How to Help Brilliant People Shine in Your Firm’s Office
Working in any office, there are hundreds of interruptions to distract you every day. The average worker is sidetracked every 3 minutes from the task at hand and checks emails 30 times an hour. That’s a lot of distraction. Then there’s the time spent looking at cell phones and social media.
This article is about your employees and colleagues, but you might find it applies to you as well.
Distraction and Genius
It doesn’t take a genius to gaze at a cell phone—we all do it. And you don’t need a big IQ to check your emails or to reply to a text message. However, the brains of the smartest, most creative people don’t function in quite the same way as the rest of us.
For people with endlessly inquiring minds every thought or idea leads to another; every question answered poses one more. Their thirst for knowledge, for information, for further detail, can be relentless. Intelligent or creative thought processes are often erratic and restless. Their seeming randomness makes it hard to settle down, and every recovery from distraction seems to take longer.
At the workplace, an inherently wandering mind is difficult to keep on the task at hand. As an employer, the best way to harness their potential is to avoid assigning your brightest workers repetitive tasks.
Intelligent people are quite likely to have a strong work ethic. If you want to get the best out of them, cut out assigning them tasks from the dull pile. Give them more of the challenging, engaging stuff for which they probably joined your team.
The Steelcase Study
In 2016, a study by Steelcase attracted global attention. In addition to its own analysis, the company drew upon the work of neuroscientists and cognitive researchers to reach some interesting conclusions on attentiveness. It identified three key brain modes:
Focus: When the brain needs to focus it must actively avoid distractions like mobile phones or emails.
Regenerate & inspire: Sometimes it’s possible to focus too hard for too long on the same project. Higher quality may result from spending time away from the task and then coming back to it. Distraction can be useful when it is infrequent, turning vice into virtue.
Activate: Studies have shown that exercise stimulates the brain by pumping fresh blood and oxygen through it and releasing hormones. This enhances attention span and memory.
Sensible delegation of tasks, a conducive working environment and careful time management are all crucial aspects of getting the best from employees (and ourselves!) and running an efficient operation.
Demands on Services
In the modern world, the clients of most businesses have become ever more demanding. They want work done quickly and well. This, of course, creates a paradox. It’s rare anyone does their best work in the shortest space of time, but with fierce competition everywhere, we need to work to achieve just that.
One way to deliver work more quickly, without dropping standards, is to automate the most tedious tasks. Not only is this more efficient, it frees up the most talented employees to focus on areas that need deep thought or creativity. Those brilliant, unfulfilled workers, that we’ve already spoken of, will be more fully engaged when challenged with rewarding work. Satisfaction will improve. Productivity will improve. Results will improve.
A Solution: Document Assembly Software
Nobody likes performing repetitive tasks, but the brightest workers are often the worst candidates for doing them well. Great minds wander if there’s nothing compelling to focus on, and that’s where errors creep in.
Great document assembly software offers a way to create repetitive documents without the monotony. It assures accuracy, consistency, compliance, and quality across your company’s paperwork. In lines of work that create vast amounts of paperwork, the best software lends a vital helping hand.
Industries that benefit most from this software include:
Legal
Medical
Insurance
Finance
Government
As well as freeing up the best employees for more challenging and absorbing tasks, document assembly software greatly increases productivity. It needs less personal input and cuts out the time lost correcting mistakes and producing multiple drafts of the same work. Our typical customer reports a 70{9e5c399d4686ffbee71f542e7a95a67178027d042b67cd6e8c3b22a26beb12ba} improvement in throughput and a 100{9e5c399d4686ffbee71f542e7a95a67178027d042b67cd6e8c3b22a26beb12ba} reduction in errors in “A Billion Here…“.
How does Document Assembly Software Work?
Rather than writing documents from scratch or reworking old ones, document assembly software lets companies create document templates that can think for themselves and are usable over and over. There is almost no chance of error.
Once the first document is carefully checked for mistakes, it can be reused repeatedly. All the employee must do is answer a few questions to make every document completely unique, whether ten pages or 1,000. Multiple choice fields can be created to avoid the need for typing. Scores or thousands of variables can auto-complete based on conditions.
Document assembly software should be easily accessible by all employees so there is no time wasted in searching for local documents or by communication breakdowns between staff. Branding stays consistent and up to date, since any changes made to templates are instant and universal. Compliance is a given. Global changes can be made in seconds.
Instead of getting bogged down with hours of writing or editing paperwork, workers can quickly move on to tasks of greater value, tasks they’ll more likely actually enjoy. The more interesting the work is, the less minds tend to drift. Your best workers get a chance to flourish, to add even more to your equation.
Document Automation: Advanced features from TheFormTool
There are many other neat features in software from TheFormTool that save work and valuable time. For instance, if you create similar documents for the same client, you can save then load a full set of previous answers to create the new document in seconds.
Programs from TheFormTool will automatically adjust pronouns, verb forms and syntax to sync with the need.
TheFormTool PRO, Doxserá, and Doxserá DB include math and date calculations. So, for instance, you could enter a monthly fee or loan amount, rate and term, and have the repayment automatically created. Need a date equal to the “Friday after the first Tuesday in a month that is more than 90 days but less than 120 days” in the future? Documents automated by TheFormTool family of products will calculate that date and amount — instantly and automatically corrected should the document be edited.
Aside from handling variables and doing the math, an intelligent form created with our software can rearrange “sections” of itself to change the content order, or automatically add and remove text as necessary. This is useful if the utility or importance of various paragraphs or sections changes over time or according to the client.
Master lists let you keep oft-used data in one handy place for easy retrieval whenever you need it. Doxserá DB allows a form to pull data from external data sources, SQL, Access, Excel, and Outlook Contacts.
Versatility
There are countless uses for document assembly software that works seamlessly with MS Word for Windows and uses the same commands. The learning curve is not steep; you’ll be up and running with the basics in minutes.
Our software enables staff to create professional, attractive documents 70{9e5c399d4686ffbee71f542e7a95a67178027d042b67cd6e8c3b22a26beb12ba} faster on average than they otherwise would. You’ll get more work done at a higher standard and forge a reputation for efficiency.
Not least, you can assign more rewarding work to your talented staff, who will feel like they’re really getting somewhere and that their abilities are being more fully utilized.
Document assembly software disproportionately benefits the smartest people, who need it the most.
Find out how document assembly software makes companies more efficient and frees up the most intelligent workers for more important and challenging work at www.theformtool.com.
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