Productivity Archives - Page 2 of 5

Aug, 2021

Shocking Study on the Work Week Suggests Shorter is Better

Many critics of a shorter work week believe that cutting the number of hours worked throughout the workday or work week could potentially lead to a decrease in productivity, but a new study from Iceland suggests that this simply is not reality. This study suggests that productivity should no longer be a cause for concern when it comes to a shorter work week, as its astounding results show what really happens when you reduce the number of hours worked without reducing pay.

Introduction to the Study

The study, published by Autonomy and Alda, as well as the Association for Democracy and Sustainability in June of 2021, took place over five years and examined workers from several different industries in Iceland. There were two parts to the study: one conducted by the city of Reykjavík and another performed by the Icelandic government. In both parts, employees worked shorter hours during the work week.

Of particular note here is that the employees participating in these trials did not suffer a reduced salary or wage while working fewer hours. They worked an average of 35 or 36 hours per work week while the control group worked the standard 40 hours expected of most positions. By the end of the study, it involved around 2,500 employees from over 100 workplaces.

Both trials hoped that shorter work hours could address poor work-life balance and improve productivity; the results might surprise you!

The Results

The results of this study showcases that the shorter work week presented several benefits to employees. The study found that these trials showed reductions in working hours “maintained or increased productivity and service provision” and also “improved workers’ wellbeing and work-life balance.”

The report examines the following:

How effectively work time was reduced
How service provision and productivity were affected
Whether improvements in workers’ wellbeing and work-life balance took place

One of the reasons why employers are so worried about shorter working hours is that it can unintentionally lead to overwork as a result of having fewer hours in the workday to get things done, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that this is simply not true. Employees found that it was easier to organize themselves and their work processes with the shorter workday. This goes for managers, too.

Service provision was also unaffected—at least, in a negative way. As evidenced by the study, “On the whole, indicators of service provision and productivity either stayed within expected levels of variation, or rose during the period of the trial.”

In perhaps the most interesting part of this study, we get to the wellbeing and work-life balance aspects of shorter work days and weeks. The indicators for this part of the study were examined close to the end of the study, where stress levels and energy levels were measured. For work-life balance, employees in the shorter work day group discovered that they had much more free time to spend time with their families and were less likely to say no to overtime when it was needed. They were also less likely to take on a part-time job. Other benefits included easier-to-do errands, more balance in participation in home duties, more time for oneself, less stress at home, more exercise, and so many others. It is evident that work-life balance saw many improvements for these employees.

What do you think about shortening your workdays? Do you think that maybe everyone could make use of a couple extra hours to enjoy life on a Friday afternoon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Jul, 2021

Clean Up Your Computer with These Digital Clutter Practices

Computers are supposed to make life easier, and in a lot of ways, they do. However, using a computer can get complicated at times, especially when you are working with tons of files, applications, and resources on a daily basis. This can lead to a ton of digital clutter, which can be counterproductive and time-wasting. Let’s learn about how you can reduce digital clutter on your work PC.

Your Files

A common practice is to save files to the desktop so that they are easily accessible at a later date. While this does make things easier short-term, imagine saving one new file to the desktop every day for a month without removing any of the old ones. There is a saying: “A place for everything and everything in its place.” You can apply this line of thought to minimize your digital clutter. Set up a folder system for your files and make sure that you can store them in the appropriate places.

Keep in mind, most workplaces require that work-related documents get stored on the server. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t be keeping important or sensitive information on your desktop in the first place. Your server or network directory that is in place is likely being backed up and protected, while your desktop computer might not be in most cases.

You can also cut down on digital clutter by deleting unused or unnecessary files. One folder that is almost always cluttered is the Downloads folder. More often than not, you have files here that you haven’t looked at since you downloaded them, and there is almost certainly a better place for them all if they are even necessary in the first place. We recommend routinely cleaning up your files so that things don’t get too cluttered over time. For system files, however, do NOT delete these. If you ever have any questions about which files are okay to delete, you should contact your IT resource.

Your Programs

Sometimes you might download software because it solves an immediate problem at that moment, then never use it again. That application is now taking a little space on your computer and if you aren’t keeping it updated, it could lead to vulnerabilities. This is why we recommend that you uninstall unused applications. Ask yourself the same question as before; do you get value from this program? Have you used it at all in the past couple of months?

We do want to put a slight disclaimer here, though. You should always check with your IT staff or trusted IT resource, like NuTech Services, before ever trying to uninstall an app. This is especially true if you don’t know the purpose the application serves. It might actually be there for a very specific reason, so it is always better to err on the side of caution.

Your Media

As time progresses, you likely accumulate all kinds of media, from pictures to videos to music. All of this can create a lot of clutter on your device. The solution here is simple: ask yourself the question, “Do I get value out of this?” This question is at the heart of the minimalism concept and can be applied here, too. For example, you might have gone on vacation and captured a bunch of great photos, but we are willing to bet that you also captured a bunch of not-so-great ones. Why hold on to them?

It’s important that you have a place where you can store all of this media in a convenient and organized space. For this, as well as any other personal file storage needs, we recommend a good cloud solution. For business owners looking to securely store documents in the cloud, we can help with that too.

Implement a Cloud Solution

As you might expect, technology has provided a solution to many of the common problems that organizations run into. Chief among them is cloud computing and cloud storage, offering an excellent way to minimize digital clutter on your devices.

NuTech Services can work with your business to implement the best cloud solutions for your needs. Get started today by chatting with one of our skilled and knowledgeable technicians about how your organization can best utilize the cloud. To get the conversation started, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Jun, 2021

Eyestrain? Start Looking for Dark Mode on Your Devices

The concept of dark mode has saturated the technological ecosystem and consciousness and is being incorporated by software and hardware vendors alike. Although embraced by vendors and users as a needed feature, the question remains, is there a benefit to dark mode?

Dark Mode Isn’t New

While dark mode has become top of mind for many users, it isn’t new… just new to this generation of technology users. In the early days of computing screens were monochrome (black and white) monitors. Early CRTs (Cathode-ray tubes) were coated with phosphor, which gave the on-screen text a green, amber, or white hue (depending on the phosphor used), on a black background. It wasn’t until the 1980s, as desktop publishing came into its own, that monitors began to focus on mimicking the effect of ink or typing on white paper.

