Archive for April, 2012
Minibreaks: When Not Working Means Working
Wrong kind of productivity minibreak (Image owned by Kellogg’s) |
Long Breaks v. Minibreaks
Burn in Before You Burn Out
Time outs is time management Minibreaks are just work time outs |
Where do Updates Come In?
By now, I’m pretty sure you can see how updates can benefit instead of hinder. They are just another minibreak for the employee to take. Instead of stressing about the halt in their time management, it has become a moment for them to pause and recover before resuming their productivity.
Updates Hurting Your Updates: The Unseen Bullet in Productivity’s Back
The Norm
Untimely Updates: The Double-edged Sword
Unforeseen Productivity Consequences Cited Here |
The Fork in the Road
Telework: The Next Stage in Work-Home Lifestyle
What is Teleworking / Workshifting?
Working shifting, or moving your work from the company office to the comforts of your home, isn’t a new concept. Numerous careers allow employees to work shift and complete their tasks from home. Yet it was never a largely accepted practice. Most of these were cases tied to specific fields, whereas others allowed it in only specific cases, such as illness or overtime. This is no longer the stance. According to Randstad Canada’s latest global Workmonitor survey, “Telework”, or the concept of working from home, has begun to take root as more efficient than its counterpart.
What will Teleworking Do For Me?
The effect of telework is in the numbers Cited: Telework Research Network |
In the everyday world, the demands of life are often competing with the demands of work. This hurts productivity as people find themselves bouncing from one obligation to another. Employee motivation takes a hit when the stress becomes too great and the limited to non-existent leisure web access, such as social sites or online shopping, doesn’t help either. Employee productivity follows suit not long after. According to Stacy Parker, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Randstad Canada, this makes a good work life balance one of the premium qualities employees look for in their employers. Telework provides this solution and eliminates the problem by allowing them to easily manage both variants of tasks and maintain a healthier work-life balance. Beginning in Canada and rapidly moving to and from Southern California, telework is being utilized to give employees the ability to control their lives and stay motivated.
How Can I Make Sure It’s Working?
Not just the employees will benefit from work shifting Cited: Telework Research Network |
Some employers might wonder “Well if they are working from home, how can I make sure they’re being productive?” This is easily solved with SaaS (Software as a Service) tools such as WorkMeter that become cruxes in the telework community by allowing both the employer and the employee themselves to see their productivity levels. By workshifting and teleworking from the company’s computer, employees get the benefit of managing both lives in a healthy manner, employers get the benefit of a productivity increase, and both benefit by seeing an increase in company success.
Andre Angel, CBS with Doug McElvein
Improving Time Management On The Company Clock
Join us in listening below.
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Angel lays out the groundwork, explaining how the existence of four generations in the work place makes banning and blocking sites downright harmful rather than helpful to the company, who instead should utilize cooperative means to increase productivity. With 56% of college graduates saying they would not work for a company that banned social sites, Angel gives light to a global software called “WorkMeter,” currently in use by over 1,000 companies worldwide, that solves the issue of time wasting through self-motivation and self-correction.
Internet Freedom of the New Generation
Social Media More important than you’d think. |
The world is changing; specifically, working world. Steadily and no longer slowly, old mentalities are being replaced as new and fresh ideas and ideals are brought in through younger generations. From the world beyond the four-wall-cubicle, thoughts and expectations of freedom are being fought for. Now, that focus of freedom has seeped in from the cracks in the walls and has arrived at the working world with an entourage of young professionals and recent graduates.
933 believed having internet freedom and access to sites such as Facebook and Twitter was as “important as air, water, food, and shelter,” indicating a critical factor in employee motivation.
1,120 stated that they would accept lower-paying jobs that allowed them their freedom to social media and from internet blocks over a higher paying job that restricted them.
This new wave of future employees are emerging like a grass-root movement, refusing positions that don’t meet their freedom requirements and setting a new bar in employee-employer social media relations. This growing trend is something that old employers are having trouble adapting to.
If you’ve been keeping up with us, you know very well that maintaining and increasing productivity is always high on the employers list. So, naturally, when they see demands for increasing internet freedoms, they usually provoke thoughts of “Well why do you want more access” and “Are you going to be wasting time surfing the web as opposed to working?” But it doesn’t have to be that way.
This increased trend of internet freedom doesn’t come from the slackers; it comes from the motivators. They don’t see it as a sink hole to waste company time and money, but instead as a tool to pause and recharge their batteries. Job motivation is a large factor in productivity and if granting access to Twitter allows them to return to work refreshed, then so be it. In the end, the problem for the employers should be the websites themselves, but the time management of the employees.
The Middle Ground
Effective time management is where both the employers and employees must meet; granting access with the assurance that it won’t be abused. Here, conventional software and productivity monitoring programs don’t work since they focus on preventative measure, as opposed to motivational goals. They snoop and locate sites that employees spend a large amount of time on and place a website block, preventing future access.
Break Time and the Website Block: Friend or Foe?
Look at yourself now. Sitting there, many of you in that cubicle with those dull grey-colored walls surrounding you. If you an employee, you’re wondering if you’ll be caught or how you should be getting some work done, as opposed to taking your unplanned break time on the web. You revel in the fact that you found a way to entertain yourself around the website block. If you’re a supervisor, you’re basically wondering the same thing, with the added thought of whether or not there should be a website block on this.
Should you be taking your break time right now?
It’s not time wasting; it’s employee productivity enhancing!
Most popular website to block. Also the hardest. |
A relatively recent study was done by Don J.Q. Chen and Vivien K.G Lim of the National University of Singapore in 2011 proving that allowing unplanned break times on the internet (in moderation of course) and not placing a website block on entertainment and social sites do boost productivity. You’ll find this much similar to the older study I mentioned in the past by Dr. Brent Coker of the Department of Management and Marketing at Melbourne University in 2009, which had garnered the same results.
Don’t block. Manage.