10 Tech-Enabled Productivity Hacks: Making Smart Work a Reality for Your Employees

There are only so many hours in a day, and much of our time is spent trying to achieve too many goals at the same time. A Pew survey found that 52% of US-based respondents usually try to multitask and tackle two or more responsibilities simultaneously. This shows the size and scope of our workloads and the pressure we experience to fulfill them.

The best way to free up your team’s time and maximize their productivity is to encourage them to delegate as many tasks as they can possibly through the best team communication tools. They may delegate to other employees, colleagues, or third parties, but delegating tasks to tech-based services and platforms can also save time and enhance their outputs.

In this article, we’ll share ten simple and effective tech-enabled productivity hacks that you can use to free up your employees’ time, energy. and resources while streamlining and simplifying their workloads. You can implement these tips across your organization, and you can use them personally to make innovative work a reality both for you and your employees.

10 Tech-Based Productivity Hacks for Streamlined Workflows

Whether you’re in the corporate world, work in real estate, marketing, SaaS, or any other sector, the use of a good productivity tool and tech can improve your team’s productivity.

Use these 10 tech-based hacks to optimize your employees’ workflows and ensure your organization is on the path to success.

1. Install Time Tracking Software

Time management is an essential skill for every professional. Therefore, time tracking is a must-have tool in the workplace for structuring your team’s daily activities.

The right time-tracking apps will help you and your employees to maximize your productivity with minimal effort, and many apps also gather data on your habits, workflows, and productivity rates to help you to optimize your daily routine even further.

Some simplify your work to an even larger degree by tracking billable hours, prioritizing tasks in order of importance, creating timesheets and customized reports, and integrating with calendar apps and digital work tools like Slack, Trello, and Google Docs.

Most productivity experts recommend opting for time-tracking software based on the Pomodoro Technique to supercharge your efficiency.

2. Filter Your Email Inbox

Sifting through dozens of emails each morning to find the ones relevant to your workflows can be frustrating and time-consuming. Cut out the extra work by setting up email filters for your inbox that allows you to quickly scan and identify urgent emails, or you can try using a collaboration tool such as Troop Messenger for faster work communication.

Some email platforms, including Gmail and Yahoo Mail, allow you to create labels and filters for your inbox in their settings menus. This makes your emails easily legible and keeps them categorized.

For instance, if you want to highlight all emails from a manager in a specific color, flag replies from hot leads as urgent, or send all emails from suppliers to a certain label, you can set up these filters and many others in Gmail.

If you’re using Outlook for your work emails, you can select the Rules button on the Home menu, choose ‘Create Rule’, and assign tasks to your emails under specific conditions.

3. Trial an AI Content Creation App

Writer’s block can hinder your team’s productivity and leave your employees feeling unmotivated. Make life simpler for them and for you by trying out an AI-based content generation app that co-writes drafts of blogs, newsletters, social media posts, and more. Most tools, like Jasper, Simplified, Copy.ai, and Anyword, offer dozens of different templates to get you started, and some even allow you to generate images using AI.

Once you have your draft ready, you can use text enhancement AIs like Grammarly and Wordtune to detect spelling errors, grammatical errors, tone and language mistakes, and more, automatically correcting them to save you both effort and time.

Teams can even use AI video generation tools to enhance existing videos, remove backgrounds, and edit footage professionally, with just a few clicks of a mouse.

4. Opt for a Password Manager

Password managers make it easy to access all of your passwords without having to remember them or have them written down. This simple productivity hack can make a significant difference to your day. You’ll never need to worry about getting locked out of important accounts when you forget a password.

These tech-based tools work by allowing you to create a master password that secures all of your other passwords to various accounts. Instead of having to recall every password, you will only need the master password to allow your password manager to automatically sign you into your platform of choice.

Be sure to choose a trusted and secure open source password manager that integrates with your web browser so that you can log into websites and platforms instantly.

5. Use a Talk-to-Type System

AI-powered writing assistants and talk-to-type systems enable you to dictate your words and have them automatically transcribed into text. This can save vast amounts of time, especially when using these systems to dictate documents, proposals, reports, and emails.

Just remember that AI writing assistants are still relatively new, so they’re usually recommended for first drafts. You will still need to read through the document once it’s in text format and ensure that you correct any errors before you send it off.

Many operating systems offer built-in talk-to-type systems. Windows users can switch on the voice typing function by selecting the Windows home key and pressing ‘H’ on the keyboard at the same time.
MacOS users using Catalina or later can navigate to System Preferences > Accessibility > Voice Control and enable this feature. It will feature a microphone symbol on your screen, which is instantly accessible as needed.

Google also offers its own talk-to-type system for Chrome browser users. Enable this feature directly in Google Slides or Google Docs once your microphone has been turned on.

6. Try a Voice-Activated Assistant

Voice-activated assistants are also helpful when it comes to creating schedules and reminders, taking down notes, and answering emails. Especially if you need to focus on other tasks or you have your hands full.

Assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant can help you to make hands-free calls, access apps instantly, search the internet for specific requests, set timers, and much more. A tool with crisp, clear audio messaging features like Troop Messenger is a great choice, especially for collaborative tasks and projects.

7. Extend Your Email Unsend Times

Accidentally sending out emails that are unfinished or addressed to the wrong person can set you back hours of time apologizing. You may lose out on generating or nurturing valuable leads, have to resend emails, or clarify any confusion or misunderstandings that arise.

Luckily, you can extend the amount of time you are given to unsend an email in Gmail.

Head to your Gmail settings, then select ‘Undo Send’ and choose the cancellation period of your choice. You can choose from 5, 10, 20, or 30-second periods as you see fit. Windows Outlook also has an undo email feature, but not for email addresses ending in @live.com, @hotmail.com, @msn.com, or @outlook.com.

8. Hire a Virtual Assistant

If you or your employees need extra support, consider allowing them to hire virtual assistants online. These assistants can provide help with scheduling, task management, and other essential tasks, including the management of digital distractions like phone calls, messages, and emails.

They work completely virtually, which allows you to maximize productivity without having to hire or accommodate additional staff at your offices.

9. Install an AI Scheduling App

AI scheduling is a must-have tool for anyone with a busy and evolving schedule. Options like Clockwise and Motion are optimized for teams. They can save you hours per week by allowing you to adjust work periods, breaks, meetings, calendar additions, and other essential tasks using a centralized dashboard.

Some tools have project management systems in place too. This enables you to adjust each task priority and automatically generate new tasks from emails, Slack messages, and other work-related digital communications that facilitate collaboration.

10. Automate Your Daily Workflows

AI automation tools can handle the majority of your daily workload by using intelligent tools and integrations to simplify your life.

Options like Zapier and AI Agent allow you to use natural language to generate workflows connected across thousands of different apps.

Describe your automation needs, and the bots will generate workflows that you can edit and customize with ease. Robotic assistants are becoming more widely used to complete tasks without any human input other than providing initial instructions and parameters.

Conclusion

Technology, automation, and AI make it easier than ever to hack productivity and introduce smart work across industries and sectors. You can do everything from tracking time to generating real estate leads, managing workflows, and creating content at the touch of a button. This improves workplace culture and collaboration, workload management, reduces the chances of burnout, and encourages employees to perform at their optimum.

If you want to make smart work a reality for your team while maximizing productivity and saving resources, opt for some of the productivity tools mentioned in this article. You’ll soon start to free up more of their valuable time—and yours, too!