potential to boost employee productivity across multiple other departments.
How is this the case? And how can you consistently improve employee productivity through IT improvements?
Utilize Wireless Technology (and Conduct a Wireless Site Survey)
Wireless technology has many advantages over wired connections. You’ll have more flexibility, less dependency on direct connections, and of course, less messy wires to deal with. But wireless local area networks (WLANs) can come with their own assortment of challenges.
You can start addressing these challenges by conducting a wireless site survey, which will give you the opportunity to assess how far your wireless network reaches, analyze connections, and proactively acknowledge any potential problems employees might have.
Once you correct all the issues you uncover, your employees will be able to connect to your network much more consistently and do the work they need to do.
Maximize Uptime
Next, maximize network uptime. When your systems are down, nobody is going to be able to do their job effectively. Most of your employees are going to sit around, frustrated and waiting for the systems to come back online. This is a major source of time waste that's almost completely within your control.
Thankfully, there are many ways you can maximize uptime:
Practice preventative maintenance. Instead of doing reactive maintenance, practice proactive, preventative maintenance. Make sure to replace components as needed, conduct regular inspections, and fix potentially problematic areas before they actually become problems.
· Utilize ongoing monitoring. Practice ongoing monitoring as well. It's important to pay attention to how your system is running and flag any potential issues that could result in downtime. With the right tools and systems, you should be able to automate this and get alerts when something needs your attention.
· Respond to issues immediately. If and when you do notice a potential problem, it's important to respond to it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Make sure your IT staff members are fully equipped with the education, training, and resources they need to do this properly.
Acquire Better Devices (and Update Them Regularly)
If you've ever been stuck with an old, outdated computer, you know the pain of trying to be productive with a device that simply won't cooperate. That's why it's important to acquire better devices for your employees and update them regularly. It's also important to keep your software updated so employees are always working with the latest version, both for productivity and security reasons.
Train and Educate Your Employees on New Technologies
When you roll out a new technology, like a new software platform, it's important to spend time training and educating your employees. If you've done your job right, the platform should be intuitive enough that most people can manage to use it with instinct alone. But you're going to see much higher productivity if your employees understand the ins and outs of the system more thoroughly.
Provide Opportunities for Self-Help
Sometimes, when employees have issues with technology, they feel like their only option is to call into the IT department and wait on hold until someone is available to help deal with their problem. This is both a source of time waste and a source of frustration for the employees making the call, especially if wait times are long. That's why it's important to provide opportunities for self-help, so employees can solve some of their own problems and move on to be more productive. Providing in-depth knowledge bases and accessible tools can go a long way.
Free Up IT Department Resources
Finally, make sure you free up some of your IT department employees so they can adequately respond to obstacles that stand in the way of employee productivity. Not all of your issues will be resolvable through self-help; in many cases, employees will require the intervention of more skilled people. Automation can help you minimize manual effort so your IT department staff members are more available.
Get Employee Feedback (and Act on It)
If you want to keep increasing employee productivity, collect more employee feedback. What are the technological barriers that stand between your employees and higher productivity? Are there any changes related to the IT department that your employees would like to see? Non-IT employees aren't always the best source of advice when it comes to improving your IT department, but if many employees share similar grievances and complaints, it's a sign you should take action.
Even a handful of IT changes should be enough for you to see meaningful improvements to employee productivity throughout your organization. As long as you're willing to make that initial investment, you'll stand to see better results.
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