Productivity issues are a challenge for most companies—and those issues can reduce profitability, creativity, and innovation. From inefficient time management to workplace distractions, there are plenty of reasons why companies struggle with productivity. But a major reason is lack of employee engagement.
When employees feel like they’re overworked or don’t have the right tools to get the job done, it can lead to poor engagement, less loyalty, and higher turnover.
Gallup’s State of the Workplace report found that 85% of employees are either unengaged or actively disengaged (which means they do the bare minimum required of them), which has led to the trend of ‘quiet quitting.’ However, Gallup also found there was an 18% difference in productivity and 23% difference in profitability between the top- and bottom-quartile business units and teams.
In other words, engaged employees are productive employees. A 2022 Business Development Bank of Canada study also found that small and mid-sized businesses are better equipped to handle economy-related challenges—such as labor shortages, inflation, and supply chain issues—when they put productivity at the forefront.
While productivity issues can be complex, one solution is to harness the power of AI to help employees minimize manual, repetitive, low-value tasks, freeing them up to do more creative, innovative work. This can also help improve employee morale and engagement, reduce absenteeism, and perhaps even mitigate the trend of quiet quitting.
Whether in sales, marketing, customer service, or human resources, there are a number of ways AI—and Generative AI (GenAI) in particular—can help improve productivity challenges in the workplace. Gemini for Google Workspace embeds GenAI capabilities into Google’s suite of products, including Docs, Gmail, Slides, Sheets, and Meet.
Here are some common productivity challenges and how Gemini in Google Workspace can help employees be more creative, connected, and productive:
Productivity challenge #1: Too many emails
Employees spend a huge chunk of their day sifting through email and responding to anything that needs their attention. Some content requires time and effort—such as sending out instructions to your team for a project or responding to an important client. That’s where the GenAI capabilities of Gemini can help. With the “help me write” feature, you can kick off a draft or compose a reply via a short text prompt (and easily make any necessary refinements). Prompts can even be used to change the tone, structure, and length, all in a matter of seconds. So whether you’re working in the office, at a remote site, or waiting to get on a flight, you can use Gemini to deal with that cluttered inbox.
Productivity challenge #2: Workplace distractions
It’s easy to miss something when you’re distracted—and in the workplace, there are a lot of distractions. Maybe a colleague drops by your desk to chat, or your workplace messaging app keeps pinging. Or, if you’re working from home, your partner/child/pet keeps interrupting your workflow. Employees often switch between multiple applications throughout the day, so it’s easy to miss an important detail or update, or even misunderstand information. With “help me organize,” Gemini can build a bespoke project tracker in Sheets to keep track of tasks, including action items and deadlines (Gemini uses context to automatically classify and label data). And in Meet, Gemini can take notes and summarize key points, so you can fully participate without worrying that you didn’t jot something down.
Productivity challenge #3: Meetings
Meetings may be necessary (sometimes), but meeting overload can drain employees and reduce productivity. Gemini has a feature for attending meetings on your behalf (whether you’re not able to attend or you’re going to be late). In Meet, it will recap what you missed, including notes and video snippets. Attending meetings while working from home or on the road can be a time-drain in a different way: dealing with background noise, bad lighting, or other distractions. Gemini can automatically reduce background noise and enhance image quality, so you don’t have to deal with it. And, if there’s a bad connection, it can even restore distortions—so you don’t miss anything important. For international meetings, it can generate real-time translated captions in 18 languages, boosting team collaboration.
Taking productivity up a notch
Gemini can help users take collaboration and creation to new levels. By removing distractions, minimizing low-value work, and providing hyper-personalized, relevant suggestions, employees can boost their personal productivity. It also makes it easy for teams to work together on tasks and projects, boosting team productivity. That’s good for workers and the organization. Since GenAI models are constantly learning and evolving, these features will get even better over time.
To find out how you can boost productivity and get the most out of your investment, Pythian’s Gemini Quickstart in Google Workspace is a four-week, fixed-fee offering for up to 25 participants that can help your organization build prototypes using Gemini and create a roadmap for the future. And our Grow with Google can help you get the most out of your investment over the following 12 months. For more information, email us at info@pythian.com to get started.
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