For busy employees in a blended context, where some are remote and others are at the office, there are as many obstacles to productivity as there are enablers. We want the best of both worlds, in person and from home.
On the one hand, many studies suggest that working remotely makes employees happier. According to one study from Oxford University, this level of satisfaction matters commercially speaking, as happy employees are 13% more productive than unhappy ones.
Indeed, in this era of working from home and from the office in a flexible pattern, what we at Samsung call ‘fluid working,’ multiple studies suggest that employees are happier and feel more valued. But respondents in one survey also emphasised the importance of staying in touch, and that staying in regular, engaged communication is more important than ever for good management.
To stay in touch, we now often switch between multiple mediums and several devices – going from direct messages to emails and then to a video call during which we share a Google Doc. All this technology, from the devices to the platforms, has enabled a massive shift towards working away from the office.
But, for all its advantages, working remotely is not without its challenges. Attention traps, from video calls to direct messages, abound.
In 2019, before remote working became standard practice, 67% of office workers in one survey said that meetings were often a hindrance to getting things done. Nearly half (49%) of respondents said that meetings drained between 5-10 hours of productive time each week.
Now, in 2022, some studies suggest that the problem of unproductive meetings has been magnified. 83% of employees in one survey said they spent up to a third of their workweek in meetings, and 71% of professionals waste time every week due to unnecessary or cancelled meetings. Each month, 31 hours were reported as spent on unproductive meetings (nearly a full working week).
But there is a way to improve productivity without losing the benefit of video calls, group chats, et al. better tools for communication cut down on the frequency and maximise the benefits. In fact, the right technology can help us make the most efficient use of communication, whether remote or face-to-face, as not every message should be a meeting.
Better communication beyond video calls
Now that many meetings are video calls, new doors to distraction open up. But meeting over video is also essential to remote work, and so it should be considered strategically, with a clear approach to boost its usefulness.
According to an article from the BBC, too many video calls can have a negative impact on your alertness. Speaking generally, a chat over video demands a lot of cognitive effort. Put simply, we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues than when we are face-to-face. Our brains are wired to socialise in person, and we wind up expending more energy reading the room when we are remote.
Research has consistently shown that fewer team meetings may increase productivity. But for some jobs, they are essential for culture and connection, allowing employees to collaborate and conceptualise across teams.
There are some good examples on how to get the most out of meetings. In one experiment, in which there was a deliberate effort to reduce the number of meetings, stress went down, productivity went up, and communications outside of meetings were much more efficient. Reducing the number of video calls meant that employees more often speak directly to each other to solve problems and accomplish tasks.
Considering these findings, a clear picture begins to emerge: the technology we need for work today should facilitate switching between these different mindsets. When employees are equipped with devices and applications that are well connected and sit in an intuitive ecosystem, these employees can switch between contexts more easily, and that helps them to manage time more effectively.
The reality is that work is now so fluid that it is hard to fully predict how a workweek (or even your afternoon) will unfold. But there are tools to help manage time well by giving you an accurate view of how long you spend on different applications.
Opting for devices with built-in 4G LTE connectivity, like the Samsung Galaxy Book, can also optimise your time by ensuring you stay online without interruption, wherever you find yourself.
Smarter multitasking with marginal gains
A study conducted by Microsoft found that, in long meetings with more people, many employees will use the occasion to multitask. One answer to this problem is to have smaller meetings with focused discussions. But multitasking is also somewhat unavoidable when you have many things you accomplish at once.
Purpose-built technology allows us to juggle multiple things at once more easily and empowers us to shut out the pings and focus attentively on one task. If you find that you are getting distracted by calls or notifications, for example, you can shift a Samsung Galaxy Book into Focus Mode, which filters all incoming notification and apps.
To manage your time at large, there are tools such as the Digital Wellbeing app, which is available on any Samsung Galaxy smartphone or tablet. This feature displays an app dashboard, so that it’s easy for employees to see how much time they’ve spent on any application, including breakdowns by day, by hour and by app. This information makes it easy to identify where time is being wasted – such as daily meeting that could be one singular planning conversation.
To match the unpredictability of fluid working, adaptability to different situations is the best way to evaluate technology to get the job done.
Imagine you’re in a meeting and you remember things better if you jot down notes by hand. With the Samsung S-Pen, you can write things out using the stylus on your smartphone or tablet. If you then needed to send around notes from the meeting, the Samsung Notes App will convert your handwriting into text that you can copy and paste anywhere.
The time you save – from not having to rewrite your notes, finding a pen with viable ink, putting your finger on a blank page – adds up. A well-connected technology ecosystem has all sorts of these ‘marginal gains’ built in.
But what are marginal gains?
In 2012, Sir David John Brailsford, a British cycling coach, broke down the concept for the BBC, and argued for its application outside of riding a bike.
“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
According to the BBC, some of today’s most innovative companies apply a marginal gains approach. Every year, for example, Google runs 12,000 data-driven experiments to discover many tiny weaknesses and then make as many improvements as possible. The gains add up.
At Samsung, we think about working fluidly – switching between contexts and devices – in the same way. We’ve paid close attention to unlocking many small efficiencies that streamline working using technology.
Let’s say, you’ve made some amends to your presentation while you were out of the office on your Galaxy Z Fold4 phone. Now that you’re back at the office, you want to open the same presentation on your Samsung Galaxy Book. Just add a monitor[1] or use your Galaxy Tab S8 as a second screen for an extended display. Or, using Samsung DeX, you could present the entire thing from your Galaxy smartphone.
For those on tight deadlines who need to collaborate across teams, QuickShare allows you to send files between your own devices and with other Galaxy users quickly without compromising on quality.
By bringing your mobile apps to your Galaxy Book, Link to Windows makes these inter-device changes happen more swiftly, enabling a smoother transition between your devices—and, with Recent Apps, saving your place where you left off to pick up on another device.
These small time-saving gains, when added together, allow Galaxy devices to work together seamlessly, and employees to juggle different settings and ways of collaborating as smoothly as possible, boosting overall productivity.
[1]Wireless Display capable Windows 10 PC models and Windows 10 2004 or later version are required for this new feature. (Windows update: September 2020 or later) Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S8 series to support this feature.
