Ep 56: Tech Tools That REDUCE Employee Burnout and Increase Productivity
you're listening to stimulus Tech talk a conversation-based podcast created by stimulus technologies that covers a range of topics related to Business and Technology welcome to stimulus Tech talk I am Sheri lip the marketing manager at stimulus Technologies and today we are going to be diving into a topic that relates to employees and owners alike and that is burnout and we are going to be talking about how Automation and AI tools can help you avoid burnout and get a more motivated uh staff and attitude so I'm joined by stimulus technology CEO Nathan Whitaker who is an expert on technology and optimizing your business uh welcome Nathan thanks Sher and you know we do this podcast uh every week and one of my cousins uh listens to this often um he's uh been in government for a long time and enjoys listening about um uh technology and how to improve things and he told me though that we're rather dry we need to tell more jokes so this is for Dan we're gonna tell a couple of jokes to start out so uh what I I think we've done this before a couple of times what we have the conversation about is hot dog of sandwi which and we we we discuss that but I I love bad dad jokes so I got a couple of bad dad jokes for you Sherry you ready all right I'm ready so how do robots organize their parties how because they automate the invitations that that one's not that funny I think it's funny because you have to say it with a straight face right yeah all right one more why was the computer cold why because it left its windows open they're called bad dad jokes for a reason all right there you go Dan got uh got your your jokes for the day hopefully you find them funny or I just trying to tell him funny I don't know now he's gonna write and be like don't do the jokes yeah the comment should be should we do the jokes or should we not do the jokes leave a comment and tell us about if we should do the jokes or not no my my wife laughs at me every every once in a while I'll pull up some uh YouTube reels and just watch a couple of them and because it knows what I like uh there's a couple of comedians that are usually on there and then there's uhh it's called doc talk and it's bad dad jokes and the eye rolling I get from my wife from those jokes is incredible I I think that's like marbles hitting the back of her head and I'm just laughing I think they're funny so yeah it's an art yes automation yes automation but this is the last podcast we're recording this year which is why Nathan is wearing a reindeer shirt and I'm wearing a green sweater that's about as good as I could get today for for the holidays but uh it's our last uh episode recording this year and so we're going to have some fun with it uh talking about automation we know we've talked about employee burnout tools before but it was over a year ago and there are so many more tools out there so and Nathan what do you see maybe in the workplace or from talking to other business owners what is the cause these days of employee burnout I think a lot of employees will claim and and say in surveys that it's what we call digital debt that they have a certain job that they're hired to do you know they're hired in the accounting department to do accounts payable or accounts receivable or they're hired to be a computer programmer or a service technician or a field you know engineer whatever it may be they're hired for a specific job but employees often find that they're spending a large amount of their time over 50% for some positions just handling things like responding to emails or uh doing research or um taking phone calls being in meetings I mean there's there's just so much um ancillary work that goes into jobs that employees feel very overwhelmed because they they feel like there's a a very small amount of time that they're investing in actually getting the real work quote unquote that they're were hired to do done and employees want to be successful in their job they want to learn and grow in their position they want to do great work they want to help the company move forward and I think employees get frustrated because they're just burdened by meetings or emails that come in text messages teams messages slack messages whatever you're using and and there's this desire for immediate response on different things and it just becomes overwhelming because of that digital that that they incur throughout the day and if you've ever taken a vacation you know the feeling like I'm going on vacation I'm going to shut off my email I'm going to shut off my notifications let everybody know I'm gone but to get to that point that I feel comfortable leaving there's a ton more work that I got to do because I want to get caught up on what was outstanding and then when you get back you're like oh my gosh the day the night before you get back from vacation you're thinking of all these things that you now have to do immediately because you didn't get them done while you were out and so I think especially in the United States people are taking time off less and less because this the digital debt does not go away you might I mean I get back from vacation and I might have several thousand emails in my in my mailbox if I haven't looked at it for a while and and you know 90% of them I don't have to do anything about they just you know or notifications of things that were going on in the business or um communication from vendor sales people what you know there's marketing mail spam whatever it may be that's sitting in the mailbox but it just takes time to clear it out and that's all employees are feeling that way and that's that digital debt that we need to get rid of that we've we've created in the last 25 years as we've implemented new technologies now we need to figure out how to um get rid of that or minimize it is there a tool so you know obviously we can sort our inbox into different it you know we can sort it so it goes into separate folders and stuff like that but even even that gets overwhelming so what tool comes to mind for you is there a tool that helps actually go through and see what you need to see I think that's what Microsoft is trying to implement with Microsoft co-pilot um for you know Outlook is allowing a assistant uh an automated assistant to go in there and and prioritize uh the emails of flag the ones that are most important um so I think right now the one that we're seeing being a timesaver is is co-pilot because it integrates with the Microsoft tool set um