Poor employees, gone are the days when you could finish a shift and forget about the boss until the next one. Once upon a time you could even ignore the ringing of the telephone just in case it was him with a desperate invitation to do some more hours. I’m being a little unfair perhaps. Although Enigmai does give business owners a greater chance of success at contacting employees out of hours that’s not all it can do. As a scheduler it not only manages shifts but can monitor attendance as well as acting as a useful employee management system. Read more
If you've ever been in a situation at work where you have been the paymaster you will know what a time consuming and thankless task it can be. Having to chase up whether Charlie worked last Friday night and figuring out if Rose really was half an hour late this morning. You never get plaudits for paying the correct amount of wages each week but you'll sure as hell hear about it if you haven't paid them enough. DeskTime is a free real-time time tracking and productivity app that will give precise and automated times on when and when not ... Read more
I’m a great believer in people writing some sort of record of their lives and I don’t just mean the rich and famous. There a far too many gravestones in the world with no story attached to them as far as I’m concerned and so getting people to jot down just some basic daily or weekly events is a start. There are wider implications of course and even though many people will consider their lives mundane and of no interest whatsoever to anyone else the generations that follow will probably see things in a different light. From a social history angle, ... Read more
Wow! If the guy’s behind this one have got their sums right there is a serious amount of cash being paid to people annually for just sitting in meetings. It wouldn’t be such a worry if a high percentage of these meetings actually achieved something but if you’re like me and have attended scores of them in your career you’ll know how unlikely that is. Read more
There’s nothing wrong with introducing a bit of competition to the workplace and if it helps productivity as well as perhaps capturing some billable hours that might otherwise have slipped through the net all the better. Read more
I can't believe how many times I've read stories about bad billing by businesses. So many businesses have disappeared off the face of the earth because they don't seem to be able to deliver an itemized and correct bill for the services used. Then there are the seemingly dodgy practices that some law firms use where they estimate a price for a specific service like photocopying at the scandalous price of ten bucks a page and hope it gets lost in the overall invoice for 'services provided.' Someone should recommend cloc.kr to these companies right now. cloc.kr is a productivity ... Read more
If you run a business with multiple locations and have to organize the shifts of a considerable labor force then getting all of those ducks in a line is no easy task. NimbleSchedule has features to cover all of the headaches usually associated with making sure people are in the right location and that shifts are covered with contingencies in place. A task which when carried out manually can take hours of valuable management time. Read more
Erbix.com provides a suite of apps aimed at small businesses allowing them to organize all activities, collaborate on projects, produce web forms and keep on top of customer relationships. There are apparently a number of apps in the Erbix bag and the main ones are covered here. Read more
No it's not the latest soccer app from England. That would be called 101 great dives. 101 Smart Goals is a free online motivational goal setting tool that's heaps of fun as well as being a virtual diary of tasks to set yourself. The attractive interface is easy to use and navigate and encourages you to improve your lot in this big wide world of ours. Read more
FollowUp.cc is a really good concept for what is essentially a straightforward reminder service. The beauty of this app is that it effortlessly blends into existing technology that we all know and use day in and day out - the humble email. Therefore it is wonderfully simple to use, even for non-techno minded folk. Basically you copy the FollowUp people into any emails by using their email address and designating a time you want to be reminded about that email - for example 5hrs@followup.cc. Once you've familiarized yourself with the basic concept it's really easy to adopt their system into ... Read more