How to Maximize Team Productivity on a Budget!

Welcome, welcome everyone to our LinkedIn Live session on how to maximize team productivity on a budget. I'm Claire Hayek, founder of MSP Team Building and team leadership expert. And I'm your host today. I'm really excited to be back. Some of you missed a couple of our sessions last week. I know everybody's gone on vacation. It's mixed availabilities. But we keep going because we know there's a lot of you here interested in what we have to say, what we have to share. And we just want to add value to you and to your team and make a difference. And if we can do that, then you've made our day. So, well, today, like I said, we'll be talking on how to maximize team productivity. The keyword here is on a budget, right? So, thanks for joining me. We're going to explore Some strategies. Actually, let me summarize. I'm going to talk about affordable team building activities that you can do on your own. I will talk about as well low-cost tools and techniques that you can use to be more productive. And how to create a motivating work environment. It's extremely important to do that. It's something that in theory, everybody thinks about. But we're not really sure how to go about it, right? So, I will be giving away those tools. Again, we have 30 minutes so I will be flying through this. But I will also be sharing some links right at the end of this session. So, if you're listening to this and you're busy or you have a meeting, please make sure to go all the way to the end of this session because I'll be sharing very important links on upcoming webinars that we're giving away for a whole hour where you can reserve your free spot. And we can share amazing tools that can help you and your team. for free. So without further ado, I would like to just welcome one of our colleagues, Conor, from our team. You'll see Conor commenting in a way in the chat. He will be sharing the links that I'll be talking about during this session. So Conor, thank you so much for being here. Always a pleasure for you to have my back. Okay, so why don't we start by getting that chat going? I definitely want to know where you're joining us from today. Again, if any of you are joining for the first time, you'll realize fairly quickly that Claire likes to interact. Claire doesn't like to speak to a screen. Claire likes to feel there's somebody on the other end. So please do me a favor and write something in the chat. Tell me where you're joining us from, and we'll be throwing a whole bunch of poll questions at you in order to also get you involved and engaged in this whole conversation. Let me see. Hi Connor! Connor's always there. Thank you so much. But if you are joining in, like I said, please do share where you're joining us from today. Share it in the comments. Let's go. So, let's start with the affordable team building activities. Okay, so There's so many team building activities that you could do that are effective and budget-friendly. And the reason why I'm talking about team building activities is because it is related to productivity. You'll be surprised how many initiatives you can do in-house that can really help with productivity. For instance, I'll give you 2 examples. I'm sure you all know or have heard of them. Maybe you haven't facilitated them yet. But they work great in person as well as virtual or hybrid. Two Truths and a Lie, right? Each person writes 2 truths about themselves and a lie. And then, they basically share these 3 facts. And everybody needs to kind of vote on which one is the truth, which one is a lie. Great way to get to know each other. Very motivating. And it gets that morale up, which affects productivity. Another one that touches on communication is called Blind Drawing. Where we actually work on effective communication tool using drawing. I will be sharing a little link here, actually just a little message. You'll see it scrolling every now and again. I can't go into too much details, of course, during this session, but just type productivity in the chat and I will be more than happy to give you more information about all this stuff I'm sharing today. Okay. Another one is great is the group brainstorming session where you just carve in about like 10-15 minutes as a team. It could be before a meeting or after a meeting and halfway through the meeting just to break things up. It promotes collaboration and creates, promotes actually problem-solving skills. So, one last one is simple walking meetings. This one not only gets people to come to the office. Everybody wants to work from home and I understand that. I work from home. I'm not going to be against that. But it's always great to see, to get your team into the office. And in order to really get them in the office, do something fun. Instead of having the meeting in the boardroom, why don't you just do a walking meeting? This gets an open dialogue and fresh ideas. So, These are great cost-effective in-house activities that you can do. And it's very important to focus on activities that build trust and collaboration, which in turn actually enhances team productivity. This is why I'm sharing this because we don't think about activities like this in terms of team productivity. You'll be surprised how that can take off a lot of the stress, the pressure, and hence affect productivity. Let me ask you something here. So, which