Four decades later, dark mode has once again come into favor. Ironically, this is by being popularized by devices that have infinitely more processing power than the devices which used “dark mode” due to the limitations of the display technology at the time.

The Benefits Of Dark Mode

As the name suggests, dark mode inverts the background from white to black and text from black to white. The main benefit of dark mode is that it saves energy consumption on OLED and AMOLED displays, mainly used on smartphones. Dark mode turns off the pixels not in use, reducing the energy needed to keep them all on when your background is white.

Dark mode also allows devices to remain operational as their batteries become low, allowing them to continue to operate longer by consuming less energy. Google notes that using dark mode (dark theme) can be a benefit to increasing battery life. Additional benefits include:

Visibility improvement for users with low vision or light sensitivity
Easier to use in low-light environments
The potential to reduce eye strain

Some Potential Negative Issues With Dark Mode

The primary concern using dark mode is that people with astigmatism may have more difficulty reading white text on black background. Additionally, some research suggests that dark mode can lower reading comprehension due to our innate preference for and ability to recognize dark images on light backgrounds. Other concerns include:

Tiny and long blocks of text may be more difficult to read
Color blindness can affect the ability of users to read the text in dark mode
It may be harder to see in different lighting environments

However, despite the potential downsides, most people can use dark mode with no issues or concerns.

Dark Mode Is Here to Stay

While smartphones drove the initial trend towards dark mode, many software vendors have hopped on the train. They are providing dark mode functionality to their applications in response to user expectations. As users continue to ask, “How do I switch Microsoft Word to Dark Mode?” it’s apparent that dark mode isn’t going anywhere. Dark mode is now supported by most operating systems, browsers, social media, productivity applications, and more.

Should You Use Dark Mode?

As with most things, the answer is, it depends. There are clear benefits to using dark mode for some people, and for others, not so much. For others, still, it’s more a matter of form over function, and using dark mode is something new, different and a change of pace. Ultimately, it’s a matter of personal preference, so if you like dark mode, use it. You won’t be alone.

Finally, while Microsoft Word supports dark mode, there is much more productivity to be found within Microsoft’s premiere productivity suite. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend time trying to make the most out of your technology’s use. Call NuTech Services at 810.230.9455 today to learn more.

Jun, 2021

Tip of the Week: How to Improve Productivity by Identifying Distractions

For all the time we spend promoting productivity-enhancing technologies, we’d be remiss if we didn’t address the source of quite a bit of inefficiency: the user. People get distracted from their tasks all the time and the bounceback rates from these distractions aren’t great. Let’s go over a few tips that you and your team can use to help identify and avoid distractions throughout the workday.

What Is the Impact that Distractions Can Have?

On average, a worker in the United States is distracted about every 11 minutes or so. As if this wasn’t bad enough, it then takes this worker about 25 minutes to return to the task at hand. Of course, more complicated tasks take even longer to refocus on—simply because of the greater mental effort needed to pivot from one challenging task to another.

Naturally, this isn’t a great turnaround rate… particularly when today’s workplaces are so committed to making the most of their available time. Minimizing these distractions is therefore a crucial goal that businesses should emphasize. In order to do so, it is important that we acknowledge that all distractions can be split into one of two categories: external distractions, and internal distractions.

How Are Internal Distractions Different Than External Distractions?

While there is a case to be made that a distraction is a distraction, comparing the differences between those that come from internal sources and those that are introduced by external factors can help us understand what is causing the worst productivity deficits.

We’re all familiar with external distractions, the kind that come in and pull our attention away from the task at hand. Emails, phone calls, instant messages, and impromptu meetings all fall into this category, and each contribute to the problem by some measure.

Adding to these distractions are those that reside internally. These internal distractions are those that are caused by the various mental blocks a person can experience. Oftentimes, these blocks come from an inability to weigh out our choices and prioritize them effectively… particularly when there are a lot of options to choose from. Think about the last time you looked at a restaurant’s menu, for instance. The more items they offer, the harder your choice potentially becomes to make. Smaller menus, on the other hand, give you fewer options to balance and therefore an easier choice to make.

Of course, with so many workplaces setting the schedule for their team members, this isn’t a perfect comparison. It is probably more fair to say that a lot of internal distractions in the professional environment are generated by a lack of prioritization in the tasks that are assigned to team members.

Think of it this way: if everything is marked as the highest priority, who’s to say which task has the highest highest priority?

So, not only are your team members liable to become distracted by the need to identify the most important task to attend to, they also can have a challenge in appropriately arranging these tasks so that they are finished most efficiently.

Other common internal distractions are likely to be familiar to most people: wandering thoughts, and all those moments spent thinking about the other tasks that are coming after the present one is finished. Combined, internal and external distractions can make real productivity difficult for even the most dedicated employee.

Fortunately, sharing a few strategies with your team can help give them the power to overcome these kinds of distractions and reclaim the productivity that may have otherwise been sacrificed.

How to Get Rid of Many Distractions

Rule Out Some Options

Let’s touch back on the menu example we discussed earlier. If too many options ultimately leads to more distractions, encouraging your team members to start eliminating options should help to make them more productive. Whether this means they spent a few minutes clearing their workspace of anything that may draw their attention away from their tasks, or figuring out the most impactful responsibilities they currently have assigned to them and starting with those, investing a little bit of time initially will help to prevent a lot more time being lost later.

Set Limits Before You Start

Remember how we mentioned that a big source of distraction can come from your upcoming tasks and lingering thoughts about them? One effective way to keep yourself focused on the task at hand is to give yourself a concrete stopping point. Perhaps you’ll give yourself an hour and a half of committed time to one project, after which you transition to the next, with a budgeted half an hour. Alternatively, you could set a progress limit—maybe you move to your next task after you’ve completed so many of something, or completed some percentage of your total goal. Establishing these boundaries—and sticking to them, of course—can be a very effective way to help minimize your distractions.

