Coleman Technologies Blog

The holidays are over and some of the best gifts are ones that replace our dead and dying electronics with shiny new ones. Then comes the matter of discarding your old devices. In today’s blog, we will discuss what you should and shouldn’t do when looking to get rid of your old devices. 

Reaching out for support involves admitting that there is a problem in the first place—a sore spot for some individuals. It can also be time-consuming, which is more of an issue for busy individuals. However, with the right approach, you can make asking for help during the IT support process much easier.

Does your business use Google Workspace for its productivity solution? If so, we’ve got a tip for you—several, in fact, as we explore the various shortcuts available to expedite your productivity. Let’s take a look at some of the lesser-known shortcuts and how your business can use them to power up its efficiency.

With collaboration playing center stage for most businesses, it’s no small wonder that file sharing is such a priority for SMBs. If you want to establish solid file-sharing practices, you need the right solutions. Today, we want to explore four ways you can establish an efficient and secure file-sharing platform.

You might have noticed that some of your younger workers are leaving your business much earlier than you might expect them to. This could be because of a phenomenon called “shift shock,” which examines employee engagement and satisfaction. Let’s consider how shift shock could potentially harm your business.

When taking stock of your business assets, technology is particularly critical to pay attention to. Let’s discuss why this is and what you must do to manage it properly.

Back in 2022, Microsoft coined the term “productivity paranoia,” referring to the fears that many managers have that remote workers aren’t working to their full productivity. However, as remote and hybrid work has continued for many companies, a different form has emerged: the feeling a worker has that they have to prove they are still productive while working from home.

Here are some tips to share with your team, so they can use them to avoid these feelings.

We’ve seen the conference rooms of a lot of businesses, from the modified break-room with stale coffee to immaculate lecture rooms with plush, comfy seats, and everything in between.

A good conference room can do a lot to impress potential clients and customers, encourage collaboration within your team, and leave a great impression on potential employees too. While we’re not going to pretend to be interior decorators, there are definitely some important steps that we can assist with to make sure your conference room is up to the task.

Whatever your industry, there are going to be processes that need to be followed, and this will require no small amount of organization to keep all the moving parts in tandem with each other. Fortunately, tools that can help with your project management needs are readily available, so long as you take advantage of their capabilities.

Take Google Sheets, for instance.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the better your relationship is with your employees, the more your business will benefit. Despite this, many businesses today lack trust between their organizational levels. Let’s go over a few simple tips that you can use to help maintain positive feelings amongst your team.

It doesn’t take much to get us to start ranting about the dangers of phishing, and it’s a topic that we won’t stop talking about for some time. Unfortunately, phishing comes in enough forms that it isn’t always so simple to spot. For this week’s tip, we just wanted to run through the different formats phishing can take, focusing on how to identify each type.

The holidays are fast approaching and that means people are going to miss work for one reason or another. If you can get away from the office for a little bit, you’ll want to set up an out-of-office message to ensure that others know you will get back to them when you get back to the office. Here’s how you can set up an autoresponder for an out-of-office message in Microsoft Outlook.

At first glance, cybersecurity might seem incredibly complicated and difficult to understand, but even a baseline understanding of some of the principles of cybersecurity can go a long way toward protecting your business. Let’s discuss some of the common-sense ways you can keep your business secure, even if you don’t have an internal IT department to ask for help from.

For small businesses, having a fast, reliable Internet connection is needed to run all the digital tools that your staff has come to depend on. If you don’t have the bandwidth in place, you can deal with bottlenecks that can ruin communications, stall productivity, and cause operational issues of all types. Today, we’ll take a look at how to determine the amount of bandwidth you need to support your business’ computing infrastructure.

Monitoring Employees Without Their Knowledge

We figured it would be most appropriate to discuss the no-go option first, which would be to start monitoring your employees without their knowledge or consent. As you would imagine, this is the shadier side of the monitoring spectrum, and is actually illegal in most cases. Unless you have reason to believe an employee is actively acting out and are investigating them, you are not allowed to use monitoring software to keep an eye on your team without telling them.

Why a Hardwired Connection?

Security

The fact is that a direct connection is inherently more secure than one that is broadcast over the airwaves, as these have the potential to be snagged in transit much more easily. Therefore, if security is paramount, a wired connection is the better option by default. That said, there are ways to secure your wireless connection, utilizing a VPN.

Mobile Device Use

When working from home, the reasonable threshold for mobile device use is significantly different. Theoretically, you could talk to someone on speakerphone with the phone across the room (although you shouldn’t). However, there are other people with you in the office that you could potentially distract.

Let’s review what true collaboration is, and how you can lead your company towards more collaborative behaviors in your day-to-day undertakings.

Teamwork and Collaboration Aren’t the Same Thing

First, it is important that we define the difference between these two seemingly synonymous terms. While it is possible to work as a team without collaborating, collaboration requires some element of teamwork to be present.

First of all, it’s important not to panic. Many organizations have been offering work-from-home perks for years. Not only is it entirely possible to keep business running, but many businesses see a boost in productivity. A two-year Stanford study shows that in general, remote workers are as productive, if not more so, than those confined to an office.

Have Them Socialize Outside of the Office

Let’s look at how kids behave for a moment… if told to partner up, they—almost automatically—gravitate toward their friends, the people they are comfortable spending time with. Your employees will do the same, both in and out of the office.

Collaboration greatly relies on some level of trust and familiarity, which is most effectively developed outside of the professional environment. Encourage your staff to socialize outside of work hours, or even treat them on occasion, on one condition: no shop talk. While your employees may not all be fast friends afterwards, they’ll understand one another much better and be able to work more effectively.

Tell Them What You Want

Speaking of efficacy, make sure your team understands what you expect from them in terms of results. This goes double when collaborative work is involved. A clear understanding of a task makes it easier to determine how to accomplish it, and how their combined efforts can best serve their purpose.

Walk the Walk

If you really want your team to work collaboratively, make the first move and involve yourself in the process. “Rank” or “position” should have no bearing on how able someone is to participate in a collaborative process, and there is no telling who could be struck with inspiration. Actively seek input from your team and demonstrate how you want your employees to work together.

Use Your Resources Wisely

While there’s a time for either, there is a difference between combining your resources to accomplish a given task and having your employees collaborate. The former is great if a lot of a single task needs to be finished quickly, but if a complicated process needs to be completed, it helps more to give the task to a group of people who have different proficiencies. This way, you have a better chance of the necessary skills being present in the group.

Acknowledge Accomplishments

A team that doesn’t feel appreciated is a team that won’t accomplish much. Why would they, if it doesn’t seem to matter whether they excel, or put out a thoroughly mediocre performance? This is especially the case if a single member’s performance is publicly singled out, as though they did all the work.

To encourage your team to perform well as a group, make sure that the entire group receives some recognition of their combined efforts.

Make Collaboration the Easy Option

Regardless of how motivated your team may be to collaborate with one another, it just isn’t going to happen if they don’t have the opportunity or means to effectively do so. While this may have been a more reasonable obstacle in the past, today’s available technology invalidates any excuse your team may have… mostly due to the Internet serving as the greatest collaborative tool the world has ever seen. The easier the collaborative process is, whether you lean on an Internet-based application or an internal resource or both to simplify things, the more likely it is for your employees to work with each other.

We’re Here to Help.

Coleman Technologies is ready and willing to deliver the solutions you need to promote collaboration among your staff. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to hear more about your options.