In an era of intense competition, employee productivity can be critical to getting an edge over the competition. This helps the business minimize overhead while allowing it to be more efficient, agile and fruitful. However, it’s important to make sure that this productivity is being put to good use, as productivity without aim is often useless.
There are many ways to improve productivity, from using knowledge management services to make full use of institutional knowledge, to more unwelcome methods like remote monitoring software. Another solution would be to use productivity apps, but some apps are made by bad actors, so it can be a minefield to find the right one.
To help you out, we’ve prepared five proven apps that can greatly improve employee productivity.
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5 Business Apps That Help Employee Productivity
1. Basecamp
One of the biggest issues when it comes to productivity is when your employees are not working efficiently enough together. Basecamp is a solid app when it comes to improving collaboration. This app has a number of features that contribute to this, including forums, a to-do list, a chatroom, and a shared list of files that users of the app can access.
One of the biggest downsides of Basecamp, however, is the price, though it could be argued that the value proposition is strong. After all, it does have a lot of features, as opposed to focusing exclusively on only one feature. At the same time, there is a free version that limits you to three projects and 20 users, which may be useful for smaller companies. Otherwise, the Business version is $99 per month with a 30-day free trial.
2. Evernote
Note taking is an important thing in any business, as our memories are only going to do us so well. and Evernote is a solid tool for businesses large and small. Evernote can be used for various reminders, but there are also other things that you can use it for. For example, you can post PDFs, images, URLs, Slack conversations, and more into Evernote in order to remind yourself and provide the content for anyone else who’s connected.
Evernote has a limited free version, as well as three paid tiers. The free version offers very limited features; for example, you can only upload 60MB per month, notes can only be 25MB at most, and other features are limited or inaccessible. Additionally, you can only use it on a maximum of two devices at a time.
Personal, meanwhile, costs $8.99 per month, and includes all features in the free tier. In addition to these, you have unlimited devices, 200MB max note size, and a cap of 10GB of uploads per month, among other things. The Professional tier is $10.99 per month, includes all lower tier features, adds an extra 10GB to your upload cap per month, and removes the cap for note size.
There’s also the Enterprise tier, which costs $14.99 per month, and each new user pays $14.99 per month as well.
3. IFTTT
IFTTT – or ‘If This Then That’ – is an app which aims to help connect different apps together to make them behave more efficiently. Even if you get a lot of use out of another business productivity app, you may also find that it lacks certain features, or that another app may have better execution with one of these features.
Many apps are capable of connecting with IFTTT, most notably communication apps like Slack and other important apps, like Gmail and Google Drive.
Another great feature of IFTTT is that you can set it to automatically share content across different social media websites. No more having to write an individual post for every single social media platform. You can enjoy IFTTT for free, although if you want to have more features, there are two more tiers: Pro and Pro+. These plans have a seven-day free trial, and once the trial is over, they cost $2.50 and $5 per month respectively.
4. Tide
One of the biggest issues for a lot of workers is being unable to focus on their work. Whether that may be due to stress, anxiety, or simply distractions that pull them out of their work momentum. The point behind Tide is to cure those distractions. It accomplishes two functions in particular: the use of natural sounds, as well as break management.
The way it’s set up, Tide plays nature sounds, such as rain or thunderstorms, while having you work 30 minutes before you can have a break. You can also have music playing during your work and break if that helps with concentration. After this, you’re given a five-minute break. For a lot of people, this kind of structure helps you from getting burnt out, while also keeping you from procrastinating too much.
Unlike a lot of other apps that help boost productivity, Tide is 100 percent free. It can be downloaded on both the Google Play Store and the iPhone’s App Store, though you can also download it as an extension on Google Chrome.
5. Trello
Trello is a popular tool for a lot of businesses and organizations, owing mainly to the fact that it is fairly simple to use. For example, when you’re managing the progress of certain tasks, all you need to actually do is drag and drop them as they progress.
Trello focuses specifically on task and project management, and thus is a good choice if you are looking for an app that prioritizes this. The app is also capable of connecting with certain other business communication apps, like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workspace.
In addition to the limited free version of Trello, there are three paid tiers in total, all three of which are paid annually. These tiers are Standard, Premium, and Enterprise, which cost $5, $10, and $17.50 per month respectively.
The Enterprise tier scales with the number of users who will be using it, as opposed to Evernote, which is a flat fee per user. You can sign up for the tier for up to 5000 users at $7.38 per month, making it ultimately the second cheapest of the three tiers if you have that many users. You can go over 5000, but you would need to get in contact with Trello to see how much it costs beyond that.