team building activity do you think would be most effective for your team? And I shared all the examples here. Please do put it in the chat. I want to know what you think. Also, if you have one to share with everyone else, please do because we're here to help each other and exchange and learn from each other, right? So, moving on. I'm doing great on time. I'm very proud of myself right now. Yes, self-motivation is a thing. All right, it is a thing. I promise. Okay, so let's talk about low-cost actual tools and techniques for productivity. I'm not talking about team building now. I'm talking about actual work tools and techniques. Okay, I'm going to take a bit of time with that one. Because it was completely— these techniques we apply. We apply with our team. And it really changed a lot. It completely changed how we worked, how productive we are. And it saved us so much time. So much time on repetitive tasks that we're able to fly through. I would say we save about at least 5 to 10 hours a week per team member at MSP Team Building by using these techniques. So let me share some of them. Now, I'm going to start with the ones that you probably already know or use. Again, I'm not going to take it for granted that you do this, that you do use these tools. So I'm still going to go through them in case you don't. Okay. So typically tools like Trello, Asana, they're great. These are apps you can download. They have, of course, the paying version, but they also have the free version. These are These are really great in keeping your tasks organized and to streamline the project management. These are very helpful. And again, they're free unless you need to upgrade for whatever reason because you have a larger group or higher users. But the cost is so worth it because it saves a lot of time. Communication platforms such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. They're great for collaboration and they make sure that the team members actually stay connected, which helps with productivity and shaves off time on reading emails. I often tell my team members, do not send me emails. I'm drowned in emails. And quite honestly, I can't keep up. I just scan through my emails and focus on the urgent ones, priorities. And have a sorting system as well. That's another tool actually. You can program things to automatically— you can add filters in your email to automatically send emails that are high priority, medium priority, or something that you need to review at a later date. So, you set all the filters. However, when you do send instant messages like in Slack or you create channels of communications, that's so quick because you see the message, you reply to it, done. So, replying quickly and efficiently to somebody's request, it gets them going right away. And it takes that burden of, oh my God, I need to answer all these messages. It takes it away. So, what happens is everybody's being more productive and quick. So, everybody's kind of communicating. So, it's basically the basis of communication platforms is that. It's really just to speed up the whole process. Actually, Google Workspace has a really great tool as well for document sharing and collaboration. So again, Trello, Slack, MS Teams, Asana, as well as Google Workspace. Okay. There's another technique like basically for organizing your time, time blocking. If you haven't heard of it, I know a lot of entrepreneurs use it, is that you really just organize your week or your day And you time block. You say, okay, I'm gonna work on this task from this time to this time. You actually put it in your calendar. You can color code it depending on what category it falls into. And the important thing here is that you stick with it, right? So, when it's blocked, it's blocked. You stick with it. And something happens when you block the time. It just subconsciously, you know that you need to take that time. So, you do take the time. And the more you time block, the better it gets. So when you're time blocking, you're more productive, you're more focused, you're more in flow. You're not being bombarded by a gazillion things while you're doing your task. So you need to be focused on the task if you time block it. Actually, one of the techniques for time blocking is the Pomodoro technique. Why don't you put it in the chat? Let me know if If you use— if you know about the Pomodoro Technique. Anybody knows about the Pomodoro Technique here? Okay, keep them coming. Let me just keep going here. So Pomodoro Technique, okay, remember this. So this is how it works. You use a timer to break work into intervals. Typically you would do 25 minutes at a time, okay? And so 25 minutes interval separated by a short break and you keep going. So example, you want to complete the financial report for the trimester. Okay. So, all right. So you sit down, you set a timer for 25 minutes, you finish that, you know, for 25 minutes, you start working on it, obviously. So that's one Pomodoro. Okay. Once the 25 minutes is done, the timer beeps, then you take 5 minutes to take a short break. You know, roughly 5 minutes. Use this time to kind of relax, clear your mind. Don't start looking at other emails and distract yourself, right? So again, you set a time for 25 minutes. You work on the task until the timer rings. You avoid all distractions. And then you stop. You take a short break. Roughly 