How to Boost Employee Productivity and Business Efficiency by Stopping Tech Fatigue

Let’s say you implement new software for your team to use, and they simply don’t.

Despite what you may assume, it likely isn’t because they’re being lazy or assembling in an act of quiet defiance. They may just be burnt out.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get excited about new technologies, especially in the workplace. For your team members, it amounts to just another thing they have to juggle.

Consider how the average office worker starts each and every day:

• They log into their workstation, remembering their password and providing the multi-factor authentication proof required to access their profile.
• They open all of their essential tools, from their email to the customer relationship management (CRM) platform to the instant messaging app and everything else. Chances are, at least some of these will also require MFA in order to access them.
• They dive into their tasks, juggling their responsibilities with the pings and notifications from all of the other tools they need to have open.

That’s a lot for anyone to manage… and that’s omitting any personal stress or distractions a team member is surely dealing with. If you add even one more application to manage into the mix, it’s little wonder that there will likely be diminishing returns. Productivity is frequently where these diminishing returns manifest.

Your business is probably dealing with technology fatigue as you read these words.

Technology Fatigue is a Business’ Death by a Thousand Shortcuts

What is the first thing you do when you’re face-to-face with a massive to-do list? If you’re like most, you start looking for shortcuts and workarounds. Your team members will be no different.

If they’re asked to remember 25 unique passwords, they’ll resort to options like w0rk_pass1, w0rk_pass2, and so on, assuming they don’t just reuse the same one over and over again: w0rk_pass, w0rk_pass, w0rk_pass.

If your network is a pain to navigate and move files around, they’ll share files with their personal accounts—officially a data breach—simply because it is easier.

This isn’t even the worst cost you’ll have to contend with, either. Appropriately, technology fatigue leads to employee exhaustion.

Even if your highest performers are maintaining their current level of productivity, they may already have mentally disconnected from their work. They’ve seen tools and solutions come and go, all of which make your KPIs look great, even as they make your team’s work lives more difficult and less efficient.

Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t have control over a secured, monitored network. That said, your human employees are not a part of that network. They’re simply interfacing with it. So, treating them like a part of the network and assuming they can effortlessly work with a dozen (plus) software platforms and applications each and every day is going to result in them struggling. Wouldn’t you, in their shoes?

Fortunately, this Fatigue is Relatively Easy to Fix

I’m about to say something that, as an IT consultant, might sound a little crazy: good IT is more about quality than quantity. I would much rather have you and your team working with three tools you can be excited (or at least happy) about using than have you and your team have three dozen tools that confuse things and create obstacles to your success.

Let’s talk about how you can eliminate some of the fatigue and get your business closer to the first scenario than you are the second:

Consolidate, Consolidate, Consolidate

More often than not, businesses don’t need to start throwing money at a problem in order to solve it. This is because they typically have the tools they need to solve it already, they just don’t know they have them. Let’s say you wanted to plan a project. While there are plenty of third-party tools that are well-known and readily available, Microsoft 365 includes Microsoft Planner, which accomplishes the same thing. While Google Workspace currently lacks a 1:1 alternative project management tool, its existing toolkit can easily be organized and utilized in an extremely similar way… eliminating the need for additional software and its associated costs, both financial and mental.

Simplify Secure Access

Returning to the password issue, either of the w0rk_pass scenarios we described is simply unacceptable. However, it is also more than a little insane to expect your team members to memorize dozens of work-related passwords (in addition to their private ones) that likely change periodically. Fortunately, there are tools available that can help.

A password manager effectively acts as a cheat sheet of a user’s passwords, with its security boosted to the nth degree. Not only does it securely help you create and store unique, complex passwords for all your accounts, but it also reduces the number of passwords you must actively remember to just one. An enterprise password manager also allows you to share these credentials with the appropriate employees based on role or need, and makes changing these passwords as seamless as possible.

Keep Your Team in the Loop

Let’s say you stumble across what appears to be the perfect software. It will do everything you need, and might even help your team work more productively. Sure, it’s a little more expensive than what you are paying now, but it could very well be worth it over time.

Your first instinct may be to pull the trigger and procure this new software platform. You shouldn’t… at least not without bringing those who would use it into the discussion. Ask them what is slowing them down, what frustrations they have with their current workplace processes. You might find out that their chairs are worn out to the point of distraction, and so, for a much smaller, one-time investment, you could see equal if not greater productivity gains from them… and you would have never known if you hadn’t talked to them.

Empowering your staff is critical, but it isn’t achieved by micromanaging every single decision and discussion. It’s achieved by giving them the tools they actually need to excel.

Is Your IT Exhausting Your Employees?

We can help identify the friction points and resolve them, streamlining your technology and ensuring it performs as expected for your organization. IT is there to make things easier, so why let it hold you back any longer? Give us a call at (02) 8825-5555.