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01732 759725 46 MANAGEMENT Thomas MacKenzie Thomas MacKenzie, CEO of RankedRight, suggests 20 ways managed service providers can increase their team’s productivity and effectiveness e Outsource Yes, the work you’re doing is already being outsourced to you but there is always the opportunity to pass on elements of the project somewhere else, particularly if it means you’ll be getting the job done to the same quality, at a lower cost. There are thousands of dedicated security experts or general labourers out there to choose from. Companies like Upwork enable you to hire as many people as you need at a moment’s notice. r Automation Every business will have timeconsuming yet crucial tasks to complete. For an MSSP, a key one is vulnerability prioritisation, which, like many other tasks your team conducts manually every day, can be automated, saving time, money and unnecessary pain for your team. Look at what you can automate cost-effectively without reducing quality and let your team spend their time on the tasks a machine cannot do. t Give everyone easy access to resources One of the biggest barriers to your team’s productivity could be slow internet or glitchy software. We may be moving away from full time home-working, but your team still deserves consistent and high quality technology wherever they are in order to do their jobs. y Improve meeting efficiency The move from in-person meetings to video calls taught us to be prompt, concise and limit the small talk, and this gave loads of time back for work. As the return to the office increases the number of in-person meetings, make sure you don’t bring back the bad habits that wasted yours and your colleagues’ precious time. A clear agenda shared with attendees in advance will help by allowing people to prepare thoughts and ideas beforehand. Also, set a rule that anyone more than three minutes late for a meeting will not be allowed to enter. u Reduce the number of meetings The introduction of communication and collaboration tools, see point 2, will enable you to replace unnecessary meetings with a quick message exchange. Look at how many of your meetings can be removed from the diary without damaging collaboration, company culture or employee wellbeing and save your team hours every week. i Remove all distractions Whether it’s a news platform, social media, too many cyber alerts or even the office décor, there are distractions all around us and they could be costing your team hours of effective working time each day. Run a discreet audit to determine where the biggest distractions lie and then put new policies in place to reduce the noise, so that your team can focus properly on the tasks at hand. o Incentivise increased productivity Could it be that your team is only working at 50% because that’s all they feel like giving? Perhaps they need an incentive to work harder. By introducing a reward scheme to celebrate and acknowledge hard work with time-off, money towards a meal out or points to redeem in the company canteen, you could go a long way in helping to boost productivity levels as well as employee morale. 1) Encourage continued remote working You have the tools in place to facilitate working from home and for the last two years your team has shown you that it can be done. So, rather than rushing everyone back to the office and disrupting their new habits, why not let them continue remote working? With more quiet time, your employees may find new levels of productivity. 1! Invest in productivity tools Distractions and procrastination can kill productivity, but tools such as Pomofocus, which uses the Pomodoro technique to split work into short, q Defer, delete and delegate Often, the need to log tasks can make a ‘to do’ list seem far longer than it needs to be. Not only that, but important tasks may get pushed to the bottom. As the founder of a vulnerability prioritisation platform, I’ve literally made it my business to help companies tackle tasks in the right order. A big barrier to productivity could be that there is too much ‘noise’ on your team’s list, i.e. tasks that don’t have a deadline, that are nice-to-be-done rather than need-to-be-done or that can be done by junior members of staff. Take some time to review your list and to split it into four: tasks to do asap; tasks to delegate to others; tasks that can be done at a later date; and tasks that can be removed altogether. Having a shorter, more manageable ‘to do’ list will help your team tackle tasks at a faster rate. w Look into communication and collaboration tools Communication, teamwork and collaboration are all essential to any successful business. Fortunately, there are numerous tools available to help, from Instant messaging programs like Skype and Slack that provide a way for team members to have real-time conversations to project management software like Asana and Trello that can be used to keep track of tasks, deadlines and assigned team members. By using these tools, teams can work together efficiently and get more done. Top tips for MSP productivity

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