5 minutes where you clear your mind and then you repeat the cycle. And after usually completing 4 Pomodoros, for instance, you take a longer break, you know, 15 to 30 minutes. You can go for a walk, just grab a bite to eat, etc. It's extremely effective when it comes to productivity. Now, these are tools that are very popular. A lot of you know about them. But I'm going to be sharing I'm going to take it up a couple, you know, a couple of levels here. And it's not rocket science because it's been around since 2023. And if you haven't guessed yet, I'm going to talk about AI tools to boost productivity. And that is instant. It's amazing how AI is completely revolutionizing the productivity of teams. And a lot of you out there don't know what tools to use. You're afraid to use them. You're thinking these tools are going to replace me or I'm not allowed to use them. IT won't let us. Let me tell you something. I mean, AI is so advanced right now, so integrated in the corporate world that if you're not on these, using these tools, simple tools that are very legit right now and that are fetched for security and safety. so it's responsible AI, you're missing out. You're honestly missing out and I don't want you to do that. And this is why I'm taking the time to share this. Okay, Connor, if you don't mind, if you look at our pacing, I do have the links to these tools. Okay, it's under segment 2, under AI tools. So if you find them, please do pop them in the chat for our participants here so they can go check them out. All right. Here it is. Note-taker. Okay. Now, there's AI note-takers. Instead of you typing away in a meeting or missing all the details, active listening is very important in a meeting. But we often lose some nuances or details or misinterpret. So, the note-takers help us. Basically, they transcribe the whole meeting. It automatically records the meeting. It transcribes it. And summarizes the meeting. This is the great part. If you don't have time to attend the meeting, you can have your bot attend for you, take the notes, and then you can go back to it and listen to it, whether you watch the video fully or you just look at the summary. And there we go. So fireflies.ai. Connor, if you want to share that. fireflies.ai. I use that a lot. It basically integrates with various conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams. And it makes it easy to keep track of important discussions and action items. It really saves a lot of my time. And sometimes, I have a meeting and then back-to-back meetings. And then, I forget certain things. I know I can— I know my Firefly note-taker was there and took all the notes. And it's automatically integrated into my CRM. And I know it's related to that person I met with. So, it's also recorded in the CRM, meaning that if I'm not around and somebody has to call a client or a partner, they know what we discussed and they know what we talked about. It's really mind-blowing. It's so efficient. Fireflies.ai. Now, I'm going to share with you a whole bunch of them. There's so many note-takers out there. So do consult with your IT department to see which one would really work best with your platform or with your security levels, etc. I use Fireflies.ai. There's Fathom. Fathom comes with Zoom. Again, it does the same thing. It'll generate summaries, records and transcribes. It'll highlight actually important moments. As you're in the meeting, you can click on a highlight item. So you're like, okay, this is— I need to get back to that. That was important. And it actually integrates a lot of tools to streamline workflows. So that's Fathom. Again, I will let Conor share the link. It's fathom.video. The other one, I'm not going to go into too much detail because again, we're short on time. Another one is Microsoft OneNote with Cortana integration. I highly recommend that. Especially if you use Microsoft Teams. OneNote combined with Cortana is actually a very effective AI-powered note-taking solution. So OneNote will allow you to, to, will take detailed notes, okay, organize it, and actually also allow some collaboration. And while Cortana can assist with voice commands and reminders, making it easier to actually manage the meeting notes. So Microsoft OneNote and Cortana. I'm sure if you go to microsoft.com— again, Connor will share this, share the link in the chat— microsoft.com and type in Microsoft OneNote, you'll find it. Otherwise, actually the same thing, you just type in the search Cortana, you'll be able to find it. Grammarly. Grammarly is great. It's an AI-powered tool that improves the writing by offering actually suggestions for better writing, improving spelling, the style, clear and effective communication, what tone you want to use. It's great for drafting emails, reports, etc. I also use Harpa.ai. Harpa.ai is great for a lot of things. It's like your AI assistant in your Chrome or whatever platform you use as a plugin. And you can click on it and basically Uh, it helps you search more efficiently. It helps correct emails, spell check, rewrite them in a certain tone, etc. It basically upgrades your writing. Uh, Trello I mentioned earlier, so it's great for project management, and now they've enhanced it with AI features like automating workflows, providing smart suggestions, and streamlining collaborations within your team. Okay. Gosh, I'm gonna wrap up here on