Save our workforce! There must be a better way.

 

Post written by Maya Pillai.

The latest global report from McKinsey Global Institute: “Unlocking value and productivity through social technology" show that on an average an employee spends 61% of their day writing emails, searching for information and collaborating internally. This leaves only 39% of the time to accomplish their role-specific tasks – or what is more commonly called “work”.  

At this point let’s take a look at how to unclutter our email inbox and also find out whether there are other modes of communication that are more collaborative and productive than email. 

Tips to unclutter your email inbox 

• The first and foremost thing we all need to do is fix a time for checking emails. Let’s say for an hour a day. That is once in the morning as soon as you take your first coffee break and then again after your afternoon tea break. 
• Make your own system. Email programs today have a feature to create folders - here you can label them accordingly. Here you can store the emails that fall under a specified title and you have search option if you want to retrieve them later. Start using good and descriptive subject lines when sending emails. This will help you to search for the communication faster. Also ask those with whom you communicate frequently to do the same. 
• Start using block sender instead of unsubscribe, for newsletters where you don't trust they will carry out your wishes. Many email service providers have included a simple Block Sender button. 
• Once you have read the mail and dealt with it, ensure you file it or delete it. Never hoard emails to save email addresses. If you want to get in touch with someone again, save the information in the email address book.  Respond quickly to emails that require only a crisp and short response. Learn to prioritize the emails you receive. 

There are a few social media tools such as Twitter, micro-blogging and Dropbox that can decrease your dependence on email.  It is a proven fact that if you spend less time on reading and responding to emails, it will increase you productivity. So which tools should we take time to use on the job. We recommend checking out the following for ways to save our workforce:

• Organizations should encourage their employees to use social media technologies such as Chatter and Yammer the products of Salesforce.com and Microsoft respectively. 
• However, the productivity of the workforce will not increase simply because the organization has installed social software. Also ensure that the employees are aware of how to use these social tools. One should assume that just because people tweet socially, they will transfer the same habit to work automatically. 
• Make a simple telephone call instead of sending an email whenever possible. This saves a lot of time. 
• Use software such as Dropbox to upload files and videos instead of send it as attachments to various people. These files and folders can be shared among various users.
• You save a lot of time by having a quick discussion instead of writing lengthy emails.
• Established and start-up companies should introduce good social technologies or get a software such as Unified Inbox installed to increase the productivity of their employees and to reduce the email inbox clutter.

Join the "save our workforce" movement today and let us know what tools and techniques you recommend to regain the time lost to email.

Why it's important for all of us to support the Startup Eco-system

Unified Inbox is sponsoring the Palmerston North Startup Weekend on the 24th of August and here are our reasons why.

We see startup events as a key part in developing a thriving startup ecosystem in New Zealand and beyond. They are the risk-free, well-supported playground that allows our fledging entrepreneurs the chance to flex their wings before they take flight and create benefits that all of us will reap in coming years.

• job creation
• innovation and creativity
• it's fun

Job Creation 
The Kauffman Foundation in the US has looked into the dynamic between job creation and job destruction and has identified startups as a key force in driving job creation in the economy.

“Put simply, this paper shows that without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. Economy.”

For our part, that seems reason enough to do what we can to aid their development.

Innovation and creativity

• “Give me the freedom of a tight brief” - this quote from a creative is one of my earliest business memories and in the startup weekend process – that 6pm Sunday pitch deadline is about as tight as it gets! 
• A focused team to bounce ideas off – check. 
• Support and input from smart advisors – check. 

Is it any wonder that the output of startup weekends can surprise and delight in their originality and innovation.

It's fun
Have you ever been to a Startup Weekend? When we attend, we can't help but have fun. The drive, the energy in the room is infectious and often leads us to some of our most productive work in the weeks following. 

For companies that are considering getting involved and sponsoring these events, we can only say  - “see you at the next one!” 

 

What Unified Inbox offers startup companies attending the Startup Weekend events.
Unified Inbox is the platform on which a small company can seamlessly grow into a big one. By bringing all your Twitter, Facebook and emails into the same inbox, and assigning permissions to your team, as appropriate, you ensure that all communications are answered in a timely manner by the person best equipped. 

 

Flexible Working beyond the Olympics

Flexible working during the Olympics, a choice many UK commuters crave but how many companies actually view this as a realistic option?

