How technology can help your business work smarter, not harder.

I’ve been having conversations with some of my customers recently around how they are preparing their business for the future. Most have said they are focusing on cost-cutting, increasing optimisation, and up skilling their current employees - which in light of the COVID-pandemic makes perfect sense.

COVID has given businesses the chance to reinvent themselves and where they stand in their market. It’s also giving workers the chance to have a say in where, when, and how they work in the future. And across every industry, the pandemic has given businesses the opportunity to redefine what work looks like.

As businesses continue to think about how they prepare for the future, and how they prepare for the possibility of being forced to duck in and out of different COVID-levels and restrictions, one of the biggest questions I believe business should be asking themselves is this:

How do we work smarter, not harder?

If businesses are smart about it, they have the opportunity to thrive, not just survive, in a post-COVID world. Xero recently conducted a survey of small Kiwi businesses and found that 85% of them thought that Kiwi businesses needed to learn how to work smarter, not harder, in order to successfully rebuild New Zealand’s economy.

The same survey also found that since New Zealand went into it's first lockdown, almost two-thirds of businesses were wanting to increase their businesses productivity - with 42% of businesses wishing that they had had better processes and procedures in place pre-lockdown.

So how can businesses start to work smarter?

It’s all about enabling productivity for your teams - no matter where, when, or how they are working. The old phrase “working hard, but hardly working” seems to be ringing true for a lot of remote workers at the moment. One survey found that while 80% of office workers felt they were working as hard, or harder at home compared to in the office, over half felt that although they were working as hard, or harder, they were not actually being more productive.

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To unlock your remote workforces at-home productivity, it’s vital that businesses start leveraging the right mix of technology for their workforce, in order to better support them - and increase their productivity.

Lots of businesses have already been leveraging cloud-based technology solutions in order to support their remote workforces, as well as to gain more insight and data about their business operations -allowing them to increase productivity, and make better business decisions.

There’s also the opportunity for businesses to be leveraging IoT technology as well, in order to ensure their remote workforces productivity. All industries - whether it’s healthcare, construction, manufacturing or others - can benefit from IoT technology, and its ability to help facilitate the new normal of remote work. IoT technology enables workers to perform tasks that they would normally do on-site, off-site and virtually - providing more freedom and flexibility when it comes to how these day-to-day tasks are carried out.