Do you know that 89% of employees prefer to work alone to be at their productive best?
Yes, you read that right! But why would they want to operate in silos when collaborative team efforts are the need of the hour?
Is your SMB facing low-productivity issues too? Are some of your highly productive employees have gone off the boil lately? Have you tried to identify the reasons for their below-par productivity?
To begin with, there could be many reasons why some of your employees are off the mark. Let’s take a look at some common culprits that prevent your workforce from delivering along the expected lines.
Five Big Reasons for Low Employee Productivity That SMBs Should Identify ASAP
Chatty Coworkers and Office Noises
Modern workspaces can be highly distracting. How? Just imagine an office space where 5-6 people work together on a common desk without any partition between them. There’s bound to be a lot of chat going around, which can get noisy and distracting if it happens too frequently. Unsurprisingly, a report has shown that chatty coworkers and office noise are found to be the top distractions for 80% of workers in the same study.
Unnecessary Long Meetings
So you thought that all your team meetings are doing your SMB all good? Not exactly. Unnecessary long meetings cut into your employees’ productive time and make them lose their focus. And when your employees lose their focus, it can take as long as 2 hours in a day to find their momentum again. Ideally, your project managers should not schedule team meetings of more than 15 minutes in the morning to receive/give updates to team members. Remove unwanted meetings, and whenever you schedule them, keep them short, to the point.
Lack of Work-Life Balance
The lack of work-life balance is another common culprit that affects the productivity of a large number of employees, especially remote workers who tend to work longer than scheduled hours due to mounting pressure to meet deadlines. The Yerkes-Dodson Law asserts that when we’re under excessive (or too little) pressure, performance can dip to alarming levels.
Multitasking
Are some of your employees having too much on their plates? It’s a common tendency of some managers to assign multiple tasks to their employees to get more done out of them. However, little do they realize that by cultivating the habit of multitasking in their top-performers, they are not allowing them to focus their attention on a single task. Switching back and forth between tasks diverts employees’ attention. This can lead to mistakes and inefficiencies in work, which can hurt both the productivity and morale of employees.
Poor Management
Another main reason for productivity levels in the workplace is poor employee management. Some reports have shown that nearly 80% of employees have experienced bad management, which invariably leads to a lack of engagement, loss of motivation, and low self-confidence among employees. Do you expect such team members to deliver the goods? You would be grossly wrong if you think so.
Top Productivity Tools for SMBs
Running a business of any type and size can be a challenging endeavor. There’s so much to manage in a limited time, with limited resources at your disposal. Manual procedures can be time-consuming, tedious, and drain your workforce both physically and mentally.
The good news for SMBs amid all this hustle and bustle is the easy availability of good productivity tools. These tools can help your employees keep track of their performance, automate manual procedures, and eliminate/bring down distractions that can hamper their productivity.
But wait. There are so many productivity tools out there. Each claiming itself to be the best and ahead of others. How do you figure out what productivity tool would best meet your SMB’s requirements?
We have done our research on some of the best productivity tools available and shortlisted those that offer the best bang for the buck to SMBs. Isn’t that what you want? A productivity tool with all the bells and whistles that won’t dig a hole in your pockets.
Related: 8 Highly Effective Online Collaboration Tools For Your Remote Team
Let’s take a look at five awesome productivity tools that can be the change your SMB and its workforce have been looking for.
PixTeller
PixTeller is a top-rated, easy-to-use online image editor and animation maker that allows you to create animated GIFs, logos, photo collages, posters, invitations, banners, quote pictures, video thumbnails, and much more.
Packed with advanced features, PixTeller offers you more than 100,000 pre-designed graphic image templates and over 5,000 premade animated video templates to create fabulous images and animated videos in minutes. The tool simplifies the design process so that anyone can bring their ideas to life with visually stunning graphics.
Main Features Include:
- PixBot
- Custom graphic image templates
- Premade animated video templates
- Beautiful free photos and illustrations
- Gradient colors
- Animation timeline
Pricing: The Pro Graphic tool is priced at $7/month, billed annually. The Diamond plan with Graphics and Animation tool is priced at $12/month, billed annually.
ProofHub
ProofHub is a flexible and powerful productivity and team collaboration tool. It enables organizations and individuals to have a Bird’s eye view of the entire project timeline from a centralized location. Users can stay updated on every development throughout the project execution phase.
Designed for teams of all sizes working together across various industries, ProofHub offers a range of features that allows users to coordinate on tasks, improve intra-team communication, track time, manage digital files, create workflows, and much more. The minimal learning curve, ease-of-use, and fixed-rate pricing plans make ProofHub a highly recommended tool if you are looking to maximize employee productivity.
