It is often that we see productivity and efficiency go hand in hand when describing employee goals. Combining both, instead of focusing with one versus the other, constitute a good strategic combination to be effective contributors in a business or organization.
Efficiency pertains to the quality of the output upon application of work. In the business, being efficient is producing high quality work outputs not just by quantity, but also with minimal errors and use of resources. On the other hand, productivity goes with the quantity of work output; wherein it is dependent on how many tasks that a worker crossed out off his list of things that he intended to do for the day. Finding the right balance out of the two is quite difficult, more so, achieving both is likewise challenging.
To become more focused at work, rather than on the paycheck alone, one must develop a sense of responsibility in delivering the job he or she is tasked to do. Employees need acknowledgement and compensation for their efforts, and businesses would want productive and efficient workers to partner with. The workplace should promote mutual benefits among employees and the business, in order to sustain its operation and survive in the competition.
The road towards an efficient and productive working environment must be taken by both the business and its employees together. Here are some factors that can help improve productivity and efficiency in the workplace:
- Employees should have a sense of accountability for his actions in order to have more drive in making better decisions.
- Make constant follow ups on employees’ work to ensure that the progress is sufficient and emerging problems can be handled right away.
- Excellent management skills are the keys to getting the cooperation from employees and work towards a guided direction.
- Every job can be enhanced with proper motivation and excellent rewards system.
- Demand realistically instead of being aggressive too much, which may lead to stress.
- Ensure a happy and comfortable working environment.
- Break routines once in a while in order to introduce some challenges and excitement.
- Enhance employee skills and give them additional learning opportunities for self improvement.
- Deploy technology based productivity tools to yield better and faster results.
What Is Project Management?
Project management is the application of processes, methodologies, tools and resources in order to achieve the communal project objectives. It is best done by the collaboration of expertise, skills and experience relevant to the nature of the project. A project manager has to make sure that objectives are met in accordance with the designated time-frame, budget and expected quality of the output.
Every project is temporary and unique, therefore, it is challenging to devise a set of procedures every time. It also involves different teams, which vary in backgrounds, expertise and experience. A project manager should have the necessary skills in order to manage varying teams and processes under different working conditions and amount of resources, which can be achieved through extensive exposure to many projects and years of experience.
An effective project management concerns and operates within the following key areas:
- Scope
- Time
- Cost
- Procurement
- Quality
- Human resources
- Communication
- Risk Management
- Stakeholder Management
A project management system is crucial in every endeavor, and must be strong enough to withstand changes, shifts, issues, conflicts or delays that may happen anytime. Many times, project management tools can be deployed in order to strengthen the approach in project management. Also, a reliable, consistent and robust communication system is important in implementing an effective project management.
Importance of Correspondence and Communication in Project Management
According to a 2013 report, 2 out of 5 projects do not meet the designated project objectives, and one half of those are related to inefficient communication. The project manager should be the initiator of communication, and is responsible in sending agendas, deliverables, deadlines, and other information about the project, across the team.
Communication among stakeholders and team members should be continuous to maintain the smooth flow and progress of the project. Different forms of communication must be used in order to promote clarity and understanding including verbal, nonverbal, written and contextual. The project manager should also regard the diversity of his team members in terms of culture and backgrounds, in order to accord to his choice of communication channel to use. A good starting point in deploying an effective communication system is to create a plan for every information that needs to be disseminated. The project manager should also encourage the team to be proactive with communication, and verbalize their concerns and questions any time they wish.
In choosing the right medium of communication to use, the project manager should be clear with the nature of the information that needs to be communicated. When situations call for reports, formal agreements, group messages and documented conversations, the email is the best choice.
Impact of Email in Project Management
Typically, project managers utilize collaborative working environments and email in order to communicate with the team about progress status and project requirements. It is also important to provide documentation for everything as evidences if problems or disputes will arise, or as references for similar projects in the future.
Project managers face different challenges in managing correspondence within the project. As the primary coordinator for everything, he has to be a dynamic and multifaceted individual that is capable of adjusting to different situations, and implement the appropriate management strategy for a given project. In case of effective correspondence, project managers face these top 5 challenges for managing emails within the project:
- About 90% of project correspondence is centralized in emails. Emails contain important document attachments such as project plans, specification sheets, budget, and timeline.
- Emails are not automatically organized and archived according to category.
- Emails may not be associated with the attachment it contains, therefore it would be difficult to organize.
- Emails containing critical information don’t integrate with the existing back end systems used in project management.
- Every email that circulates within the project team and project associates is considered a valuable record.
Benefits in Deploying Email Management Tools
Email based management and collaboration can exist in a project management system. These two can be integrated in order to make one powerful technology suite that streamlines the correspondence and document management within the project. A project management software can integrate the following functions to an email management software:
- Indicates the status of the current project.
- Adds task in the current project.
- Informs if there is a bug in the current project.
- Uploads a document in the current project.
- Adds a forum option for a current project.
- Adds comments or attach files to a task in a current project.
- Uploads files to a folder.
- Post replies in a forum with attachments.
- Adds comments or files for a specific event posted.
- Adds comments or supporting files for a reported bug in the current project.
Another approach is the integration of the right email management tool to the existing document management system used in the project. This is done in order to streamline the process of gathering emails and its attachments with ease. A repository within the document management system will be used in order to centralize the document management with important correspondences and conversation histories.
An email tracking software can capture and classify incoming emails and puts them on record. This is done automatically, including tracking and storing of all electronic correspondences within the project using a simple tagging process. It just needs to be applied to each unique email, and the tagging system will also work on all its associated emails and corresponding attachments.
The benefits of integrating the email management system with the project management are to ensure that all processes involved will run seamlessly and automatically within the whole project. This is to assist project managers in running a critical management process, which can increase his productivity and efficiency in his job. As for the team members, they also reap the benefits of using technology based tools which promote convenience, collaboration, accountability and productivity with efficiency as well. The email tracking tool can also reflect transparency in communications with the project’s stakeholders, vendors and associates.
The top email tracking software can help sustain the level of transparency of processes, especially on the side of budgeting and project status. Emails containing concerned critical documents can be captured and automatically stored in the central repository, and can be easily accessed by the concerned and authorized members including the project team and the stakeholders.This is valuable in gaining the trust and confidence of your team members in your ability to execute an effective project management that benefits them too.
Expand your horizons in establishing an integrated system for executing better project management. Let email tracking software reviews from CrowdReviews reveal more benefits of using email as your choice correspondence for your next big project.
Trevor Price
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