Remove Distractions from Your Area

Where you work plays a considerable role in how you work, with our five senses unfortunately much harder to focus than our thoughts can be. Sounds like background chatter can be intrusive and interruptive, while our sense of touch will exacerbate any discomfort we feel. Many of us rely on sight to see what we are doing, but that also opens us up to visual distractions. Smells (both pleasant and decidedly not so) can very quickly occupy our attention, and everyone has had to try and deal with the distraction of an inexplicable funny taste.

Identifying these kinds of distractions and being prepared to address them when they do appear will help to take away a few sources of distraction, potentially preserving productivity.

What have you found distracts you the most, and what have you done about it? If it isn’t enough, know that NuTech Services is here to help. There are a few things that we can do to help keep your team members on track, and we can make sure your company is equipped to make the absolute most of any time spent by implementing productive and efficient IT solutions. Learn more by giving us a call at 810.230.9455.

May, 2021

Improving Your Business Communication for the New Remote Normal

The fact that many of their workers never see each other has led to some interesting shifts in the way that businesses approach communications. They used to just walk across the room and have a conversation, but as people try to make sense of the hybrid work environment, communications will continue to be a key. Let’s take a look at how your internal and external communications strategies will change to meet the needs of your roving workforce.

The Hybridized Has Created Certain Challenges

Your team has been using multiple modes of communication for a while. They utilize email, they send each other text messages and instant messages, they collaborate on files together, they’ve likely even spoken to each other on the phone. The one thing they haven’t been able to do since the pandemic struck in early 2020, is talk face-to-face.

You’re probably thinking that they’ve interacted face-to-face on video conference calls, but consider for a minute that a large percentage of communication is non-verbal, and we don’t mean Facebook Messenger texts, we mean from body language. That aspect has been eliminated completely, and some organizations have struggled without it.

So while communications may not be the same for every business, we can bet that if your team hasn’t seen each other in-person in months, there is probably something being missed. Here are a few solid practices that you can start to normalize communications in the new normal.

Internal Communication Practices

Lead by Example: When attempting to spur on better communications inside your business, you need to take the reins and lead by example. Not only do you need to communicate your expectations to your team, you need to be right there with them to ensure they are meeting those demands.
Personalization: Ditching the jargon-filled business productivity rants is a solid practice regardless of the situation you find your business in. Internal communications should be about collaboration and cooperation and clearing the air so there is less confusion and fewer impediments to progress.
Switch It Up: With so much in flux, it is important that you use all of your communications in a way that benefits the process it supports. For example, if you have a project team that can’t meet because it’s crewmembers aren’t in the office at the same time, make sure that there is a video conference meeting in lieu of a conference room meeting. Using all the tools at your disposal to normalize communications in your business can be a major benefit.

External Communication Practices

Keep Your Contacts Updated: Your business is making moves and it’s not a bad idea to share it with the people you depend on. Your clients appreciate being kept in the know, your vendors can use good ideas at their own business, and prospects will do more business with a company that keeps things transparent.
Empathize With Current Issues: We’ve all been dealing with major problems for more than a year, and if your business has been fortunate enough to come through it in good shape, make sure to let people know that you are ready to help in whatever way you can.
Speak Directly Whenever Possible: As long as it doesn’t hurt your business, being direct can really help move things forward. Sometimes people need to be handled carefully, but for the most part people respond to plain speaking and straight-forward messaging.

At NuTech Services, we can help your business sort through the many issues you will face by going hybrid. Give us a call to learn more at 810.230.9455.

Apr, 2021

Don’t Let Burnout Overcome Your Business

It can be said that most of 2020 and the first couple of months of 2021 have been difficult for most people. Not billionaires, of course, but most other people have found the past year difficult on some level. That’s why it isn’t surprising to hear people talk about workplace burnout. Today, we’ll define burnout and what is being said about it.

What Exactly is Burnout?

You probably already know or at least have seen cases of burnout. If someone starts laughing maniacally, screaming uncontrollably for no apparent reason, or crying silently while they sit at their desk, you are probably looking at a case of burnout. Burnout is the feeling of helplessness, frustration, and exhaustion you get when you have had enough.

Some cases of burnout go away quickly, while others fester and stay around for months. Burnout makes a person cynical or even apathetic and is not a good thing to have around your business. With the burden of burnout, you can unwittingly create a toxic work environment. Keeping this from happening should be a priority.

Spotting Burnout Amongst Your Team

If you want to catch burnout before it creates workplace toxicity, you will need to pay attention. The best way is to have regular conversations with your staff and honest conversations with yourself. By dedicating a few minutes to self-evaluation, you can help identify the triggers that can make all the difference between getting the burnt-out party the help they need before it can negatively affect your workplace culture.

Today, with so many people surely feeling like they are losing control over things in their lives, the risk of burnout is greater than ever and needs to be mitigated so that negativity doesn’t seep into your office and cause more problems. One way to accomplish this is to establish some consistent and predictable routines to be followed in the office, emphasizing control, and decreasing the potency of employee burnout.

Resolving Burnout

If you plan to prevent this type of thing from happening in your office, you have to respect that anyone that is feeling stressed or tired or angry could have a negative impact on your business. The human mind is complex and extraordinarily capable, but it won’t always be able to deal with everything that is thrown at it.

If you or a member of your staff is on the verge of burning out, you will want to take some time to sort through the issues that are making you feel this way. On an organizational level, incentivized collaboration and other support incorporated into the workday can help prevent burnout even further.

Have you had problems with feelings of exhaustion from just being too stressed, being stretched too thin, or having too many demands on your time? Leave your stories in the comments section below and return to our blog soon for more great content.

Mar, 2021

Automation Can Bring a Your Business Serious Value

Today’s business is always searching for a leg up, and this often means doing what it can to improve their operational efficiency. Companies can approach this in several ways. They can try to cut out redundancies, they can invest in training, or for many businesses, it means leveraging innovative new technological tools that are designed specifically for this purpose.

