How to Supercharge Productivity: 3 Tools that Power PFA

As the professional landscape continues to evolve, more companies than ever are adopting flexible working. By embracing the fairly novel work-from-home approach, many businesses have been able to pursue innovative business models that empower their employees with more autonomy and better work-life balances.?

While there are plenty of upsides of remote working, it can also present challenges in employee productivity.?

Some would argue that being at home makes them more productive, while others may be surrounded by distractions in their home environments.

PFA has experienced rapid growth over the past year, which we believe is owed to our diverse and innovative distribution model, as well as seasoned leadership. In order to maintain this speed of growth, we’ve incorporated new tools into our tech stack to supercharge employee productivity and best serve our talented agents.?

Why is employee productivity important?

Put simply, employee productivity is the overall output of an employee in any given amount of time.?

It’s not necessarily determined by the amount of time invested into a task, because you could put hours and hours into a project without much to show for it, or you could accomplish a lot in no time at all.

In other words, it’s working smarter, not harder.?

In a survey of almost 2,000 workers, 79% admitted that they only feel productive for less than three hours per day. Increasing the number of productive working hours is good for business, with statistics showing that happy workers are more productive, leading to a 21% increase in profitability.

Employee productivity is vital to PFA, because our business model allows agents to work from remote locations all over the U.S.?

While our associates can dictate their own working hours and be their own boss, we make it our responsibility to support them by connecting them into our entrepreneurial community and helping them to be more productive.?

Our agents' high levels of productivity benefits the wider organization as well as the individual. By streamlining the process, we lower operational costs, better engage our associates with PFA’s mission and culture and improve our overall customer service.?

What are the challenges faced by companies right now in terms of productivity?

It’s no secret that the world has been going through tough times in recent years. While the shift that we have seen in working styles has introduced many new opportunities, we have to acknowledge that it has been a result of adapting to stressful situations.?

Even pre-pandemic, 61% of teams were reporting burnout, with another 31% reporting high or extremely high levels of stress at work. Burnout and stress are bad news for business. Both cause us to become distracted and exhausted, unable to complete even the simplest tasks.?

So how can team leaders and employers support their workers to prevent this??

Initiatives such as wellness programs are of course helpful, but it’s also important to take a look at the root cause of these increased levels of stress.?

For instance, 80% of employees say that they feel stressed due to ineffective communication within their company. Imagine that you’re facing a deadline and you’re having to chase up co-workers on various platforms to bring you the necessary data, yet everyone seems to have misunderstood exactly what you need and when you needed it. In these stressful scenarios, the outcome is your responsibility and yet it feels completely out of your hands.?

Implementing tools across your team will help to streamline working processes and ensure that communication is effective and fast.?

What tools can you use to supercharge employee productivity?

Unsurprisingly, 75% of global organizations were looking to use more productivity tools in 2021.?

You might have the most talented employees in your industry, but if they don’t have the right tools to help them on the job, they won’t be reaching their full potential.?

Not only does assistive technology help workers to be more productive, but 92% of employees say that it affects their workplace satisfaction - which in turn, leads to more productivity.?

When looking for productivity tools, we prioritized those that promote collaboration and have vast integrations. We also looked for tools with reporting functionality, to help track key metrics and measure productivity.?

Below, we’ve covered the three types of software that we have used to skyrocket our employee productivity.?

Project Management System

A project management system is a tool to help teams run their projects and workflows. Sometimes referred to as a work operating system (work OS), it can help employees to plan, track, organize and manage all aspects of a team project.

This can include tools for:

• Scheduling?
• Allocation of resources
• Data visualization
• Quality control
• Decision-making?

It creates transparency across teams and removes a lot of the grunt work from projects, making life much easier!

At PFA, we couldn’t think higher of Monday.com. A complete work OS, Monday.com has quickly become more than just a tool for us to manage projects. In fact, many of our existing policies and procedures wouldn't be possible without it.

From automations to integrations, this tool allows us to boost productivity by allowing employees to create triggers that produce specific actions across various software. We're able to swiftly import information from multiple sources into a central location for us to house and visualize data, helping us to make smarter business decisions.

Internal Communication Platform

A communication platform is a software that allows you to send messages with ease. This could be instant messaging, photo messaging, video calls, or even voice notes.

A great communication software will facilitate group chats to enable team messaging, as well as file sharing and in some circumstances, even customer service management.?

Slack is the main communication platform used at PFA. From weekly standup meetings to facilitating company fitness challenges, Slack is our internal communications hub that keeps us connected wherever we are working.

Many customer-facing actions also prompt Slack notifications, so employees know when to take action in certain areas of the business. For example, if an agent wanted to get appointed with one of our insurance carrier partners: they would fill out an online form that immediately notifies a specific Slack channel.

Customer Support Software

Customer service support tools are often integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) software to provide additional context to a client’s history of information with the business.?

For instance, it may tell you about a customer’s purchase history, who they are, where they’ve been referred from, and why they’re reaching out.?

Help Scout is PFA’s customer support powerhouse. It connects with other tools that we use, so we can quickly direct agent inquiries to the right department and person. Notes can be added to a conversation so employees across multiple departments can discuss a conversation internally and get the right information to the agent quickly.

Check out more of our valuable business tips

Hopefully you’ve found some helpful tips and tools to integrate within your teams to supercharge your productivity.?

Check out more useful articles that we’ve written about the powers of goal setting and the importance of team diversity!

Or if you’re interested in joining PFA as one of our entrepreneurial associates, reach out today.