5 Core Office 365 Tools for Managing Tasks and Projects

There’s a reason why there are more than 100 million monthly active users on Microsoft Office 365 and why organizations rely on Microsoft Office 365 for their daily activities more than any other web-based business application. Office 365 is very beneficial for a variety of different projects and tasks and allows employees to manage more effectively. This blog will break down five relevant tools in Office 365 that will help you manage your projects, including the pros and cons for each to help you decide which is right for you.

The five tasks and project management applications currently available include; 

1. Planner

2. Sharepoint task lists

3. Project Outline

4. Outlook Tasks

5. To-Do

Planner

With Planner, teams can manage private and public plans and task buckets through creating and prioritizing tasks. Along with collaborating and commenting with other team members through SharePoint on project documents, users can also get instant reporting through board and chart views. 

Pros

• Clear visualization of activities and keeping on track of projects

• Easy to manage and well-defined plans and tasks

• Integrated with Microsoft Teams, making it simpler to collaborate

Cons

• Large projects are more difficult to manage

• Supervising and handling large teams is insufficient 

SharePoint Task Lists

Cohesive with this tool's name, this tool allows users to create lists of tasks and subtasks and visualize the allocation on the timeline of a project. Additionally, SharePoint Task Lists enables users to manage tasks, assign resources, and envision their tasks through Gantt charts, personal tasks, upcoming tasks, and more. 

Pros

• Utilize Outlook calendar and conversations

• Provides simplified representation of the project and individual tasks

• Can be paired with other SharePoint features

Cons

• Multiple timelines within one task list cannot be added

• Customization is needed for larger project reporting

Project Outline

Project Outline offers three plans; Essentials, Professional, and Premium. Each plan is for a different target group and includes project and resources managers. This application provides project planning, task scheduling, resource management, and other features. Project Online is a professional application for project portfolio management and is the most powerful out of all the Office 365 tools. 

Pros

• Can handle various projects 

• Has the ability to meet the needs of various different employees

Cons

• Requires employees’ skills to utilize and handle

• Training for end-users is required and adoptions can be challenging

Outlook Tasks

If you are looking for a more personalized task management tool, Outlook Tasks may be right for you. This tool allows teams to manage their activities within their email. Through Outlook Tasks, you can mark your tasks off by their status, priority, category, and more. 

Pros

• Easy to share with other team members

• Can be coupled with Outlook Groups and allow users to work together on the same app

• A great option for moderate project management

Cons

• Users have to put the effort in to make tasks clearly arranged

• Additional training may be required to be adequately used

• Tasks are not very organized and can appear messy if many entries and events are added

To-Do

To-Do is an app that enables users to manage personal or business-related tasks through lists, due dates, notifications, and slight UI changes. To-Do can be used alongside Outlook Tasks and synchronize with their inbox.

Pros

• Easy to use and aesthetically laid out tool

• Allows employees to use a private task management area and prioritize specific activities

• Can be used independently of other team members

Cons

• As it replaced Wunderlist, this tool is still incomplete and may lag. The mobile app is also much weaker than the web app

• There is no option for employees to create subtasks 

• Employees cannot share tasks with other users 

Conclusion

These five project management tools outlined are very effective to manage tasks and projects and can help to keep your team organized and on track. Aside from these five core tools, Office 365 also has some other options including:

• SharePoint Project sites - This tool is essentially an advancement from Sharepoint Task Lists where teams can collaborate and share the news.

• Microsoft Teams - This is a central communication hub where you have all the features from Planner as well as a more interactive component. 

• Yammer - Adding on to Project Online, Yammer is a forum-like area on the Sharepoint project site.

Evidently, there are numerous options for you to choose from when it comes to project management on Office 365. Every tool has its own strengths and weaknesses, but each individual tool has its own specialties. 

Contact us to figure out how you and your team can use software to stay more organized.  

3 Ways to Achieve Employee Engagement in Covid Times

The reality today is quite different than it was 2 years ago. The pandemic situation has affected as many factors in human life as possible. The labor sector, in general, suffered record unemployment rates and, what was previously unthinkable for some companies today turns out to be the only option; remote work has become the solution.

Human Capital is practically the most important asset to companies, and having them happy and committed to the companies they work for is today a difficult goal to achieve. However, difficult is not synonymous with impossible.

Therefore, let's discuss some ways to maintain employee engagement in these turbulent times.

1.Get to know your employee’s situation

Resisting change is no longer an option. If companies want to keep their employees, and not in an unhappy and frustrated mood, but engaged and grateful, they must start listening to what employees really need and doing something about it. 