Let’s Define Automation

Automation is the process of utilizing technology to take the repetitive and often mundane tasks off of your workers’ plates. This frees them up to focus on revenue-generating activities. Since technology is getting more sophisticated, it can now do more, thereby making your business more efficient. Businesses that successfully automate certain tasks will often see boosts in productivity as their workers are more engaged as they can do what you’ve hired them for in the first place.

Implementing Automation

When looking to utilize automated tools to cut down on human responsibilities, a business has a lot of places to choose from, but typically it is used as a support structure to improve the efficiency of all those little tasks that up until recently humans were responsible for. This has led many people to claim that automation is the main reason people are being cut out of the workplace. Studies show that there is some truth to this theory, but when applying automation to just handle the tasks that no employee wants to do, it benefits both the company and the workforce.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of employing automation in your business:

Improved Customer Support

One of the most important aspects of your business is how you interact with your customers. Unfortunately, it can be expensive. Using automation to cut down the cost of support is a great plan. Using AI-fueled chatbots for online support and automated menus for your phone support can provide a lot of value, while also providing the support and transparency your customers demand.

Ensured Compliance

You can always depend on your staff to find better ways to do things. They don’t want to waste their time making tasks harder than they need to be. Unfortunately, as they try to be the most productive and efficient, it can cause problems with any compliance regulations that your business operates under. By deploying automated solutions you can ensure that your operations meet compliance standards every single time. This allows your staff to focus on their job and reduces the chances that they may get creative and hurt your business’ chances of meeting compliance standards.

Enhanced Business Communications

Much of business is a dance. There are so many parts of it moving at once that all it takes is somebody to miss a step for the whole thing to go horribly wrong. Automating scheduled communications can have a lot of benefits. Not only will it keep people that work in your business on point, it can provide customers a sense of value. This can also help prospects get the information they desire while also working for your sales and marketing teams to be able to schedule appointments without conflicts or follow up after a sale or inquiry.

Automation will be a big part of business going forward, and the experts at NuTech Services can help you leverage the tools that fit your business. Give us a call at 810.230.9455 today to learn more about how automation can benefit your business.

Mar, 2021

Tip of the Week: Highlighting Certain Outlook Messages

While no email platform is immune to mismanagement, Microsoft Outlook can quickly become filled with outdated and redundant messages that detract from the communication that it is meant to provide. Fortunately, there is a bit of a hack that you can use in Outlook to help prioritize your most pressing messages. Let’s dive into it.

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff in Your Inbox

The average inbox will contain a veritable ton of messages, the important ones mixed with promotions, group messages, and those that have been saved for later. After a short time, this can make it challenging to find the important ones as they are pushed down lower.

However, Outlook offers a means of finding these messages more easily through its conditional formatting capabilities. Basically, by switching a few basic settings, you can make the messages you want to focus on stand out a little more in the crowd.

Highlighting Your Messages

Let’s say, for the sake of example, that you often work with your colleague, Sandra, so her messages are some of the most important that you receive on a regular basis. Setting her messages to stand out is a longer process, but that is just due to the many options you have as you do so:

In Outlook, locate the View menu at the top of the window. Doing so will give you access to your View Settings. Click into them.
From there, click into the Conditional Formatting option. You’ll see a list of preloaded options included with Outlook, along with buttons that say Add, Delete…, Move Up, and Move Down. Click Add.
You’ll see a new rule added to the list of options called Untitled. Rename it to whatever works for your purposes. For this example, we’ll call it Sandra.
Click the button that says Condition… to establish when this rule comes into play. This can be based on a variety of options: whether a word or phrase is included in specific parts of the message, who it is from, the time it was sent, and even whether the message was directed to you specifically or to a larger group of recipients. Some of these can be disabled by unchecking the appropriate box or leaving the field blank. Let’s stick to simply specifying that these messages are ones sent directly to you, from Sandra.
You’ll be brought back to your list of rules in Conditional Formatting. With your Sandra rule still selected, click the Font button.
There, you can adjust the way messages that meet your conditions will appear in your inbox. You can change the font, the font style, its size, add strikeout or underline effects, and even change its color. In this example, we’ll simply say that the messages should be highlighted in green.
Click OK once you’re satisfied, continuing to do so until all the dialogue boxes are resolved.

Your inbox should now reflect the changes you have made—Sandra’s messages appearing green in the list—to help you quickly identify those she has sent to you. Simply follow the same process for any other messages you want to easily identify, and your inbox will quickly be more manageable for you.

Speaking of your email, did you know that you can receive a notification there whenever we post a new blog? Subscribe for these updates, and don’t hesitate to call NuTech Services for any of your IT-related questions at 810.230.9455.

Nov, 2020

How Listening to Your Team Can Improve Your Use of Technology

Business leadership is an important trait for more than just a business’ leader by title. It is something that should be present at every level, encouraged by the individual at the top. To do so, it helps to ask your team the right questions to put them in a mindset of responsibility for the business’ well-being. Here, we’ve shared some of these questions to get you started.

“What does—and doesn’t—work?”

To motivate your team to take ownership over their responsibilities and invest in your successful operations, you need to communicate that what they say has credence. Your team can be a goldmine of insights if you hear what they have to say. Think about it, they’re the ones that have hands-on experience using the tools that you’ve put in place.

Asking this question also gives you the opportunity to hear any criticisms of the processes and procedures that your team is currently working through. Again, as the people actively following these processes, your staff will likely have the best impression of the most effective way to complete the task at hand. Listening to their feedback will tell you if a solution is proving ineffective or if the team needs more training and support to properly make use of it.

Regardless, your team members are likely to have information that you would find invaluable, so it pays to listen to what they have to say. Who knows, one of them may have a solution to a longstanding problem that just needs to be brought up.

“What can I do to help you succeed?”

This is an important question to ask, again and again, as time goes on. After all, as situations change, the answer to it will change as well. By asking this question, you can use the feedback you collect to improve your employees’ engagement levels that much better. Opening yourself to this kind of input enables your team to enjoy a greater level of access to you.

This question can also help you reinforce the data that you generate by asking the first question we discussed, furthering your efforts to improve your processes.

“What has your team done to further the organization’s goals?”