immediately so that's that's one that's their advertised um platform and we have a few employees at stimulus that are using it and clients that are using it and they're seeing the benefits of that you know it's it's a virtual assistant you know that's built in that's going to automate some of those tasks so that would be my recommendation for that type of digital debt the other nice thing is it can you know it can attend teams meetings and summarize those so if you have conflicting meetings and maybe you just need to know what happened in the meeting you don't need to you know provide input um it will do that type of work too and hopefully reduce the number of meetings that you're just attending to be a fly on the wall um which I think a lot of us do that too is we just you know are invited to a because you kind of need to know the outcome of it and um these automated tools whether it's co-pilot or Firefly or one of these AI tools I think can do a really good job of summarizing and uh providing key highlights to what happens in these digital meetings and and really save some time so those are two one those are two key points that I think are helping a lot in that debt yeah I've been to a few Zoom meetings where somebody's bot is coming in in their place but they just name it their name so you can't actually tell I do advise like naming your Bot something that that lets people know it's not actually you so you're not talking to to no one but uh just think they have their camera off uh what other kinds of tasks do you think can be automated maybe with co-pilot or another tool where it can really help employees focus on the core of their of their job instead of tasks that just take a lot of time well we've been doing it for years with computers is improving automation through technology and so the the biggest target I I think any company should have is things that occur repetitively um that really don't need uh human interaction or potentially mild human interaction that could be handled with AI uh to take that burden off so you know maybe you have um I mentioned accounting a minute ago you have like an accounts receivable process um that you know a human is sending out invoices is you know running credit cards um you know doing Bank reconciliations whatever it may be that are happening constantly inside your organization the question is is how to automate those type of tasks so that they uh happen you know automatically without human interaction and then if there is a error um or a problem then that's when a human gets involved uh to resolve that and so what we want to do is is look at ways to improve uh that work and automate those processes that are are I mean low hanging fruit you know those repetitive tasks um and once we do that then then we can focus on maybe even uh improving the interactions with those automated tasks with AI so that uh AI can can handle uh through its large language model interpretation of communication back from clients and then have additional workflows inside your organization depending on you know how a client responds so there's there's really anything that is repetitive is easily maybe easily automated and that's what we need to look at is is those repetitive tasks and this is kind of a two-part question uh what can business owners do to help their employees understand that this is a tool and not something to replace them that's that's a you know we talked a little bit about it on this podcast and I think it's the tough question um that employees and owners need to answer is if I'm going to automate something that an employee is doing today day how do I ensure that that employee is still viable inside the organization and and help them feel comfortable that they're viable and um and and productive and I think it requires us as owners of the organization and as employees to make sure that we are experts in what we do because we have to train these AI models or automation models if it's just straight up automation um and and if there's exception to the training or to the rules then it has to go to an expert to resolve those and so if if your skill set is just a you know moving widgets back and forth and that's all you can do but you don't understand how that widget works or how that whole process works then yeah you're you're probably going to be automated out of a job just like you know going from you know manual assembly lines in in manufacturing that we did you know manufacturing cars or whatever it may be in in the last 100 years we moved to robots you know handling all that automation um but there's still tons of factory workers at those locations they have to you know be involved in the whole process or or managing that entire system and I think it's the same thing in our in our knowledge work uh as administrative work or in our organizations that it it requires us to be to have more expertise and so as owners that's what we have to discuss with our employees to say you know we are going to automate some of these tasks um as we automate these tasks we're going to reduce your you know your workload your digital debt you know this this these things that keep you busy all day but we want you to upskill we want you to get new skills and be better at what you're doing so that you can focus on the things that bring you enjoyment in your work and you can feel more productive and so that's the type of discussion I think we need to be having so yeah so on the on the flip side you know employees who are worried about their job you know somebody comes to you it's like I'm very worried that we're automating these things that I do what what kind of advice do you do you give them so the advice I've given is let's let's find out what you really enjoy doing um what what what your career path is um and how can we provide you the skills necessary to move along that career path um it might be sending you out for additional training or certifications it might be um you know a new position inside the company but it's it I think it has to be communication across the board of this is the this is where the company's going these are the areas that we need help in and how can we get the you know the team members that are the right right people in for the organization in those seats and so how you know working together how can employers and involve their employees in those decisions of what kind of tools to use well I I've been talking a lot with organizations about uh technology implementation life cycle and before choosing a tool you have to have