Considering that most people work from home since COVID-19 became a pandemic last year, the office environment was left behind, there are no longer conversations in the hallways and no coffee breaks. Besides, the balance between work and personal life has become a bit imperceptible. 

People have to manage their work schedules to deal with deadlines and at the same time manage interruptions in their personal lives. All these situations can affect the emotional health of workers, causing them depression, and therefore negatively influence their work performance.

What can you do about it? The correct answer is not just one. Each company must familiarize itself with the situation of its employees and make decisions about it. For example, Novartis stated that its company has focused since the beginning of the epidemic on the health of its workers and their families. They did not stop the production of medicines, but they identified the needs of their employees in relation to remote work, family care, and free time and achieved a balance.

2.Work together to achieve the same goal

It is indisputable that the more committed employees feel to the company, the greater their contribution to the achievement of its objectives. Empathy is essential in these cases, when you feel empathy and act accordingly, you are creating a close bond with your workers.

When Covid began, Microsoft analyzed the situation of their workers when they had to start working from home. Consequently, 95% of Microsoft employees started to work from home full time. But not just that, in addition, managers held meetings to find solutions to the need to establish a workspace from home, the necessary infrastructure, the flexible hours of workers with children at home due to the closure of schools, among others.

In order to support them to face the change, they decided to create the Pandemic School and Childcare Closure Leave (PSCCL) policy. This policy provided every caregiver with two weeks off after school closed. Furthermore, they were allowed to take 12 weeks of paid leave in order to give them time to set and organize their priorities while allowing them to stay connected and keep working.

As a result, they support their employees and at the same time, they continue to contribute to the economic development of the company.

3.Give them a voice

As we mentioned before, the working realities of millions of people have been affected in one way or another. The possibility of remote work has largely rescued many jobs and therefore saved numerous companies from closure. However, this modality of work also has its cons, since it affects the bond between employees and companies.

In an interview with Sharion Wei, Senior Solution Director at Microsoft she expressed that: ‘‘We can’t take for granted that employees will just know or tell you what they need. It’s a matter of building trust, exercising empathy, and having flexible solutions like PSCCL to address a variety of needs.”

What could your company do? The solution is to strengthen that relationship, and for this, you must not only be aware of your employees’ feedback, but you must also create the correct channels to receive those feedbacks.

After Microsoft implemented the Pandemic School and Childcare Closure Leave (PSCCL) policy, employees were encouraged to discuss with their managers the new schedules, workloads, and timelines in order to adjust in the best way the new commitments.

The final result is a win-win. Employees feel valued when they see the efforts made by the company to support them and therefore their level of satisfaction and commitment to the company increases.

Having workers committed to your company can make the difference between success and failure. These are turbulent times, but there has been no better time than this to show your employees how committed you feel to them. Solutions are never absolute, that is why each company must analyze its capabilities before establishing strategies to support its workers. 

Feel free to contact us if you need any support.

Understanding and Respecting the OSHA Fall Zone

The majority of industries worldwide experience a load being lifted somewhere along the supply/production lines. To be specific, a lifted load is commonly classified as a load that is being lifted, manipulated, lowered, or carried in a way that could potentially pose a risk to workers. As of 2018, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has stated that over 50,000 lifted load injuries are documented annually. 

The Fall Zone

According to OSHA, a fall zone is defined as “the area including, but not limited to, the area directly beneath the load.” Current regulations prohibit workers from standing in the area under any kind of raised load, other than an employee that is tasked with hooking, unhooking, or guiding. 

The Importance of Avoiding the Fall Zone

Given the nature of dealing with overhead loads, there are many different factors to take into consideration when determining what is safe and what isn’t. The biggest concern related to overhead loads is usually judging what a safe distance is to maintain from the load. 

The fall zone’s size is directly correlated to the complexity of the load itself. When evaluating the fall zone, factors such as material, weight, shape, and height need to be considered. Higher load weight and height usually result in the fall zone being larger. The shape of the load is important to take into account because a fall zone will not always be a perfect square or circle. A complex shape of the load will result in the fall zone matching the complexity of the load’s shape. 

Safety Tips for Consideration:

• Maintain a minimum of a ten-foot radius from where the load could fall. Should the load be higher, increase the radius. 

• Refrain from guiding loads over workers or commonly used walkways. 

• Understand the path that the load will follow if it moves. 

• Conduct a sufficient amount of training with any worker who is directly involved in the handling of a load or anyone who may come in indirect contact with it. 

• Maintain a level of safety through sufficient communication and warnings of potential hazards. 

• Remember that outside work can be greatly influenced by weather factors like wind and rain. 

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