By asking this question of your team, you can help encourage them to collaborate more with each other and use the communication tools you’ve provided. Asking them what their coworkers have accomplished in tandem to them, helps you make sure that they remain aware of the company’s greater processes and how their efforts contribute to the organization’s success.

In asking it this way, you’re also encouraging this team-based focus to integrate into your company culture. As a result, your team members will begin to think more as a team and work together to accomplish everything on their shared agenda.

“How would you make what we offer our clientele better?”

This is a practical example of what we’ve already discussed—asking those with first-hand knowledge to draw upon their experience to help improve what it is you’re discussing with them. Seeking insights from those who are working directly with your clientele will help you to identify and resolve the biggest impacts influencing your company and services.

“If you were me, what would you do differently?”

This question can provide you with a variety of useful information, from the biggest pain points that your team is experiencing to all the small inconsistencies you may have missed. It also helps you encourage your team to see things from a perspective of leadership.

This is what you want, as it isn’t enough anymore to simply have drones pecking away at assigned tasks. You want to have people who are ready to embrace innovation and are engaged enough to work their way upwards in your organization. Handing the power over to your team, even in the hypothetical, helps to show the employee that their input is appreciated and valued.

Should this feedback ever reference any difficulties due to insufficient technology solutions and resources to complete a task, NuTech Services is here to help. Our services are designed to improve the efficacy and security of your workplace, boosting your productivity.

To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Oct, 2020

Tip of the Week: What Google Lens Can Do

Not many Android users are aware of the Google Lens application, and the supplemented utility that it can bring to your device’s camera. Let’s fix that by going over what Google Lens is, and how you can use it to your advantage.

Explaining Google Lens

Downloadable from the Google Play Store, Google Lens is a utility app that incorporates artificial intelligence to make your smartphone’s capability to take and store images even more useful. With Google Lens, your phone can identify the elements in an image and give the user in-depth and contextual options based on it. Let’s say you wanted to find out what the flowers were that someone had planted outside their house. Using Google Lens, you could point your camera at the flowers and identify them that way.

Now, just consider how this could be applied to the modern, mobile workplace:

Copy and Paste Real-World Text

The ability to copy and then paste content is one of the most often-used functionalities in the office, so why not bring it to the physical world (sort of)? Using Google Lens, you can capture text with your camera from any media just as though it was content on a website. Simply press on the desired text to select it, press the Copy button at the bottom of the screen, and there you are. This text can then be shared directly to the clipboard of any computer with the same Google account actively logged in.

Extract Contact Information from a Business Card

While business cards are a great way to build business relationships at networking events, they don’t exactly fit in with most of today’s business environment. Lens can fix that by capturing the details printed on the card and giving the user various options. Whether you want to call the contact shared on the card, visit a website printed on it, or send a quick text or email message, Lens makes it simple to do so.

Create a Calendar Event

While calendar events are a great way to keep one’s schedule organized, helping one fulfill their obligations, they can become arduous to input into a mobile device. Google Lens can automate that process, pulling the necessary information from a flyer, an appointment card, or any other media and giving the user the option to Create calendar event.

Of course, this has been but a brief sampling of Google Lens’ capabilities. We encourage you to download it and see how much it helps you. If you’ve used Google Lens before, let us know how it worked out for you in the comments!

Sep, 2020

Partition Your Network to Prioritize Network Resources

Wi-Fi can be found in many homes and businesses alike, as it is perhaps the simplest means of connecting your various computers and mobile devices to the Internet without installing networking cables or risking going over any data caps you may deal with. Of course, some devices may take priority in such a setup, so it could be very useful for you to partition your Wi-Fi.

Let’s go over what this means, how you can go about doing so to your business’ benefit.

Your Wireless Network and its Bandwidth

When you sign on for Internet services from your service provider, you’re effectively subscribing to a preset amount of bandwidth—hopefully, enough for your staff to do everything they need to do. However, once some people start a few resource-intensive tasks, they could potentially pull network resources away from your other users… not the ideal situation.

For example, take a point-of-sale system as it collects customer data and efficiently processes payments. If network resources are being expended in other places, the POS system could experience some challenges, and negatively impact the customer experience. Internet-hosted communication systems, like email or VoIP, are also vulnerable to this.

Fortunately, partitioning can help avoid these hold-ups.

Understanding Partitioning

To understand partitioning, it helps to look at your Internet bandwidth as the wait to be seated in a restaurant. Regardless of whether there are ten people waiting to get in, or two, the restaurant can only hold so many people. Bandwidth is like the number of seats available—once it is filled up, some will have to empty before operations move along. When it comes to your data, running out of bandwidth causes a bottleneck.

To continue this comparison, partitioning is a little bit like reserving a table at our metaphorical restaurant. When you place your reservation, a table is set aside for your specific use. When you partition your bandwidth, that section of bandwidth is reserved for a specific use as well. So, returning to reality for a moment, partitioning your bandwidth essentially just means you’re reserving some of your Internet resources for a certain task. In the case of a POS system, whether you partition your network could potentially be the difference between having the necessary reliability for your payment terminals, or not. This is also used often for VoIP systems, offline backup, and other bandwidth-intensive systems.

What Does Partitioning a Network Require?

When you partition a network, the first step is to establish how much of your network could be partitioned for specific tasks without causing an issue for your business.

Then, it’s just establishing what processes should be partitioned. If you were trying to ensure that a VoIP platform would remain functional, you could partition your network at the router, specifying that so much bandwidth is meant for VoIP processes, and protect this bandwidth with an authentication system. As a result, your telephony would remain crisp and clear, as its bandwidth wouldn’t have other processes borrowing from it (or the other way around).

For assistance with partitioning your business network, or with any other aspect of your business’ IT, NuTech Services is here to help. Reach out to us today for predictable and professional managed IT services and support by calling 810.230.9455.

Sep, 2020

There’s Scheduling, and Then There’s SMART Scheduling

A schedule has long been the tool of choice for businesses to uphold their productivity, despite the challenges that managing everyone’s schedule can often present. Fortunately, today’s cloud solutions provide a means to overcome these challenges. Let’s explore the idea of smart scheduling and how it can make your entire process so much simpler.

