5 Free Productivity Tools for Time-Short Teams

5-free-productivity-tools-for-time-short-teams

My guess is that you have a super hardworking team right? BUT…are they working on innovating and growing or are they stuck doing mindless tasks?

Knowing where and how to automate is the key to freeing up your time for bigger and better things. Here are the tools that will help you streamline team communication & productivity and get you back on track. Take what works for you and by all means, leave what doesn’t!

Slack 

First things first, let’s get your team talking!

If your team is sending emails for short questions, blowing up someone’s phone with texts or getting up from your desk everytime you need to ask a question…newsflash this isn’t effective communication. With Slack you can organise your conversations in channels, send direct messages, start group calls, organise documents & downloads and collaborate with other teams. You’re going to find time that you didn’t even know you were wasting!

5-free-productivity-tools-for-time-short-teams

Trello 

Trello is task management on steroids!

Trello is a really simple program that you can download on your desktop and mobile to manage your ongoing tasks and keep your team organised! Basically, you create ‘boards’ dedicated to teams, events or personal and then personalise the ‘lists’ that display on these ‘boards’.

We break our lists into:

  • To do today
  • To do this week
  • This month
  • For approval/on-hold
  • Done
  • Notes

You can then create ‘cards’ that sit under the lists drag and drop them as to prioritise your tasks. You can also assign due dates, tag other team members on your cards, attach documents and leave notes. Trello is great for predicting workload and assigning tasks to different members of your team.

5-free-productivity-tools-for-time-short-teams

StatusBrew

I’ve mentioned StatusBrew before in my blog ‘Free Tools for Creating and Distributing Content in 2018

Scheduling and distributing your content is often the largest obstacle for many people getting started with content marketing. By using a scheduling tool you can take the stress out of remembering when you need to post to your social channels and automate the entire process. Over the years I have switched between Hootsuite and Statusbrew, both of which have great free versions. I would suggest trying them both out to see what works for you!

5-free-productivity-tools-for-time-short-teams

Zapier 

Zapier was sent from the gods! All of those mind-numbing tasks such as adding/updating subscribers to your mailing list, auto-posting to social from an RSS feed and even moving your notifications out of your mailbox and into Slack…Zapier can do it for you!

It’s 2018, most retailers rely on multiple apps and software programs to manage their finances, customers and business. Having these programs ‘speak’ to each other and be able to pass on data is beyond valuable and will save you more time than any other program on this list!

Also check out ‘If This Then That’ – This is better suited for basic app integrations.

5-free-productivity-tools-for-time-short-teams

W.I.P (work in progress) 

This isn’t so much a tool as it is a process!

Automating time-wasting tasks and communicating through channels and cards is a great way to stay focused. BUT…if you really want to meet deadlines and work towards your goals you need to have a weekly WIP meeting. Map out a time (start of the week is best) to get your team together, in a room or online, and take turns outlining the following:

  1. The tasks I am working on this week
  2. Do I need help from other members of the team? If so, what do I need and what are my deadlines?
  3. Any questions or suggestions that will help move the business forward

5-free-productivity-tools-for-time-short-teams

And th-th-th-that’s all folks! As I said above take what you need and leave what you don’t –automation works differently in every business!

Also, let me know if there are any tools you use? I’d love to share them with our Milkies!

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