Main Features Include:
- Online proofing
- Custom fields
- Table view
- Kanban boards
- Gantt chart
- Group chat
- Online discussions
- Task management
Pricing: The Paid pricing starts at $45 per month, billed annually.
10to8
10to8 is a leading online appointment scheduling software that enables HR managers and project managers to reduce their workload by allowing easy and hassle-free scheduling and running of both virtual and in-person appointments. Users can automate daily tedious and time-consuming tasks. Integrations with Zoom and Microsoft Teams allows for an effortless hosting of video meetings.
Suitable for both small companies and large-scale enterprises, 10to8 also helps to improve customer experience as they can book slots specified by your business. The daily appointment calendar allows you to share your availability calendar with others and schedule meetings.
Main Features Include:
- Absentee management
- Calendar management
- Multiple appointments
- Real-time entry updates
- Mobile integrations
- Client database
- Customizable fields
Pricing: A Free Forever plan for small businesses. The paid plan starts from $9.6/month for 2 staff logins.
Google Drive
Google Drive is a free online cloud storage solution that eliminates the need to store and organize all your crucial files and documents in a centralized location. You can access all your digital files from any device connected to the internet.
You can share and collaborate on your files and documents as well as limit their accessibility by choosing certain team members you want to share these files with. Users also benefit from Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. A Free plan comes with 15 GB of free storage which is more than enough for many people. You can upload and store not just documents but audio files, video files, and images to Google servers.
Main Features Include:
- File upload and storage
- Secure file sharing
- Access files from any location
- Comprehensive search
- Data encryption
- 15 GB free storage space
- Integration with other tools
Pricing: Free up to 15 GB storage. 100GB now costs just $1.99 per month. A terabyte of online storage can be bought for $9.99 a month.
TimeDoctor
Time Doctor is an accurate and reliable time tracking tool that is designed to increase the productivity of users. Using Time Doctor, SMBs across various industries can easily track the amount of time employees spend on specific tasks and projects. This cloud-based employee monitoring software offers tools for web activity monitoring, payroll management, web activity, and time tracking. The screen monitoring feature captures employee activity via screenshots. The software can also be used by SMBs to track time spent by employees on calls, meetings, chats, internet usage, and other activities.
Main Features Include:
- Time tracking and employee monitoring
- Online timesheets and payroll
- Project management and budgeting
- Distraction alerts
- Productivity measuring and summary reports
- Screenshots and activity levels
- Website and App monitoring
- Customization options
Pricing: The Basic plan is priced at $7/user/month.
Hirebook
Hirebook is an employee engagement software designed for managers to boost team productivity. It offers greater visibility of the team’s performance via OKRs, task boards, and meeting management. Managers can get a comprehensive dashboard for understanding where the team needs a push, and act in a data-backed way. The tool can also be used for building organizational charts and tracking KPIs for projects.
Small businesses can use Hirebook for enhancing managerial prowess. With a consolidated suite for employee monitoring, feedback and communication, managers always have the right information close at hand.
Main Features include:
- Check-ins for communicating with employees personally
- OKR management for motivating employees for pre-defined goals
- Meeting schedule management for managing time availability
- Task management for improving performance
- KPI tracking for ensuring the project meets all its objectives
- Org charts for building and viewing organizational hierarchies
Pricing: Hirebook is charged at$10.00 per user per month when billed annually.
Calendar.com
Calendar.com is one of the easiest to use and most advanced calendar tools available for SMBs. It simplifies the task of scheduling meetings with the help of shareable links that sync up with your personal calendar. You can hold team meetings with 0 conflicts and keep your conversations always on time. It also works as a smart calendaring system for keeping day-to-day activities on track. Users can share their calendar within the team or with intended parties in just one click.
Main Features include:
- Team meeting schedules
- Share meeting invites with the help of links
- Shared team calendar for daily activities
- Schedule multiple parties in the same meeting
- Improve productivity with smart calendar syncing
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $6/user/month, billed annually.
nTask
nTask is an all-in-one smart task management tool that users can use to organize tasks online and track all the task activities, time log and project updates from a common platform. nTask is used by over 250,000 companies in 155 countries to ensure systematic planning, creation, and managing of tasks. You can bring clarity to your team by assigning to-do lists and tasks so that everyone is notified in real-time. The tool has a wide range of task management features that help companies and individuals to manage their work smartly to ensure timely completion and delivery.