Understanding Smart Scheduling

These software solutions are commonly found in industries that are subject to a lot of outside influence and fluctuating demand due to a variety of factors, such as retail. Smart scheduling gives these businesses the capability to schedule their employees more effectively, using automation to simplify the process.

Having said that, the principles of smart scheduling can be applied to all industries if they are viewed as a process, rather than a technology. Not only can all industries apply these principles, they should, as all businesses must deal with numerous factors that impact their operations.

Looking at it in this light, smart scheduling effectively just boils down to consolidating your various circumstances and scheduling to accommodate them accordingly. It’s recognizing that certain times will have different demand levels, that some conditions will impact operations, and making the preparations to deal with them proactively.

Scheduling More Intelligently

Even if you don’t have a dedicated solution lined up for these purposes, there are some ways that you can embrace the concept of smart scheduling. Consider these strategies:

Bring Your Information Together—You should consolidate any available information that you have regarding your schedule and your business’ operations to make it easier for you to predict patterns and prepare for them. Understanding what priorities you have, and how much your employees have been available to accomplish, will assist you in scheduling your team more effectively.
Communicate—Communication is one of the most important factors when determining your success, and this goes for how much information your schedule provides. Give your employees context into their tasks to help empower their procedures and productivity.
Use a Scheduling Platform—Businesses have many options to assist them with their scheduling available, and not all of them need to be inherently “smart.” Finding one that works for your needs will bring considerable benefits to your business and its processes.

Regardless of the business solutions you need, NuTech Services is here to help you manage them. To learn more, reach out to our team by calling 810.230.9455.

Sep, 2020

Small Businesses Make Progress with Managed Services

For a lot of businesses, 2020 has seen some major challenges. Many SMBs feel like they are in a snow globe attached to a paint mixer that is always switched on. With all the problems laid out in front of them, many businesses have decided that in order to protect their business that they would subscribe to a strategy of proactivity. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways managed services help keep you ahead.

What is it to be Proactive?

It’s all about preventing issues and risk. Being proactive is simply action taken after a risk assessment. Many times, risk is inherent, so being proactive is just managing situations to keep risk at bay. It goes without saying that taking proactive steps, especially in business, can be some of the most effective strategies to get ahead. Why is this? It comes down to time.

When a person sees a problem and fixes the problem, the time that is spent fixing the problem is waste, especially when taking proactive action could eliminate the problem in the first place. Managed services are predicated on this very concept. The more you do to keep problems from presenting themselves, the more time there is to be productive. We measure this in uptime.

Downtime, the Business Killer

Your business isn’t Google. It isn’t Google in 2013. That was the year that Google went down for almost five hours. Imagine five hours without Google! It cost the company–in 2013–an estimated $545,000. Now, Google can afford that, but it just illustrates how expensive downtime can be. It can be problematic in several ways, including:

Customer frustration – Downtime is extremely problematic for your customer relationships. Not only does extended downtime flood your business with calls and messages, it also fosters distrust.
Staff frustration – For many small businesses, employees wear a couple different caps. One of those caps, that many workers would rather not wear, is that of a customer service representative. If someone on your production team can’t get at the resources they need to do their jobs, you are paying them to either be PR or janitorial staff. Either way, they tend to get impatient pretty quick when they can’t do what they were hired to do.
Exorbitant cost – The two previous examples fuel rising costs. If you are paying your employees and they aren’t producing anything tangible, you are losing money, period.

Limiting downtime is a priority for every well-run business, otherwise you are just throwing away money.

Proactive Services

At NuTech Services, we have a couple proactive solutions that can really benefit your business. They include:

Remote monitoring – By remotely monitoring your network and infrastructure, our expert technicians can see if there are inconsistencies, infiltrations, or irregularities that we can take care of before they become problematic. By staying ahead of hardware issues and monitoring for malware and other network-related issues, you avoid the downtime it takes to fix these issues when they come to a head.
Cloud computing – Another option is to take your computing infrastructure offsite. Cloud solutions often come with comprehensive management baked into the price so that your employees will have anytime, anywhere access to the data and applications they need.
Patch management – Software vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers and cause significant devastation on your company’s network. By updating all of your software systems with the latest updates, you mitigate the risk that comes from running older versions of software.

Proactivity doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen. If you would like to stare down some of the biggest risks to your technology and data, and improve your business’ uptime, call us today at 810.230.9455.

Jul, 2020

Tip of the Week: Useful Excel Shortcuts

When most people think “spreadsheet,” they’re thinking about Microsoft Excel. Yet, for how well-known it is, many people are unaware of many of its capabilities. This is particularly true of the shortcuts available to properly format these spreadsheets. For this week’s tip, we’re sharing a few of these formatting tips.

Quick and Easy Tables

Let’s face it—a spreadsheet full of points and figures isn’t the most comprehensive way to view your data. It is far better to instead format that data into a table, as you can then reorganize it and filter it as needed. Once your data is in a spreadsheet, creating a table is as simple as selecting one of your cells, pressing Ctrl + T, and then hitting Enter.

Handy Formatting Shortcuts

Formatting a spreadsheet is a matter of balance. While it isn’t something you want to spend a ton of time and effort doing, it can add a significant amount of comprehension for the person reviewing it. Shortcuts can help make this formatting less intrusive, and more efficient for you, the person creating the spreadsheet in the first place.

Here are a few select shortcuts that you will likely find useful:

Ctrl + B – Bold
Ctrl + I – Italics
Ctrl + U – Underline
Ctrl + 5 – Strikethrough selected text
Ctrl + 1 – Format box for selection
F4 – repeats the last action

Icon Sets

On the topic of visibility, some trends can be challenging to spot without this kind of added context as well. Excel has icons that can automatically put in a bit of visual context. With the cells you want to add the icons to highlighted, click on Conditional Formatting under the Home tab of the menu. There, the Icon Sets option should appear, where you can select the set of your choosing.

These icons are particularly handy because they are automatically configured to adjust to your data. Let’s assume that you pick the icon set with three arrows. Based on the range your data covers, the lowest third is automatically assigned the downward arrow, the middlemost third has the sideways arrow, and the highest third gets the ascending arrow. With five icons, your range is split into fifths, as your range is automatically divided amongst the icons.

