Today’s work landscape is marked by rapid digital transformation, evolving organizational structures, and an emphasis on employee well-being. 

What is your organization doing to keep up? 

“Companies need to adapt to these changes and leverage advanced technologies like GoLinks to maintain a competitive edge.” – Linh Phan, Head of People Ops at GoLinks

In our most recent webinar, we brought on some experts to address these drastic changes in the workplace. Operational Excellence Consultant Tricia Arneson, and Head of People Ops Linh Phan, address a handful of topics in this webinar, including: 

• Remote team efficiency 
• Resistance to change 
• Fostering innovation 
• Employee engagement

Watch the recap below and read our summary to empower yourself with knowledge that will transform your organization. 

Top team efficiency tips, tricks & hacks

During the webinar, Tricia dove into some of her top efficiency tips for companies trying to boost productivity. But to start, she covered some common issues. 

• Difficulty finding information: This is a significant barrier to easy efficiency gains, especially for new employees. 

• Lack of process documentation: Proper documentation becomes extremely important when scaling up or adding more resources to your organization.

• Ways of working not being defined: If you implement a new tool, but everyone uses it differently, you may unintentionally increase inefficiency due to a lack of consistency. 

• Time zones: Global companies and even national companies can have a hard time making sure work moves forward despite employees working at different hours. 

• Communication misinterpretations: Tricia emphasizes the importance of a company dictionary for global companies to ensure everyone stays on the same page. 

To address some of these common issues, here are strategies that Tricia has seen make a difference. 

• Set clear objectives that are transparent and accessible to everyone you work with. 
• Keep things simple and document what you can.
• Make information transparent and easy to find. 
• Use GoLinks so you don’t have to explain how to find everything. 

“Efficiency you can gain in both process and through human relationships. But keeping things extremely simple and information transparent is going to be the easiest way to gain efficiency across your organization.”

—Tricia Arneson, Tricia Arneson, Operational Excellence Consultant

GoLinks for team productivity 

Poor knowledge sharing = poor productivity. 

That’s why Linh highlighted the benefits of GoLinks during the webinar! GoLinks revolutionizes how employees find and share knowledge by transforming any URL into a short, memorable go link. 

Here are some GoLinks benefits that Linh shared: 

• Say goodbye to long URLs: With GoLinks, you don’t have to hunt down long URLs. Turn any link into a short go link.

• Make go links intuitive: Since you can use common, everyday words, go links can be super memorable and easily guessed by employees. 

• Share go links verbally & visually: Whether in a meeting or in presentations, go links are super easy to share. 

• Easily change the go link destination: When you change the destination, the go link can stay the same. So even if your benefits portal changes, go/benefits will still take employees where they need to go. 

“Whether your company is remote or hybrid, incorporating GoLinks into your workflow will empower your team members, foster collaboration, and spark efficiency to keep your competitive edge.”

—Linh Phan, Head of People Ops at GoLinks

Team efficiency Q&A

Here are just a handful of the questions we received during the webinar and the answers from our panel. 

What strategy have you found most effective in improving efficiency within remote or hybrid teams? 

Linh and Tricia listed a few key strategies that they’ve found helpful, including: 

• Create and promote values that align with your intentions as an organization. 
• Build a culture of community and collaboration where it’s safe to ask questions.
• Make sure everyone aligns toward the same OKRs. 
• Implement the right software for communication, like Slack, Google Workspace, or Loom. 

How can HR departments effectively support remote or hybrid teams in maintaining productivity? 

“Onboarding is the very first step. How a new hire experiences onboarding is going to affect what they think about the company and their experience moving forward.” Linh shared. Here are some ways to support them: 

• Create go links for new hires like go/onboarding, go/new-hire, and go/benefits so they can easily access the info they need. 
• Encourage regular communication among team members, both sync and async. 
• Have clear guidelines and expectations on behaviors and performance. An easy way to do this is through regular performance reviews where employees can give or receive live constructive feedback. 

What metrics or KPIs can I use to measure team efficiency and performance? 

Tricia suggested these as some of the top KPIs companies can track:

• Team Output: Number of tasks completed, projects delivered, or units produced within a specific time frame
• Time Savings: How much time a process or tool can save employees (GoLinks, for example, lets you see hourly time savings using the tool)
• Cost Efficiency: How much money you saved by improving processes 
• Cost Performance Index (CPI): The financial efficiency of a project 

How can organizations overcome resistance to adopting new tools? 

This can be a big hurdle! Especially in larger organizations, it can take a lot of work to get everyone on board with change. Here are a few of the strategies Tricia suggests for employee buy-in. 

• Ask for feedback on what’s working and what’s not working. This makes employees feel like they’re part of the decision process. 
• Make sure employees of all levels are engaged and participating in implementation. 
• Make sure leaders are brought into the implementation process early. Leaders are often the last to adopt, but the more teams see them using the tool, the more likely teams will adopt it. 
• Don’t just talk about the tools; use them in practical ways. Show employees how you’re using them. 
• Be transparent with the mistakes you’ve made. A rollout won’t ever be 100% perfect, so by recognizing and evaluating mistakes, you can build trust and make better future decisions. 

How can leaders strike the right balance between fostering efficiency and allowing creativity and innovation within their teams?

Efficiency and creativity should go hand-in-hand rather than conflict with each other. Efficiency gains often come from new ways of doing things. Tricia suggests giving teams objectives without telling them exactly how to reach them. This gives teams the ability to figure it out. And who knows, they might come up with a faster method than you had. 

Linh also mentions the benefits of recognizing and highlighting creativity within teams that have made a positive impact. Celebrating the small wins will encourage future innovation within your organization. 

Watch On-Demand 

Ready to learn even more tips around team efficiency? Click below to watch the webinar on-demand or share it with a coworker.