When employees feel overwhelmed by their to-do lists, they're less likely to perform well at work or at home. Just like time off or
In a survey by productivity and automation platform IFTTT, 68% of respondents said they lose between 1 and 7 hours per week to task management alone, and 44% say they wish they had a tool to manage it. Some other time-consuming areas of annoyance were emails and other communication, administrative tasks and file management.
But leaders need to be careful about how they approach new tech tools, as these can sometimes
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IFTTT, short for "If This Then That," allows people to integrate their apps, devices and tech services so that they work together. For example, someone can cross-post their
To make sure any tools being brought in are actually effective, Tibbets shares four things for leaders to keep in mind.
Give people permission to automate
Employees shouldn't fear that by streamlining tasks with technology, they're making themselves obsolete, says Tibbets. Instead, people should be encouraged to see how tech can improve their workflows, allowing additional time for more meaningful work.
"Fear of the unknown sometimes holds individuals back from experimenting and trying new things," he says. "Give people the expectation that it's okay to automate some of what they're doing. Finding ways to give people assurances, or give people ideas for what their role could look like if they didn't have to do these tasks over and over the same way, actually sparks creativity."
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Establish guardrails around AI
Speaking about his own company, Tibbets points out restrictions that protect customer privacy, and points out the importance of making sure employees understand what company information may be fed to AI or ChatGPT, and what is off limits.
"We put policies in place around what data can and can't be used, especially any kind of customer data," he says. "We can't just pull that in, even if it's a simple copy and paste, but certainly not plug it in wholesale via AI. Having guardrails in place [is important] so those tools don't create future problems.
Test products and make them team-based
Individuals and teams should be able to test out tools, rather than have those tools be forced on them. One size does not fit all, Tibbets says.
"One of the things we've learned just over the last 10 years of internet productivity and how people are using different services, is that it's an approach in which individual tools, not necessarily all from the same large tech company, often get pulled in organically," he says. "Organizations have to accept that that's probably the best way to do it:Allowing different teams, different individuals on each team, to pick and choose those tools."
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Couple saved time with other benefits
Once automation tech tools are in place, leaders can remind employees of great ways to use any extra time. From health and wellness opportunities, family time and professional development, it's a great time to plug other available benefits.
"One of the things our company values is always learning, and one of the ways we've tried to back that up is giving people an annual stipend to take any type of class," Tibbets says, noting that many employees have chosen classes around career development. "We've had people start in customer support and move to engineering. We've had people start in marketing and move to product management. It's not just retraining, but giving people the expectation that as they save more of their time, they can use that time not just to get more of the same types of things done, but actually move into, or move up into other types of roles where they can reuse a lot of what they've learned and a lot of what they've built."
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