What are some of your favorite formatting tricks for Excel? Share them in the comments!

Jul, 2020

Tip of the Week: Bookmarking Your Google Documents

Productivity is always an important consideration when it comes to your business’ processes. That’s why, for this week’s tip, we’re going over how to boost your productivity by adding some of your G Suite documents into your bookmarks bar.

If you use the selection of tools that Google offers as a part of its G Suite offering, you’ve probably found a few documents that you find yourself repeatedly returning to on a regular basis. Rather than navigating to them via the appropriate folder hierarchy in Google Drive, there is a simple shortcut that you can take advantage of in Google Chrome: creating a bookmark that navigates directly to the appropriate page.

This is a very simple process:

Access your Google Drive and open the document you want to save to your bookmarks.
In the Address Bar, you’ll see a star icon at the right side. Click it.
A small drop-down menu will appear where you can change the name of your shortcuts, and select the “Folder” that it will appear in. Select Bookmarks bar.
Click Done, and then the document will appear in the bookmarks bar.

There you have it, you now have a quick shortcut to one of your most-used documents. For more handy shortcuts and tips (along with some other topics), subscribe to our blog!

Jun, 2020

Tip of the Week: How to Effectively Task Out Goals and Assignments

There is a lot that needs to be done in the typical business each day, and with so many steps involved in each process, it can be difficult to stay on track. Without the right information, it is basically impossible to remain productive. To help keep up your productivity and morale, we’ve put together a guide to help you task out your objectives for this week’s tip.

The Ideal Task Formula

The consensus of many productivity experts and trusted names is that the equation to build out a task essentially looks like this:

Step + Detail + Deadline + Context = Task

This works well, as it can apply to either a complete project, or each piece of a larger project. Let’s take a closer look at each part.

Step

Every task is going to feature some action or another, whether something needs to be researched, written, completed, or reviewed, what have you. Essentially, this defines the what of the task at hand, the goal that the person assigned to it needs to accomplish.

Detail

This takes the step and builds it out with additional context and specificity. This might involve such details as:

Who the task is assigned to
Why they’re completing the task
What contribution this task gives toward the final goal
Where the assigned team member can find the resources needed to complete the task

Deadline

Of course, one of the most important details associated with any task is the date and time it needs to be completed. By specifying this, you prevent your projects from remaining in a holding pattern, moving them along.

Context

The final things you include in your task are the other important details surrounding it: how long is allotted to spend on it, any projects it is associated with, and where it should fall in the assigned team member’s priorities. This enables the person you’ve assigned to better organize their schedule to make the most effective use of their time.

Let’s say you wanted to assign one of your team members to write you a blog post about creating a task, so you needed to task it out. The final product might look something like this:

“Write blog post about creating tasks”

Creation of blog for website describing how to create a task for a business goal to be posted on Friday. Please compose blog on document found in content creation folder.

Assigned to SEAN – Priority 5

*If unable to complete, please inform HR and reschedule to next week*

Wednesday: 9:30—10:30

Seek out sources for blog post about how to task out responsibilities
Compose blog post
Contact BRIAN to read blog over and proof

Friday: 1:30—2:00

Post blog to website”

There you have it: how to task out your business’ processes for your team to reference as they follow your instructions. This process can apply to just about anything, if you are careful to follow the steps and provide a clear and comprehensive view of that which needs to be accomplished. The more information you provide, the better the outcome will likely be.

For more information to help you boost your productivity, and information about the tools that can help you to do so, subscribe to our blog today!

Jun, 2020

People Have Been Working From Home Longer than You Think

Working from home isn’t new, but with the COVID-19 pandemic sparking public health fears many businesses decided to move their operations offsite. For much of the past decade remote work was an available strategy for business, but many business owners feared it would give them a lack of control over their workforce, and therefore was largely ignored. This was despite remote work being a strategy people have embraced for a long, long time. Today, we take a look at the history and progression of working from home.

For Much of History People Worked From Home

In medieval times people predominantly worked at their place of residence. Many people of this era in Europe lived in what are known now as longhouses. They lived a subsistence life, looking after their crops and livestock. Individuals that lived in these communal buildings typically found a way to justify their inclusion by gaining a trade that would help the rest of the people out. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-18th century where people started going outside their immediate community to go to work; and even then, the people that ran the factories lived and operated out of small buildings adjacent to the main factory.

Office Work In the 20th Century

As industrialization took hold, there was demand for clerical workers and salesmen that necessitated building an office. Inventions such as electric motors, telegraphy (and eventually telephony), and the typewriter facilitated a major change for business.

Only a few decades later, much of the job market was represented by clerical work. The workers that still worked in production were made to hold fast to management’s new standards for productivity. The standard that kept increasing. Managers of the time began to keep detailed figures of how long a task should take. According to a productivity field guide from 1960, swiveling in your seat should have taken .009 minutes. At this juncture, the cubicle was invented, bringing unparalleled distraction prevention to the modern office.

Technology Helped Encourage Remote Practices

As computing became more commonplace, so did remote working. Factories, the base for the 20th century American economy, started to close as the price of labor started to be prohibitive for business. Service jobs filled the gap and a new level of productivity was established. Major innovations such as the personal computer, home Internet service, and ultimately cloud computing have expanded the availability for a worker to have access to everything he/she needs from anywhere.

What better place than home?

Remote work had been growing pretty rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In mid-May, 66 percent of people that could work from home, were working from home. That number is sure to go down as businesses reopen, but it may be that enough has been learned from this situation that employers will offer more flexibility to their staff than they had previously.

Remote work can provide your business some serious benefits. To talk to our professional consultants, call NuTech Services today at 810.230.9455.

Jun, 2020

Tip of the Week: 3 Crucial Considerations when Managing Projects

In the workplace, projects are used to push operations forward. This makes your ability to manage your business’ projects truly important as the global economy turns back on. To help, we’re sharing three tips that will help you most effectively do so.

