How Mobile Technology Enhances Your Workplace
First we denied the impact of mobile technology in our workplaces.
Then, unable to fully comprehend its power, tried to ban it or at least control it.
We have worked our way through these two stages and are now tip-toeing into the reality that mobile devices are here to stay in our corporations and organizations.
It's up to human resources professionals in many cases to figure out where and how they can really work best to revolutionize the way work gets accomplished. Mobile technology not just effects productivity in a workplace, but how well team members work together, collaborate, and communicate.
Here are 5 great things worth appreciating about how mobile technology enhances your workplace.
1. It Makes For Happier Employees
The connectivity of mobile devices allows your company to cross time zones, geography, and spill into non-traditional hours of work. Surprisingly, your employees are thanking you for it. That's because it gives them the most coveted quality of employment today: Flexibility.
Your employees can slip out of the office at 1 p.m for a couple of hours to watch their child perform in the school musical, knowing they can work that couple of extra hours when the child is sleeping later in the evening and finish the work that needs to be done. To most employees, being on call 24/7 is a fair exchange for the freedom of dealing with their private life issues that occur on company time. When you handle it this way, everyone wins. Apps useful for this are Slack, Basecamp, and Trello to name a few.
2. It Makes Your Workers More Connected To Their Jobs
Your company takes its place on the same device they use to connect to their family and those they care about most. You get equal footing and equal commitment.
The long-term impact in the employee's mind is a beautiful blend of the key components of their life. You are no longer "shut off" just because the employee has physically left the building.
3. You Can Build Better, More Effective Teams
You are no longer limited to building teams for employees who work in close proximity to each other. Instead, you can use content sharing apps, video calls, online communications and more to build virtual teams that blend skill sets, experience, and expertise in a way never possible in the past. An app perfect for this is BoostHQ.
Relationships build across the barriers that would normally have kept team members apart.
4. You Can Communicate With All Your Employees More Effectively And More Consistently
When you call physical meetings together to communicate an important message or announce the details of a significant project, inevitably someone who should be there misses the meeting. Either they are on vacation, sick for the day, or off attending to a crises in their personal life.
When you send a video of the key message or a detailed text message or even email a file with background attached, each employee has access to the full picture of the project and can read it and digest the details at a time they select when they can give it their full attention. Again, BoostHQ is the perfect app for this because it allows you to send links, files, PDFs, videos, and more and has all the discusses attached to each piece of content. So every content piece has the context attached to it.
Plus, once the project is initiated, if an employee fails to remember a particular point or wants to clarify intent, they need to only pull up the original documents at the push of a button and be back in the loop.
5. You Can Avoid The Spread Of Confusion And Misinformation
By responding to individual questions, regardless of where the employee is located you can avoid the spread of employee confusion. A key problem in any workplace is the spread of misinformation or the buildup of confusion because someone has a question that isn't addressed in a timely fashion.
Encouraging communication on mobile devices such as particular communication apps such as: Slack, WhatsApp, and others, ensures that employees who do have follow-up questions can get the proper answer that they need quickly and thoroughly. Keeping everyone in the loop and focused on the clear intent is a wonderful foundation for corporate success.
