Legendary American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker Paul J. Meyer famously said, “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
In today’s era, one factor also impacts workforce productivity in a massive way—effective communication. That’s why it’s not surprising to know that a majority of contemporary businesses invest a lot of money and resources to enhance inter-team communication and collaboration.
Even though the typical budget for internal communications may vary from company to company depending on the industry, size of the company, and specific needs, the common guideline is to allocate between one and five percent of total annual revenue. Make no mistake, the percentage may seem tiny, but for a company that registers a billion dollars, the budget can be between 10 and 50 million dollars.
That’s where sophisticated technology such as Unified Communication systems comes into the picture. You see, UC is the integration of various communication tools into a single system. Since its introduction, UC has revolutionized the way businesses communicate.
Now, the question comes “What’s that factor in UC systems that shoot up workforce productivity?” The answer is quite simple—features. The more sophisticated a UC system is, the more effective are its features. This blog post lists ten real-time UC features that play a huge role in enhancing workforce productivity. Dive right in!
1. High-Quality Video Conferencing
Face-to-face communication is far more effective compared to verbal and written conversations. That’s because face-to-face communication provides crucial nonverbal cues that are elusive in other types of communication. Since remote working has become the new normal, many organizations take necessary measures to ensure virtual face-to-face communication. Just imagine the state of remote work conditions without video conferences! It would not only affect teamwork but also individual productivity.
On the other hand, an excellent video conferencing experience connects team members working remotely and enhances their productivity. That’s where a reliable and reputable UC system comes in. It has necessary features such as virtual backgrounds, screen sharing, and participant annotations.
2. Single Interface for Communication
When an organization has a unified means of exchanging information between different components, devices, or systems, it has an advantage over its competitors that don’t have a single interface for communication. Having a single interface for communication enhances productivity, improves efficiency, promotes simplicity, and reduces confusion.
A sophisticated UC system enables one to access phone calls, text messages, voice mail, and instant messages from a single interface. Apart from that, the level of control every user has resulted in improved employee productivity and effective communication.
3. Control Over Communication and Customization
Sophisticated UC systems have several options for users ranging from auto-attendant, presence sharing, voice mail system, and more. Such type of user availability provides total control over communication and mass customization.
Speaking of customization, UC systems give users a plethora of choices that provide freedom to take part in communication sessions (out of the office, busy, available, and so on). Besides, the users can connect through their preferred communication mode (call, text, or instant messaging) before the start of an actual conversation. Both features enable users and employees to operate as per the standard and tailor their responses to different customers and situations.
4. Collaborative Document Editing
Would you be surprised to learn that real-time collaborative document editing can enhance productivity? Be it a spreadsheet, presentation, or report, multiple team members can edit a wide range of documents in real-time and work on important documents simultaneously.
When team members don’t have to spend time on back-and-forth email exchanges, each one of them remains on the same page and their productivity is enhanced exponentially. Apart from enhancing overall team efficiency, the collaborative document editing feature also accelerates the document creation process.
5. Unified Calendar Integration
You read it right! Unified calendar integration can boost workplace productivity. Now, you may have the question, “How can unified calendar integration enhance workplace productivity?” The answer to that is extremely simple. Real-time calendar integration is the cornerstone of effective time management and scheduling.
Calendar integration not only enhances workforce productivity but also enhances team coordination, minimizes scheduling conflicts, and ensures all employees remain on the same page as far as schedules and deadlines are concerned.
6. Presence-Based Call Routing and Presence Sharing
Presence-based call routing feature ensures that all incoming calls are efficiently handled. This feature reduces disruptions and enables team members to focus on their tasks without constant interruptions. To give a simple example, if an employee is in a meeting, they can mark themselves busy and all the incoming calls will be directed to another employee or voicemail.
When unified communication is integrated with mobility, inter-team collaboration, and employee productivity improves by leaps and bounds. That’s precisely what presence sharing does. It includes a wide range integration of communication channels ranging from video chat, video calling, email, text messages, and more.
7. Teleworking Features
Teleworking features enable employees to leverage a wide range of features and tools such as:
- Video conferencing
- Voicemail
- Corporate security features
These features make sure that employees maintain a professional and consistent communication channel. Teleworking features play a pivotal role in facilitating discussions, collaborations, and virtual meetings. That means employees can share documents in real-time, collaborate on live projects, and communicate with each other using high-quality video and audio conferences.
8. Collaborative Features
Collaboration is the cornerstone of increased productivity. As Helen Keller rightly said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” One research conducted by Stanford University found teams that work well together are 50 percent more productive.
The UC system has many collaborative features that make it extremely easy for team members to collaborate. All these features put together, play a huge role not only in improving the productivity of employees but also facilitating collaboration and teamwork.
9. Hot Desking
Hot Desking is an office arrangement where employees do not have assigned desks. Instead, they use any available workspace on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s a critical feature for contemporary organizations. In the context of hotdesking, employees aren’t tied to any particular place or a specific desk. Instead, they can work from anywhere and still be productive.
The feature has been extremely useful after remote working became the new normal. After the onset of the pandemic, this feature became a lifesaver, quite literally. It enabled employees to work from home and still be able to be as effective, if not more, as they were when they worked from the office.
10. Dynamic Extension
Just think of a scenario where employees can be reached by all team members with just a click of a button. That’s possible with the dynamic extension feature.
The feature enhances employees’ flexibility and reachability by enabling them to receive calls on various devices. The functionality is extremely critical when it comes to enhancing productivity.
Summing everything up,
There is no doubt that UC has revolutionized the way organizations operate their business as well as the way employees collaborate. Equipped with a wide range of sophisticated real-time features, UC systems empowered modern-day businesses to function more effectively and efficiently and adopt a culture of real-time collaboration.