Citrix Systems research finds the 24% of respondents intend on implementing flexible working during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The YouGov survey, which polled more than 500 senior decision-makers at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the London area, also found that only 10% of respondents will adopt new working practices. It also found:

·         58% of respondents are prepared to cope with the expected disruption.

·         64% of respondents believe that some staff will be late into work, with 27% concerned that they will not get in at all.

·         37% of respondents trust their staff to make up any time lost.

·         56% of respondents expect more staff to work from home.

Andrew Millard, senior director, Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) marketing for the online service division at Citrix, said: “Despite the fact that so many anticipate Olympics-related disruptions, it is surprising that almost 60% of SMEs don’t think that any formal change to existing ways of working is either relevant or necessary. With London in the global spotlight over this period, it provides the ideal opportunity for UK employers to show that it is possible to reap the benefits of hosting the games and avoid the fall-out of any pressure on the transport network, by using collaboration technologies to ensure their staff can work effectively wherever they are.”

The UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced earlier this year that the government was considering extending flexible working patterns beyond parents in order to make it “much more common – a cultural norm”.

Currently it is possible for employees to request flexible working patterns and in fact this is something which has been encouraged during the Olympic period due to the expected increased strain on the London transport system. Having visited London many times I am aware that even during the quietest commuting periods it can be hellish, as such I can only imagine what the poor souls who face this regularly are facing for the rest of this summer.

I expect that many, if given the chance opted to work from home during this period, but why not continue this after the games? Some may be restricted to continuing the standard 9 – 5 work pattern during this period but others may have experienced increased flexibility. If only this were to continue, both employees and employers could benefit from this change.

Employees who have the chance to work flexible working patterns feel an increased sense of loyalty and improved morale. Management may view this as a “nice” employee relations exercise that falls under the umbrella of human resources but perhaps now is the perfect time for this to change. Remote working does not mean working from a kitchen table surrounded by noisy children and builders. It means working from anywhere that is not the firm’s physical office. This can be done easily with modern technology such as Skype and Facetime for video conferencing, combined with tools such as, Unified Inbox, Dropbox and Google Docs for collaborative working.

Employers often argue that they cannot be certain that their employees are working hard and an element of trust in every working relationship but unproductive people will finds ways to procrastinate wherever they are. Whether they are working remotely from home or gossiping with colleagues at work.

Remote working gives employees flexibility and can also give employers access to new markets. By allowing them to coach a sports team, help with their children’s homework or give piano recitals it means that they can then work extra hours that evening talking with clients in another time zone. It is the 21^st century so operating in a global scale is the norm, very rarely will you only have clients/colleagues within your country and by offering this flexibility you can build better relationships with those away from the office.

Remote working can also have an enormous benefit in reducing sick days, according to a study of 24,000 IBM staff worldwide, employees who were able to work flexibly provided an additional 19 hours a week before they reached the same levels of stress as those who did not work flexibly. By doing this you will reduce current levels of sickness which is something all employers seek, with flexible working looking more and more like a win – win solution.

Remote working can also manage the high percentage of office space that employers fail to utilise. BT allows their staff to vary their hours for a range of different reasons, with an additional benefit in a reduction of office space which has apparently saved BT £500m. Another benefit is the removal of “dead commuting time”, the time wasted on journeys to and from work which then also helps reduce environmental impact, with 22% of domestic carbon emissions in the UK coming from traffic. The government is considering legislation to reduce parking spaces at work, with Nottingham leading the way with a “workplace parking levy”. Opting for a remote working solution is a solution which will impress not only employees but shareholders also.

Currently the UK government is fighting Europe to prevent legislation which would make employees work less than 48 hours a week. The main debate in Europe relates to Working Time Regulations 1998, which implements the European Working Time Directive and whether the UK can ask its employees to sign a document in which they “opt out” of the 48 hour working week (aggregated over a 17 week reference period). Rather than relying on this companies should think imaginatively and by offering the flexibility to work remotely many of these issues can be avoided. Yes, meeting clients and colleagues face-to-face should be encouraged as it is an effective way to develop relationships, but by also offering flexibility and embracing the fact that we have moved on from the Victorian era the workforce of the future are free to grow. Employees should be judged by their result and not by attendance.