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Even in the best of times, clear and comprehensive communications are necessary to the success of any business initiative. Without them, a team simply cannot function as they should, leading to delays, redundancy, and missed steps.

To avoid these ramifications, you need to set a precedent that encourages your team to communicate with one another. In addition to frequently reinforcing the importance of their collaboration, give your team the opportunity to do so in various settings. Regular meetings are a must to keep everyone on the same page. You should also provide your team with the solutions that facilitate communication (like VoIP, messaging, and good old email) and set an example by using them yourself.

2. Identify and address risks.

Murphy’s Law clearly states that, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” This is important to keep in mind, especially regarding your business. Acknowledging the risks that you’ll face and determining how to address them proactively will prove to be exceptionally useful, as you can figure out which is the most likely to impact you and your operations and prepare for them accordingly.

One of these risks could involve scope creep, where your project expands beyond its original limitations and deadlines. Make sure that you’re accounting for these kinds of delays as you plan it ahead of time.

3. Clarify responsibilities.

When multiple people are working together on a project, it is critically important to establish who is to see to which task. Otherwise, you encounter the same issues that a lack of communication will cause.

As your project progresses, you need to firmly establish each team member’s role and the responsibilities that they need to uphold. Not only will each member have a clearer idea of their part in a project, they will better understand the process and be able to contribute to it in a more productive way. Make sure that you work with the members of the team to distribute these tasks to the best available person for each one. This will help contribute to the team having ownership of the project and inspire them to contribute their best efforts.

For the IT tools and solutions to assist you in your project management, or the other processes your business relies upon, reach out to NuTech Services! Give us a call at 810.230.9455 to learn more.

May, 2020

Chrome Adds Color Coded Tabs and We’re So Thankful

Google Chrome is adding a cool feature over the next week or so (it may already have been released for you). The next feature is sure to make a big difference for some and will be non-descript for others. Let’s unpack colorful tabs in Google Chrome.

Adding More Organization Into Your Chrome Browser

Admit it, you have a tendency to use too many browser tabs. At any given time, you may have 5-10-20 browser tabs open. If you use more than one screen, it could be more. Way more. Most users use their Chrome browser for so much of your online life that you hardly pay attention. Then you wonder why your PC is running slow. The truth is people use a lot of browser tabs, and they are better off for it.

Google, knowing their users’ behavior better than most companies has come up with a new feature that will allow you to assign a certain color to a browser tab and then group them together with like-colored tabs. This feature will be rolled out to users in this update.

The update should be coming this week, but it will hit everyone at different times (Google is deliberate about their updates). You may already have the feature in your Chrome browser. When it does come it will be as a default browser update, and will be a change for all Chrome users. All you will need to do is right-click on tabs, group them together, and assign a color.

Are you a tab-hoarder, or a tab-minimalist? Is this feature going to help you? Leave your comments below and be sure to return to our blog for more great information about technology.

May, 2020

Tip of the Week: Three Simple Measures for More Productive Email

Email is a great tool for businesses to use, but if mismanaged, it can quickly become a major time sink. That’s why we wanted to go over a few ways that you can use your email solution to boost your overall productivity (rather than squander it) in the form of some handy tips.

#1: Interact with it less.

As we established from the very start, email can very rapidly shift from an asset to a considerable time commitment, often multiple times throughout the workday. If possible, avoid getting drawn in by reducing the total amount of time you spend in your mailbox. There are a few ways to accomplish this:

Check your emails in batches, allowing them to accumulate throughout the day and attending to all of them at once. This will help you to remain focused on your actual responsibilities, rather than having your concentration broken each time a message comes in.
Create a browser shortcut that takes you directly to your message composer and bypasses the inbox:
- For Gmail, use: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1.
- For Outlook, use: https://outlook.office365.com/mail/deeplink/compose?version=2020042702.13&popoutv2=1&leanbootstrap=1

#2: Organize yourself, by organizing it.

Without the proper maintenance, your inbox can quickly become bogged down with messages and make it impossible to find important messages later. Therefore, it is useful to add additional rules and features to your email client, such as:

When you’re dealing with a ton of emails, it can be annoying to have to bounce back to your inbox each time you delete, move, or act on one of your incoming messages. Fortunately, there is a way to mitigate this issue through a simple change in your settings.
- In Gmail, there is a feature called Auto Advance. With it activated, deleting, moving, or archiving a message will no longer send you back to your inbox, and will instead move you to your next message. You can also activate the Send & Archive button, which will give you the option to do both things in one click.
- When using Outlook, you can change your settings to also advance you to your next message after acting upon its predecessor. Call up your Options (under the File menu option) and select Mail. On that page, you’ll find a section labelled Other, and the specification to complete an action “After moving or deleting an open item.” Select open the next item from the dropdown.
Whether you’re dealing with communications referencing different projects or simply receive many kinds of correspondence, it can be difficult to keep them all straight. Sorting these messages out automatically can save quite a bit of time and frustration.
- In Gmail, you can create Labels, which effectively help you manage different emails from different senders or that reference different topics. By creating Filters via the drop-down option in the Search bar, you can also set certain emails to have these labels applied based on preset criteria. These can even be used to sort through different email addresses you receive in the Gmail client.
- Outlook also offers a similar function with its capability to create Folders and generate Rules to direct certain messages to them automatically, once again. When an existing inbox message is right-clicked, suggested rules will display, along with the opportunity to create one or to manage the ones you have already created.

#3: Prepare Ahead of Time

We all have those messages that we find ourselves sending time and time again, with minimal details changed between them. Shave the time you spend drafting these messages down by creating a template to start off with.

In Gmail, as your message composer is open, click the triple-dot menu at the bottom and navigate to Templates. From there, you have the option to either insert a template you have already created or save what you have drafted as a new template to use later. If you no longer need a template, you can also delete it from this menu.
In Outlook, you can create a new template from a message by navigating to File and Save As, then switching the file type to Outlook Template. To use them, select New Items as you are drafting your email and from there, More Items and then Choose Form. From there, select User Templates in File System in the Look In box. Find your template, and select Open.

What other ways do you know to speed up your use of your email? Share them in the comments! For more handy tips, make sure you subscribe to our blog.