IT managers have a role to get the best out of their IT staff. The IT staff workforce landscape changes rapidly for several reasons. First, technology is moving so fast that IT professionals need to constantly update their skills. In addition, the competition for talent means that the attrition rate of IT staff in many companies is higher than staff in other departments. IT managers, therefore, need to develop strategies to reduce the cost of high employee turnover rate.
One way to reduce employee turnover and maximize productivity is through workforce-driven tools. These tools enable automation of tasks, easier assignment of tasks, document collaboration, and more.
1. Project Management Software Tools (ProofHub)
Any IT manager overseeing complex projects requires a platform from where they have visibility on all elements of their project. The more features a platform offers, the more useful it is to IT managers.
ProofHub allows creating roles with customizable responsibilities and tasks. This allows the project manager to control access for different participants in the project. Another powerful feature is the ability to create tasks with sub-tasks. Each sub-stack can have its own deadlines and deliverables. Therefore, the project team can check the percentage of completion of each task. Such visibility is important because it puts everyone at ease by allowing the tracking of progress.
ProofHub has an inbuilt custom project report feature. This allows the project team to quickly generate reports with different parameters depending on what audiences require. It also allows project teams to manage their documents through cloud storage. ProofHub offers its own cloud storage and integration with third party options such as Google Drive and One Drive.
2. EverNote
Evernote is a productivity enhancement tool that allows users to capture notes, ideas, or inspiration easily through text and voice recordings. Users can share these notes with team members working on a project together. It’s also possible to organize related notes into notebooks on the app.
Evernote allows users to save articles, PDFs, screenshots, and web pages. There are also templates to assist with the organization and presentation of ideas to teammates. This way, you can form a narrative when sharing notes with team members as opposed to a bunch of fragmented articles and voice notes.
Another great feature is optical character recognition. Evernote scans images for readable text which eases extraction of information. From experience, Evernote works smoothly across all operating systems for PC and mobile devices.
3. Slack
Slack is one of the most popular productivity tools at the workplace today and with good reason. It allows smooth internal communication in companies on channels. A company can create a channel and invite all participants in a particular project to join the channel. It’s also possible to create channels where even the client can join and track the progress of their project. Direct messages are also an option for communication on Slack.
IT managers can find Slack very useful when they are overseeing multiple projects at the same time. Document sharing on Slack is very intuitive and it can be easily integrated with other tools including Google Drive.
4. Betterteam
IT managers are responsible for the recruitment and onboarding of new talent. This can be hard to standardize especially with a long to-do list. Betterteam is an online employee onboarding platform that helps to tick all the boxes when bringing new people into the company.
On this platform, the company can curate the first few weeks for new employees to help them settle in quickly. A checklist can be created for things to do including tours and introductions, getting resources on company history and code of ethics, security policies, and safety regulations. The experience can be curated to even include the first few assignments the person will be expected to handle.
A standardized onboarding is important for maintaining the culture of your organization. New employees will quickly understand what the organization stands for.
5. Better Performance Tracking through IntelliHR
Objective performance review and management is often a problem for IT staff. With IntelliHR, IT managers get a tool to help them become better coaches. The platform takes in data which is then analyzed to find powerful insights. For instance, by tracking performance metrics such as the number of hours worked, successful projects completed, and participation in team forums, it becomes possible to identify star performers in the company and those who could improve their productivity. The company can then query the reasons for high performance and use findings to boost the performance of others. This objective analysis advises initiatives such as training, remuneration, or a change in team leadership to lift performance.
Intelli HR also builds solutions to help companies implement a key staff retention strategy. They use data to find qualities that predict the cultural fit of potential hires. This informs hiring decisions. Data can also reveal those things that are likely to make people stay longer once they join. Objective job satisfaction analysis is key in finding out what people think of the company. When they leave, the data collected from exit surveys can be crunched to give useful insights.
6. GanttPro Gantt Chart Maker
GanttPro is a project management online software that eases project management. Users can split projects into tasks and subtasks and have milestones too. Project progress can be presented easily using Gantt charts that can be shared with clients. As an IT manager, it’s easy to track the progress of many projects at the same time. Tasks can be scheduled on the platform based on priority. The software allows project teams to analyze critical paths to figure out ways to speed up projects to beat deadlines.
Improving Productivity Tools
There are many tools that IT managers can integrate into the company’s workflow to save time, costs, and boost productivity. However, picking the right tools can be a little confusing owing to the many options available. Some tools have similar features, but others offer a little more in terms of integrations.
If your company is seeking tools to augment the skills of your IT team, Transcendent Software can help pick the right technology stack. We will help set up the tools and integrate them with your existing mission-critical IT infrastructure.