Looking to help your employees be more productive in the workplace? These days, there’s an app for just about any goal—including productivity.
Things are as technology-driven as ever these days, so it should be no surprise that there are dozens of tools out there to boost productivity, from books and online courses to phone apps and even browser extensions. In fact, today we’re taking a look at browser extensions in particular, specifically for the most popular one of them all: Chrome.
1. Staying Focused
Two thirds of employees admit to doing non-work-related tasks online when they’re sitting at their desks. It’s not always intentional either. Often, employees may be conducting in-depth research online when one website leads to another and then another and then another…and soon enough, they’ve fallen into a rabbit hole with all the distractions for which the internet is notorious.
That said, you might want to consider installing the Chrome extension Just Read. It’s perfect for those who just want to get to the meat of the information without any of the ads, links, or graphics that might pull you away from the website. Just as well, uBlock Origin is an ad blocker that will allow you to hide all the distractions on any webpage you visit while also boosting the speed of your browser!
2. Trimming Time
How many collective hours every month are lost when your employees have to spend time correcting spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in their emails and other documents? Take that time back with Grammarly – a tool that’s used by over ten million people, including those in the workplace. It’s an especially great tool for large projects that your team might be working on for important presentations.
From the extension’s webpage: “Grammarly will make sure your messages, documents, and social media posts are clear, mistake-free, and impactful. Adding Grammarly to Chrome means that your spelling and grammar will be vetted on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, and nearly everywhere else you write on the web.”
3. Managing Tasks
Wouldn’t it be great if we could each have our own project managers to remind us of tasks on our to-do lists? Imagine the way productivity in your workplace would soar if you could appoint a project manager to every single one of your employees.
That’s basically what installing the extension Todoist is like. It’s a simple yet powerful task manager built for the pace of modern life. Whether you need to collaborate with your team, keep track of your most important projects, or just remember to pay the rent, Todoist does it all. It’s even been prased as a life-changing app by The Guardian, USA Today, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Lifehacker and more.
Similar extensions within this same vein include Win the Day, which transforms your browser into a goal setting, habit tracking, focus tool to help you maximise your productivity, and Toggl Button, which puts a timer into any web tool and allows quick real time productivity tracking with all the data stored on your Toggl account.
4. Ease of Access
How many times have you wasted valuable minutes trying to remember a password? Or trying to recover one by answering questions and waiting for that email with its ‘reset password’ link? It may not seem like a lot, but collectively over the span of a year, you’d be surprised by how many hours have gone by the wayside by this seemingly harmless task. And it’s not just money you’re losing either! A survey of 2,000 people in the U.S. and U.K. found that companies lose $430 in productivity per employee per year due to workers struggling with passwords.
So what if you never had to remember another password again? No, it’s not a fantasy. There’s no an extension that can help with that very thing. It’s called LastPass. It instantly autofills passwords for all your saved websites, meaning you never have to remember another password again!
Productivity is quickly progressing with the digital age. As a leader and manager in the workplace, be sure to equip your team with the latest tools in the industry to help them excel in their work and be more productive than ever. Using one or more of the Chrome extensions above is a great way to do just that. Which one will you introduce to your employees this week?