Sometimes, with all of the fun and entertaining technology around us, it can be hard to remember how helpful technology actually is. It isn’t just here to make our movie nights better or our cars more fun to drive. Technology, at its core, is here to improve our lives by making everyday tasks run smoother. This is especially true when it comes to the workplace.
Whatever your industry is, managing projects and daily tasks is vital for a smooth-operating company. Thanks to technology, there are multiple options for software that does just that. Mobile and desktop applications such as Slack, Monday and Basecamp are programs designed to help you assign tasks to individual team members, actively monitor their current status and collect the finished products.
Slack, like the other platforms, gives employees and bosses the ability of instant collaboration. If you are having a hard time imagining what Slack actually is, imagine a well-organized group drop box with the ability to instant-message, video-chat and screen-share.
As an employee, this is beneficial because you can work remotely. Long, drawn-out days in the office aren’t always necessary and this program allows you to stay connected as if you were at work while you are away. It also benefits employees by providing collective assistance. If you had a problem or a question with something on your project, you can get help from co-workers and bosses. Slack is so helpful to businesses. You’ll see top companies such as Jet, Lyft, 21st Century Fox, Shopify and even NASA take advantage of the software.
Another technology that is creating a better work environment is a platform called Glint. Glint is designed to increase employee engagement and employee satisfaction, develop your people and improve overall business results. They achieve these results through a real-time feedback platform that takes employees’ results/opinions and delivers solutions to solve any problems.
Glint gathers feedback from employees via a quick questionnaire with levels of satisfaction for each question. Human resources and managers can watch the Glint dashboard and monitor the real-time results. The collected results can then be broken down and viewed by gender, age, department and more. Furthermore, Glint creates graphs and charts trends so that current opinions can be compared to those of years past.
Where this program will really pay off is the proactive insight that Glint provides. This helps reduce the risk of a problem occurring. An additional tool that Glint provides is the predictive analytics. Thanks to these two functions, a company can be alerted to an employee population that may be at risk for problems. If you own or manage a company, you know how important all of these features are, especially with how hard it is to find and keep employees.
Glint doesn’t stop at just showing you the problem. It takes it a step further by providing integrated action planning to each manager. Managers are taught why each engagement issue matters and how to take action to alleviate the issues. After a manager or human resources representative takes action, Glint tracks and displays the impact of their actions over time.
While Glint was created specifically for the workplace and hasn’t branched out into other aspects of life just yet, Fitbit has seemingly done just the opposite. Fitbit, the health tracking wearable tech, has recently seen growth of use in the corporate world. Companies are paying for an employee’s Fitbit and motivating them with contests.
Fitbit has highlighted some of the recent success stories from Emory University and the South Carolina State House. At Emory University, 92 percent of its employees said they felt more motivated to be more active than before. And at the South Carolina State House, 18 percent of participants lost significant weight or are no longer obese. Those results were obtained simply by providing their employees with a Fitbit.
Simply giving your employees a Fitbit may get you results, but why stop there? Other companies are taking this a step further and creating competitions designed to get even better results. A monthly competition of who can take the most steps or a prize drawing for only the employees that increased their steps by 15 percent for that week are both simple challenges that increase engagement.
Companies that are giving out these fitness trackers are not just giving out an ordinary piece of tech. The latest model of Fitbit, the Fitbit Charge 3, combines fitness tracking with smartwatch functionality. The Charge 3 is water-resistant up to 50 meters, provides 24/7 heartbeat monitoring, tracks your sleep, displays smartphone notifications and provides goal-based exercise plans, all while keeping a charge for up to seven days.
One reoccurring theme when looking at technology is the retooling of a specific product or service for a completely unique purpose. This results in technology spreading to even more places than before. Thanks to this, whatever your occupation might be, technology is surely making your life easier. From the human resources director for an entire McDonald’s who is using Glint, to the minimum wage cashier who takes a customer’s order on a touch screen POS, technology is helping everyone.
Bahar Ferguson is president of Wasatch I.T., a Utah provider of outsourced IT services for small and medium-sized businesses.