this AI thing. There's so much to talk about. Zapier. Zapier honestly cuts so much cost for us when it comes to repetitive tools for calendar bookings, automatic invoicing creation, automatically creating tasks in our CRM. When somebody fills out a form for it to automatically save into our database or in Airtable or in our actual cloud. Then the list goes on. Basically, the way it works, it's an AI tool. It automates repetitive tasks by connecting those different apps and services. I'll give an example. I gave a whole bunch, but I'll give one more. It can, for example, move automatically information between web apps And reminders or generate reports, which saves a lot of time and reduces actual manual efforts. So it really works for you. You just tell it what to do. And again, please don't tell me AI is going to replace you. AI, these tools that I'm sharing with you, is not— we're not in the business of replacing people. We're in the business of helping people work more efficiently, be more productive. be happier, have better mental health, better well-being, and removing the stressors. That's what we're in the business of. So, if I share these AI tools, it's not about replacing people. It's about helping you be more productive and saving you those pain points so you can focus on what you do best, which is being creative and being efficient and doing your job because Even if we're using these AI tools, we are training them on what we want them to do. So think of it as your assistant. Okay, just doing very bland, tedious work that the human brain— it's kind of a low grade for the human brain. The human brain is way more advanced and smart to focus on the important things, which is more a human connection, the creativity, the innovation, and my God, and the list goes on. So again, these AI tools are very effective and the investment is definitely justifiable. It's going to save a lot of wasted time. So the time that your team is using and being unproductive, repetitive, and with mistakes in communication and misinterpretations, now they're going to be more efficient so they can focus on the real tasks that really matter in what you do. So, it's not about reducing their hours. It's about making their hours and their time spent more efficiently. Okay? And it's worth the investment. Let me ask you here. So, I'm curious again, which productivity tool does your team use? And I mean, maybe you use none. But do you use any AI tools? Anything? If it's not listed here, I shared a whole bunch of examples. But if it's not listed here, please do share. Okay, let me take a little break here. I think Connor is doing a great job sharing these things in the chat. Thank you, Connor. So it's all there for you to go back to. And yeah, wonderful. Thanks, Connor. Good job. Good job. Let's keep moving here. And go to the third thing I wanted to talk about today, which is how to create a motivating work environment. Now, again, we're talking about a motivating work environment on a budget. I really need to stress that. It could be easily done. And You will be surprised on how easy it could be. Okay? So, I'm here to share these insights with you. Here's one. How do you promote motivation? Peer recognition. It's so simple. Peer recognition, promoting a culture of appreciation. Here's how you do it. Simple, simple, simple, easy. Choose a date of the week. Instill this in your culture and say, okay, Wednesdays, for instance. I'm just grabbing any day. Everybody's encouraged. Give it a name. You can call it the Shout Out Wednesdays. So, where you would encourage teammates and colleagues to write a Post-it note or send a chat message or a dedicated channel in your com platforms like in Slack or in Teams or or whatever you use. Okay, so where people can just add shout-out messages to recognize their colleagues or congratulate somebody. Happy birthday, even share like a celebration. Or just say, I just want to highlight Paul. He did a great job on finishing this proposal and we got it out on time. Or Shout out to the whole team that worked on this RFP. We just got the order. You know, anything. Or shout out to Christina that was so helpful in getting the team organized so we can deliver this XYZ on time. Shout out to our leader who was so understanding and patient with us and that provided us enough flexibility for us to be able to complete our tasks in a joyful, stress-free manner. I don't know. The list goes on, right? This is actually peer recognition is discussed in a Forbes article that is called The Importance of Employee Recognition. So, you can also share that in the chat, Conor. I don't have the link but you can share the name. Flexible work Flexible work. I mean, people since COVID people realized how flexible work can reduce stress, improve workflow, work-life balance, etc., and increase overall productivity because employees feel more more in control in their schedules. And we're not talking about only virtual, right? We're talking about even in person. If people feel that they're trusted and you know that you know they have control over their schedule because their leaders trust that they're going to get it done, they don't care. when they work and how they work, whatever. They really care about the outcome. And so that trust factor and that flexibility actually renders people more productive. A lot of companies adopted