Main features include:
- Project management
- Task management
- Kanban boards
- Gantt charts
- Team management
- Time tracking and Timesheets
- Meeting management
- Issue tracking
- Risk management
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $3/user/month, billed annually.
Visme
Visme is one useful tool to design, store, and share your content. Visme labels itself not as a tool but the whole workshop. Whether you are an experienced designer or a rookie, you can easily use Visme to create visually appealing brand experiences for your business. You get all the assets, graphics, and templates you need to create attractive presentations, reports, infographics and social media images in minutes. You can also create short videos and animations for your website and social media channels to further strengthen your brand presence.
Main features include:
- Icons
- Photos
- Data widgets
- Flowcharts
- Interactivity
- Integrations
- Collaboration
- Presenter studio
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $12.35/user/month, billed annually.
Hunter.io
Hunter.io is an email finder tool that lets email marketers find professional email addresses in seconds and reach out to people that matter for their businesses. This tool helps you search any domain for email addresses. Hunter.io is available as a Chrome extension and as Google Sheets add on. The app is easy to use and has recently integrated campaigns that enable you to perform direct outreach instead of uploading contacts to another CRM. The domain search provides the contact details (name, emails, telephone number) of all the people working in a company and the tool is completely legal.
Main features include:
- Domain search
- Email finder
- Email verifier
- Bulk tasks
- API for developers
- Google Sheets add-on
- App integrations
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $49 per month.
ZoomShift
ZoomShift is a popular scheduling software that enables businesses and individuals to create and manage employee schedules in a simple, hassle-free manner. Using ZoomShift, HR professionals and managers can manage employee availability, overtime, shift swaps, and time-off requests. By tracking employees’ time and schedules, businesses can save a lot of money on payroll as labor hours and equivalent costs are available as real-time view. Scheduling managers can easily notify members when open shifts are easily available.
Main features include:
- Work scheduling
- Time clock
- Timesheets
- Mobile apps
- Time tracking
- Time-off tracker
- Shift planning
- Shift swap
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $2/user/month.
ProProfs
ProProfs is a knowledge management software that hosts more than 100,000 pages of content in more than 70 languages. ProProfs make software tools that enable companies and organizations to have efficient employees and happier customers. This digital and online-based tool is easy to use even for beginners. To get the most out of this tool, you would need to pay for a full account although there’s a basic, free version. This tool allows teachers to share quizzes from anywhere. Students can participate in the quiz from their device in the class or outside it.
Main features include:
- Training maker
- Knowledge base
- Quiz maker
- Survey maker
- Help desk’
- Live chat
- Qualaroo insights
Pricing: Prices vary according to individual or company’s needs.
Nextiva
Nextiva is a top-rated business phone software that lets people use its business VoIP phone service, video conferencing, collaboration, and customer management. This business communication tool offers basic calling, faxing, and video conferencing. The phone service is reliable and efficient, and users get a wide range of advanced features beyond voice calling on every plan. You can talk to anyone through phone, text, video, email and instant messaging.
Main features include:
- Phone system
- Contact center
- Video meetings
- Collaboration
- Mobile app
- Analytics
- Call pop
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $18.95/user/month.
Niftypm
Nifty is a remote collaboration tool that helps to improve team productivity by reducing project development cycles and automating progress reporting. This tool combines all important features of project management into one software so you can control various aspects of your tasks and projects from a single platform. The software improves teamwork as it brings all team members and clients on the same page. You don’t need to switch tools for collaboration as it’s easy for teams to share ideas and feedback.
Main features include:
- Discussions
- Time tracking
- Tasks
- Docs and Files
- Reporting
- Project portfolios
- Gantt chart
- Project home
Pricing: The Paid plan starts at $39 per month, billed annually.
Zapier
Unlike a traditional communication tool, Zapier works behind the scenes to connect all the different applications you use so they can communicate and work together. Interested in combining data from your Shopify, Google Analytics, and Stripe accounts into a single Google Sheets report? Now you can. It only takes seconds to set up highly productive custom workflows that will save you hours every day with Zapier, thanks to its thousands of apps that can be connected in infinite ways.
Summing It Up
Efficiently utilizing employees’ work time remains one of the most important challenges for any SMB. Though it’s a fact that you cannot expect your employees to work all the time while doing their work, it’s important to make them accountable and conscious of their actions.
Therefore, using a good productivity tool makes sense, especially in these times when a large number of employees are working remotely from different geographical locations. The productivity tools listed here can help SMBs get more out of their teams by improving employee performance, employee efficiency, and employee productivity. Way to go!
