5 Shortcuts That Will Give You More Time at Work - CareerMetis.com

5 Shortcuts That Will Give You More Time at Work Regardless of the industry, you work in, or the size of your company, office work can become cluttered and artificially busy in a hurry. There are meetings to attend, paperwork to do, reports to file, emails to check, phones to answer and, well, your Facebook page isn’t going to update itself.If you’re not careful, your day can quickly fill up with non-essential activities, leaving you much less productive than you need to be. This can result in late project completion, assignments not meeting deadlines, and ultimately, your work performance being less stellar than it could be. It’s one of the easiest ways to add stress to your job.evalYou don’t have to be at the mercy of every productivity pitfall, though. There are steps you can take to speed up work and save time, freeing your schedule to handle more priorities and get more accomplished in the day, week, month, or year. It just takes the right tools and tactics.This list, assembled to help you cut time sinks and maintain e fficiency, describes 5 shortcuts that will help you save time, get more accomplished, and not get bogged down in less essential duties at work. That way, you can focus on priorities and take care of business.1) Have Someone Else Answer the PhonesevalOne of the most significant time sinks any given business deals with is customer phone calls. Answering phone calls and offering stellar customer service can be problematic for any business, but especially for younger or smaller companies that may not have the manpower to handle the number of calls they get.Even large businesses can struggle, having to utilize a significant amount of the bandwidth to address minor concerns that can be answered quickly by even the newest of employees. These minor concerns can soon clog up the phone lines.This can mean perception of your customer service suffers, as wait times for legitimate concerns lengthen out, and many customers will choose to switch to a competitor rather than wait for your team to †œfigure out what they’re doing.”What many businesses don’t know, is that they can alleviate this burden by outsourcing some or all of your phone-based customer service to a call center solution or an answering service.Much like outsourcing your janitorial work, accounting, or HR services, a qualified team can make a huge difference, decreasing your overhead, and allowing your team to focus on income-generating activities.2) Automate Everything You CanevalSpeaking of automation, there’s probably quite a few of your daily activities that feel like a monkey could accomplish them with the right training and proper motivation. The good news is, in our age of technology, much of that is now outsourceable.All without having to pay anyone. Automation opens a lot of possibilities if you know how to work it right, and some tools can do it for you for free.Want to have every email With a little bit of prep work, you can shave hours off of your work week by having your computer do menia l tasks for you. It’s like having a little monkey of your own, without any of the mess.3) Ditch the Data EntryLet’s face it; one of the most frustrating parts of any office job is putting data where it needs to be. Whether it’s getting useful information out of a written document 5) Keep In TouchSometimes, the biggest problem is just being able to get answers to concerns and questions from people on your team. Calling them or getting out of your chair and walking to their office takes valuable time out of your day, and when you have to do it repeatedly through the day, it can eat into your productivity.evalMore importantly, both of these options have two serious problems.First, you never know if the person you need to talk to is available, and you might be calling or walking to their office for no reason, as you’ll have to come back when they’re not preoccupied.Second, there’s no record of the conversation, so it can be difficult to remember what was said, what new agree ments there are, and what now needs accomplishing.While chat programs like Skype and Google Chat can solve some of these problems, they present another: every now and again you need a way to share information or ask a question of a whole group, or even the entire company. In this case, you need a team communication app that has a more flexible UI.That’s where apps like Slack come in. Slack allows you to contact team members at your Productivity and efficiency are sometimes hard to maintain. However, with the right tools, and a little bit of strategy, you can keep yourself running at full speed.