that, sorry, that they allowed to remove one day out of the week because people are so productive. So now they work 4-day weeks. This is a Harvard Business Review article, The Case for Remote Work. But I truly believe in that as well as in-person, applied in-person. Again, we'll share this in the chat. Access to professional development. You cannot underestimate this. People want— your employees, your team members, they want to grow. They want to feel that you're offering access to low-cost online courses, free online courses, webinars, training programs. There are so many of them. We give a whole bunch. Actually, we're launching 2 in September. And I will be sharing the link at the end of this talk. We're giving 2 online courses in September, one on AI-assisted team productivity and the other one on team leadership boot camp. Not only if you provide training opportunities for your employees, not only it motivates them, it makes them more productive. They feel like they're growing and they're thriving. But also, it's a win-win because now your team is more educated, smarter, more efficient, more productive, right? And it actually was proven that it, you know, when you provide these opportunities to employees, you show them that you are invested in their growth and their job satisfaction and their loyalty, right? So, And another way that we can create a work environment that is motivating is open communication. Creating a safe space and open communication and regular feedback. Quickly, sandwich method. When you're giving feedback, you give positive feedback, constructive criticism. You end with positive feedback. That's the best way to give feedback. So let me ask you now, what motivates your team the most? Recognition, flexibility, or professional development? Do share it in the chat. I'm gonna wrap up here. I have about a couple of minutes left. If you have any questions and you've shared them in the chat, please let me know here. I'm just gonna scroll through. I don't see any. All good. But if you do have future comments as you're watching this, please do share them. And I will reply to you. Now, let me just summarize quickly what we went over here. So again, we talked about affordable team building activities and why. Because team building activities, specific ones, do encourage improved productivity because they work on communication, getting to know each other, as well as how, you know, being more open and creating trust and solid foundations. We shared low-cost tools and techniques on how to be more productive. There were classic ones, medium, advanced, medium to advanced. And then there are more AI-assisted ones too, as well as, you know, for example, note-takers, as well as Zapier integration automation. And finally, I went over how to create a motivating work environment. And I did share 3 tips: peer recognition, flexible work, as well as investing in professional development for your team and open communication. Now, let me tell you here. Actually, let me share with you the upcoming one. The upcoming— voyons, brain freeze. The upcoming conference I'll be giving July 31st. Ethical Space and Indigenous Culture Awareness with Denise Atkinson. I am extremely proud of this conference. I cannot wait to share this with you and show you what this is all about. And so QR code, RSVP, I'll send you invites anyway. July 31st, 11:30 EST. Now if you're interested in AI productivity, uh, and how to, you know, use tools, uh, for to, to increase your, your productivity using leveraging AI. We are giving a free webinar, so please, uh, scan the QR code and reserve your spot. We're giving that, um, August 8th at 12 PM EST, um, 9 AM PST. It's 1 hour, and we're gonna give away all these tools and put hands-on with Marcel Seymen, our CTO and AI expert. Blows my mind. Great guy, very knowledgeable. And we'll both be on this webinar sharing these tools with you. And finally here, wrong link. There's another webinar if you're more interested in team leadership and learning more about tools to promote team leadership, team building. Performance, communication, collaborations, etc. Synergy, cohesion in a team. We're giving away also free spots for this webinar, which will be August 1st at 3 PM EST, 12 PM PST. Do RSVP. We are opening the registrations now. So, and do share with colleagues. Okay then. So, it's already 12. Actually past 12. Thanks again for joining. And I'll see you July 31st. I'm also giving a talk with SG Tech's leadership on Gen Z. That is July 24th. So, do RSVP that on SG Tech's leadership. Again, reminder, type productivity in the chat if you want me to share more information about how your team can be more productive and share with you again the link on our upcoming webinar on August 8th. Connor, I am sure you got my back here and you shared all these links. Of course, he did. He's awesome. I love my team. I love my team members. I'm so lucky. I'm so blessed. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. It's always a pleasure to give and serve you. do reach out. I'm here to help in any way I can boost your team productivity, your team performance, help you become a bit more AI literate in order to help make your job much more fun and easier. Okay, my name is Claire Hayek. I'm the founder and CEO of MSP Teambuilding. Have a wonderful rest of the day and I will see you soon enough. Bye now. Thank you.