Tag: productivity

In the dynamic landscape of small businesses, effective communication stands as a cornerstone for success. It’s not merely about exchanging information but fostering relationships, aligning goals and driving growth.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and other tech are fast becoming the biggest sales enablers on the block. Sales is a pressure game. You’re juggling leads, chasing targets, and dealing with the endless cycle of follow-ups. But high-performers don’t just work harder - they work smarter by leveraging tech that delivers results.

One significant challenge facing African manufacturers is inadequate reporting and analysis capabilities. This often results in inefficient decision-making processes due to siloed data, limiting the ability to respond to changing conditions quickly.

In the fast-paced realm of people management, "induction" and "onboarding" are frequently used interchangeably, yet each bears unique significance in shaping the employee experience (EX). First impressions leave a lasting impact. Employers have an average of 44 days to “make or break” a new joiner, according to a survey released by cloud-based human resources platform BambooHR.

The workplace is one of the most important social resources in a typical adult’s life but more meetings, faceless chats and fewer work friends is fuelling an epidemic of loneliness. Right now, people are experiencing a surge in loneliness so profound that the American Surgeon General has characterised it as an epidemic. Some believe remote and flexible work is at fault, fraying our social ties by removing incidental interactions from our daily lives but the data tells a different story.

According to estimates by our experts, the average share of spam in global email traffic in 2023 was 45.60%. This deluge of unwanted emails not only clogs up inboxes, but also consumes a significant amount of time and resources. On average, each year, employees spend between 5 and 18 hours sorting through spam, and when scaled to an organisation with hundreds of employees, this translates into huge amounts of lost productivity. Yet, the wasted time is just the tip of the iceberg.

The fusion of technology and healthcare has reshaped how organisations approach employee wellness, and telehealth is at the forefront of this change. Daily, approximately 15% of South African employees miss work, costing businesses between R12 billion and R16 billion a year. What’s more, it's estimated that up to 25% of all employees in South Africa will experience depression or some kind of mental health problem annually.

Local businesses that have transitioned to hybrid work programmes are well aware of the potential productivity gains to be had when employees have the flexibility to work from anywhere. Of course, the journey from a traditional office setup to a complete remote model during the pandemic was the catalyst for this model.

Before the internet, businesses tended to operate in smaller areas and in a very siloed manner. Today, however, there is a global online economy, and the geographical boundaries that limited business operation areas have fallen away. The ease of access to information has become critical to successful operations, and the ability to leverage data has become a point of competitive differentiation.

A report published by market research specialist In On Africa in August last year presented some interesting insights about artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in South Africa. In a survey of more than 3,000 South Africans working across various industries, 59% stated that they knew about ChatGPT but only 38% had used it previously.