Flexible working can:

• Provide access to new markets
• Reduce sick days
• Free up office space
• Reduce your environment impact
• Meet the European Working Time Directive
• Improve efficiency
• Save money!

Please share your thoughts below.

 

Essential Software Tools for Startup Teams

Startup Weekend Auckland 2nd place getters JumpOnBoard.co hard at work. 
Photo courtesy of the wonderfully talented Janine Barr.

Post written by: Ursula Hoult

It's 6pm Friday night and 54 hours from now you're expected to have worked an idea up to investor pitch quality.

Welcome to Startup Weekend!

Obviously there are many factors that contribute to team success (or otherwise) over the weekend but the software tools you use, can be one of the factors that make or break you. Not only on the weekend but into the future as you build a real live business from what was once just an idea.

I've listed five tools below – all of which were used by the Startup-Platform team as moved we from being: 

• three Startup Weekend participants moved by our team leads pitch to
• a pressure cooker weekend of work to 
• a Highly Commended placing to 
• the hard work of putting together a real live business getting ready for its first trial in the field.

Trello.com
Free and easy to use. You can set up the bulletin board to replicate the headings on the Lean Startup methodology. Then each team member can login and add, edit or move to do items as necessary. We found it a great way to keep the ideas that were bubbling around, recorded and moving along.

Github.com
A private repository costs $7 USD per month but you can add as many team members to that repository as you want. This is a more programming focused tool than Trello and is useful for reporting bugs and creating a code review.

Skype
It's likely you'll find yourself having many a late-night (moonlighting on your day job) conversation. The free version is fine for audio conference calls but at least one team member with a premium account is required for video conferencing or screen sharing.

iwantmyname.com
Once you've decided on a product name, you'll need a URL – this is the simplest and easiest way to buy and host your domain name right then and there. It can even be done without technical skills!  Which is important because you're already got your developer working on code for your product :)

unifiedinbox.com
When you're in a team that won't physically be together after the weekend, a tool to manage the email addresses you set up for your project, as well as your Twitter and Facebook accounts, is a useful tool to for managing these communication streams. Startup Weekend participants are typically offered a deal for free usage. Check with your organiser for details of your weekends deal. 

We set all of these up on the first night of our Startup Weekend to ensure the work we put in was being managed most efficiently. There are many more tools that you may want to consider as essential for your team, you can find a more extensive list here. 

And when thinking of essential tools - don't forget the humble cellphone. Swap cellphone numbers (for when one team member fails to return from lunch!)

 

Ursula Hoult is PR Manager at Unified Inbox in her day job and is about to attend her second Startup Weekend.  Her AKLSW project Startup-Platform received honourable mention. The team use Unified Inbox for managing their incoming communication streams.

 

Work email gossip and its effect on team morale

Post written by Maya Pillai.

It is a fact that people love to talk about other people and they also show a great interest in hearing about the business of other people. It's simply human nature. Recently, I had the opportunity of watching an American movie named 'Gossip' directed by Davis Guggenheim. Though it had nothing to do with work email gossip, it showed how a rumor or gossip that is nurtured and dispersed efficiently can become a mighty weapon. If you are working in an organization, think  for a moment how gossipy emails effect you and the morale of your team members. 

You will never guess that on an average a corporate email user sends and receives 112 emails everyday. This was reported in a study by Georgia Tech. The study also revealed that 15% of the work related emails can be gossip and this is prevalent at all levels of the corporate hierarchy.

Remember, the term 'Gossip' is a negative word and therefore we are likely to give such emails a negative interpretation. Curbing work email gossip will not only decrease the clutter in your internal mailbox but also increases the productivity of yourself and those around you. 

We spend most of our waking hours at our work place. Can you imagine how highly damaging it can be to be in a place where whispers about your personal/professional life are circulated? Gossip emails can lead to a total breakdown of your performance which in turn will affect the team and the project you are working on. 

Your work life is likely to become uncomfortable and you will find it difficult to work in proximity with your team mates. Misunderstanding between the colleagues and team member can then result in workplace conflict. This in turn has a negative impact on the working relationships with your team members. And if the morale of the team is affected, it can lead to increased episodes of absenteeism and stress-induced sickness. 

