Summary: Reducing email volume is a primary goal for many organizations. We have provided 3 unqiue time-saving ideas for your office!

Don’t work harder; work smarter. There’s a finite amount of time we spend at the office so being efficient and highly productive are crucial. Don’t worry though – there are a variety of ways you can ease the time-crunch. Below are three time-saving ideas for your office that are sure to help your team to get sh*t done. Spoiler alert: they all focus on reducing email volume.

1. Reduce Email Volume. Remove All Staff Emails.

“But I love my excess of work emails!” “Information overload is my jam!” – said no one ever. If you want to communicate with your staff, your intranet software is the first place to start. Below are a few ways your intranet allows you to collaborate and share information:

• Live chats – have a question that needs an immediate response? Communicate in real time with your peers over live chat. Avoid cluttering your colleague’s inbox and waiting for a response. Cut down the amount of follow up emails for lost or forgotten mail.
• Project sites – Project Management Sites promote a collaborative and secure work space without giving employees outside the project group access. Ensuring that sensitive information stays secure. Making the switch from emails to Project Management Sites will streamlines communication, efficiency and collaboration.
• Message boards – a great resource for employees to post questions, seek advice and tap in collective knowledge.
• Discussion forums – enhance effective communication by using a platform for your team to lock down topics and conversations.

These are immediate and interactive ways to connect with your staff while reducing email volume. With fewer emails, your staff can do what they came to do – work.

2. Automate Processes with Work Organization Tools

Make sure your employees aren’t wasting their time completing manual tasks by utilizing automation. There’s an abundance of tools available on your intranet to streamline processes and trim tedious tasks.

• Document management – keep your documents stored on a shared drive with a search function for quick and efficient retrieval. Time spent physically searching through different cabinets or manually through a shared drive is a major time thief.
• Online Forms – streamline workflows and eliminate redundant business tasks but adding automating forms online such as approval processes. By simply moving the approval process online you have the potential to reduce timelines from weeks to hours.
• Employee onboarding – switch your onboarding processes from manual and tedious to efficient and seamless with online automated employee onboarding tools.
• Training – it goes without saying that not all staff training can be eliminated in the workplace, but you certainly can save time by moving some training online. Consider adding knowledge tests, setting up an online training calendar, storing key resources such as training manuals and add online tutorials for new staff.

3. Get Your Priorities Straight! Goals To Set For Yourself

Planning goals and securing time to work on them (while not getting distracted by emails) is essential to working smarter. Planning tasks to complete on a daily, weekly or monthly basis will lead to the much more efficient use of your time.

• Set deadlines for tasks – avoid allowing tasks to have limitless timelines. Have you ever noticed how much work gets done the day before a vacation? Knowing there is a restricted timeline on completing a task will improve your concentration.
• Establish goals – set long term company goals for your staff to work towards. Encourage employees to break down each milestone with reachable tasks throughout the quarter to attain tangible results.
• Use a calendar – secure time to get actual work and planning done. If you are intermittently breaking your concentration to stop what you’re doing and respond to emails, phone calls or other interruptions, you’re not utilizing your time in the office to the fullest.

Have any time-saving techniques you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!