Education Is Key When Building a Collaborative Culture

Driving adoption of anything within an organization is difficult enough, because people tend to resist change. Even more so when it comes to all-new collaboration tools. So how do you ensure their buy-in and ongoing support for the tech? Easy. With some good old fashioned education.

We should know

It’s crucial not to take deployment lightly. We say this from experience. If you hand the management department a flimsy brochure or a demo video that just scratches the surface of the product, it might do more harm than good. Sometimes higher-ups may be even more resilient in the face of change than the workforce on the ground floor. When it comes to communication & collaboration tools, knowing the numerous benefits of each feature in part lets you align those features perfectly with your business.

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With The Right Collaboration Tools, Office Time Is Still Your Time

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Quick: what are your staffers doing at this very second? If you’re like most organizations, there’s a good chance many of your staffers are attending to personal matters. But who says it’s acceptable just because it happens in other offices too?

According to a recent survey of 2,000 office workers conducted by AtTask and Harris Interactive – experts in management and market research – employees at various firms said they only dedicate 45 percent of their time to getting stuff done. The remainder (55%) of the time gets spent sifting through emails, or in meetings that could easily be replaced by conference calls. Also on the list of common pastime activities was “miscellaneous interruptions.”

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How Much Do You Know About The Internet? Take The Web IQ Quiz

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As part of a broader study focusing on the state of the Internet in America, Pew Research has put together a fun pop quiz that lets you test your knowledge of the web and digital technology in general.

We won’t spoil it for you, but don’t expect anything too fancy. It’s just a rudimentary assessment of people’s understanding of the web – how it started, key moments in its evolution, and the tech leaders who contributed to the way it looks and feels today. It’s fun, even if you’re a complete noob.

You’ll be asked 12 questions, followed by a short demographic query that helps the surveyors gauge the knowledge level in people with different levels of education, male or female, young and old, etc. When you finish, you’ll be shown a couple of charts to see how you stack up against the 1,066 participants in Pew’s live poll. The correct and incorrect answers will be shown as well. So even if you don’t get all of them right, you’ll walk away with some extra baggage of knowledge.

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How Mobility Will Enhance Your Contact Center

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When you hear contact center agent, the first thing that pops to mind is an employee confined to a cubicle with a PC and a headset. However, these days, that same job can be practiced out in the open with a cell phone. And starting this year, the practice is gaining some well deserved traction.

It’s not just the contact center staff that needs newer, more versatile tools to get their job done. The same goes for knowledge workers, roaming experts, back-office personnel, part-time or overflow agents, and even account managers. Everyone must collaborate to tackle customer issues, or to take full advantage of opportunities as they arise. However, for customer-facing employees it’s critical to have the flexibility to take calls anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

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Quote Of The Day By Henry van Dyke

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Thinking objectively can get you places. Sometimes there’s no right or wrong answers. Just circumstances. Building a factory can churn out useful products and create new jobs. At the same time, said factory can hurt a local business, or pollute the environment. When timing and location are considered, the choice to erect a factory can be regarded both right and wrong.

But not doing anything never did anyone any good. Also, you can’t please everyone. So you do what you have to do. In the words of Henry van Dyke…

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Working From Home May Not Be For Everyone, But Mobility Is

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There are countless studies that tackle the productivity debate regarding remote working versus driving to the office every day. But few have amassed the bulk of data found in Dell & Intel’s Global Evolving Workforce Study.

Commissioned by the technology duo and conducted by TNS Global, the research aims to pinpoint today’s workplace trends. Specifically, where and how people like to work and the technologies they prefer to employ. Two things jump at you from the data.

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Highlights Of The Global Evolving Workforce Study

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Recruiting, supporting and (most importantly) retaining a workforce is no picnic. Especially in today’s competitive market. The 2014 Dell Global Evolving Workforce Study identifies six major indicators for IT managers, human resource professionals and business decision makers to enable them to build a sustainable workforce.

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One Reason Why We Hubgets

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It starts with an innocent tap on the shoulder — a colleague asks a brief question about an upcoming deadline. No big deal, right? Two conversations and four emails later, you’ve officially wasted almost an hour.

I’m not here to tell you the story of how companies big and small fail to acknowledge the importance of using proper collaboration tools. The cat is out of the bag and has been for years. The market simply isn’t mature enough to take the plunge. What I want to share with you today is the typical scenario where office hours become pure chaos due to simple distractions like the one mentioned above. I’m 100% sure these will strike a chord with fellow office workers far and wide.

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Quote Of The Day By Albert Einstein

Einstein 1921 by F Schmutzer – restoration

Do you often feel like you’re dreaming even though it’s daytime? If you think you’re crazy, you’ll be happy to know that you’re probably just very imaginative. Perhaps even a genius.

There are many forms of mental illness, but daydreaming isn’t one of them. Neither is hearing music in your head, research has shown. But everyone asks this question at least once in their lifetime:

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