While the best defence against a culture of negative workplace gossip developing, is simply not to get involved, we've found that our usage of team based email is an active tool in fighting a gossip culture. Get your system administrator to configure internal mailing system such as unifiedinbox.com where all the team mails can be accessed by the team members. When there is this level of transparency where mails can be read by the members of the team, you'll find there will be a drastic reduction in both inbox clutter and work email gossip. 

 

Surviving your first Startup Weekend (and loving it!)

They say startup weekends are intensely addictive and it just takes one to start what could become a lifelong habit but for those about to set out on their first startup weekend, what can they learn from those who have gone before to make the finishing line in the best possible shape?

The organisers will send you their own list. And these are all important - bring them all but what I found was that the veterans brought a bit more than that. And I made a note that next time I'd be one of those savvy veterans bringing the following:

• multi-plug – one office, two power outlets, six laptops – is there any further elaboration needed?

• alternative internet – internet is provided but do you really want to sit through a session of being down, knowing that the key fact/image/code you need is out of reach until it's back up?

• a clean USB drive – for moving files around.

• coffee mug – you will be supplied with more coffee than may be good for you, and a new cup every time. Be a little kind on your world and bring your own (supersized if necessary) mug. But label, if you want it back again, label.

• water bottle – yes, you've got that unlimited supply of coffee on the go but the brain needs a little more than that – a bottle might encourage you to drink a little bit along the way.

• late night food supplies – don't worry about food – it's good and it's plentiful, except possibly at 11pm when you're about to make that last push for the night – an emergency musli bar stash will never go astray. And a bag of lollies for outright bribery of other teams' members helps.

• stationery set – oh yes, it's a high tech world but sometimes you need to put a piece of paper in front of someone, and you'll need scissors to cut it with and you'll need sticky tape to put it on their wall so they don't forget you. You could ask the endlessly helpful organisers or your could save those minutes for the next task in the impossible list of tasks to complete in your allotted 54 hours.

Well, that's my list of what I wish I'd brought with me, I'd love to hear from other participants on the items they most wished they'd had with them. When enough are mentioned, I'll republish the article with them – as the “perfect suitcase for startup weekends”.

Until then, whatever you do – make sure you take the multi-plug.

 

Ursula Hoult is PR Manager at Unified Inbox in her day job and has just returned from attending her first Startup Weekend. All Startup Weekend Auckland June 15-17 2012 attendees are entitled to receive a free years subscription to Unified Inbox – a place for teams to collaborate on the multiple communication accounts required to run a project or business. Her AKLSW project was Startup-Platform and they use Unified Inbox for managing their incoming communication streams.

 

 

Email is dead, long live email.

The headlines have flown in the last year as to whether our forty year love affair with email is coming to an end. Driving the calls for the end to email were those citing the cost to our lives and productivity. French company ATOS famously announced its plans to ban internal emails by 2014 and German company Volkswagen stopped the delivery of work emails after hours.

But the 29 billion (and increasing) number of real emails sent every day are not going away in a hurry. More than anything businesses today are looking at how policy and technology changes can ensure their businesses are not the ones affected by the $900,000,000 productivity losses the American economy deals with each year.  

Recent research by the Grossman Group has found most believe that banning email in the workplace is the wrong approach to combating email overload, but what would you say if you CEO proposed banning email? This is an area in which many have weighed in with their opinions (interesting polarising views by David Grossman and Daniel Mittleman here), but when legislation is starting to be passed and unions start demanding change, then it is clear a solution is needed.

Policy changes and etiquette for businesses include encouraging workers to pick up the phone, walk across the office or switching to instant messaging to speak to colleagues. But what can be overlooked in these discussions is that email is no longer the only form of communication businesses and their customers are using. Many customers are now more comfortable Tweeting their relative un/happiness with your services. For companies still trying to keep on top of the email torrent, these can seem a next to impossible communication stream to keep on top of.

One of the driving factors behind the development of Unified Inbox was to bring all these communication streams together. There is no ability to intelligently manage their processing without realising the full scale of the communication overload that faces us. This step is one which most providers of communication software are missing, ensuring the business are stuck using the same message silos, as they have in previous years.

Take a look at the infographic below to see what damage overload is doing and how much a solution - a Unified solution - could save you.

Created by: OnlineITDegree.net