a problem to solve and clearly identified problem I think a lot of organizations make mistakes on technology implementation in general by chasing after the latest thing latest new tool latest new technology latest you know thing that they heard from their friends or online and trying to implement that without having a specific need that they're they're working to resolve and so you know looking at the entire organization and getting feedback from all your team members across your company of things they struggle with or things that could be automated or made better um and you got to identify those problems first and then Define what the outcomes the best outcome would look like so again if you know going back to that accounting procedure that I was mentioning in the beginning if you have you know a process that's very manual then what does the outcome look like you know our goals are invoices are set out sent out automatically without any human interaction credit cards are automatically charged without human interaction for those invoices um you know there's an automated response if a client you know calls in with any with or emails in with any questions um and then if they're you know if there's additional questions it gets routed to the right person so to finding what the exact outcome should be then you go on and look for a tool that can help you implement that um and then there's a whole life cycle of you know implementing that new technology and and making sure it works inside the organization but you you have to define the problem first and then Define what the priorities and outcome are um before um you you just go buy a tool or a product and how do you when you start using these tools how do you measure the success of it um hopefully not with a yard stick or maybe um or a meter stick if you're in the UK or in the in Europe or elsewhere um so you look at Roi you look at Time Savings and you know looking at uh there there should be for each tool or each area a specific key performance indicator that should improve by implementing that type of automation uh and those should be defined in the beginning too what what kpis do we look at um and what is our expected outcome or Improvement so if you're implementing a new process in accounting and accounts receivable maybe your um you know your your days of outstanding receivables should reduce you know maybe you have you know 25 days of outstanding receivables maybe you want that to reduce down to 15 days by a new automation process so that's that's what you'd be looking at is what's the kpi for that exact um work process and what are the expected outcomes and then you can decide if um the ROI was there based off of the achievement of those outcomes well and let's talk a little bit about how stimulus helps businesses because I think part of the problem you know automation AI are just new tools sometimes businesses dump a new thing on the employees and there's not a lot of training or or what's going on and and people don't know how to use it and it's just a big problem and then people don't get excited about it so you know we have a program we could talk about a little bit about how you know imp we Implement co-pilot in businesses and and how that helps employees get involved can we talk about that a little bit Yeah I think that's a great great um segue because a lot of companies will buy a new tool or technology and then not invest in the training or defining what the workflow is and that's where um a lot of issues come up is the employees will revert back to the way that they did it before without you know sufficient training and and follow-up training and retraining so you know with uh with these AI tools especially I think it's a new way of operating and so your employees have never ran into this before they're not getting this AI experience from another job that they've had in the past and so on us now as organizations to help employees Implement uh these new technologies so we've developed uh this AI master class uh that is a uh stimulant Rand class we provide training for about 30 minutes a week and then um there is 30 minutes of Q&A in the class that uh you know the team members that are part of this group um can you know ask questions if they're having any issues on co-pilot uh across the board and in the class they can learn from each other about oh I didn't know that you're you can use it for this problem and then they learn from that and so we make it as interactive as possible possible there's also a Microsoft teams chat that's ongoing that people can ask questions throughout the week uh and those can be answered you know in the class our Engineers can Pro for those questions so that's that's what we're doing and I think whether you're implementing a technology inside your organization um with a vendor or just by yourself um having a group of people that are um uh a class or a Workforce or team that's working on that implementation that are meeting regularly that are resolving problems and you defining those workflow processes and then achieving those outcomes is essentially you can't just you know put a new piece of software on everybody's computer and expect them to work on it just fine the next day it's it it's time to implement time to define those procedures written procedures and training on those over and over again and and that's when they stick and final thoughts on this uh If an employer you know from from the standpoint of helping employees of getting the best tools for their employees where do you think a a business owner should start you know it's again going back to the problem that you're having and then you could talk to your technology provider of saying you know this is a problem I'm having inside my organization what suggestions do you have on implementing these uh or solving this problem that that's what stimuluses here as a resource and that's what any te good technology company should be doing is being that resource uh to bounce ideas off of and help solve these problems inside the organization so that's that's really the first start is you know doing the research in the back end of how the problem can be resolved and then you know coming up with a set of choices and then choosing those outcomes um we're really excited at stimulus some of our goals are to help uh or for 2025 is to come up with new ideas new tools that we can help companies Implement especially around Ai and automation for 2025 so be on the lookout for some new things coming from stimulus and uh we're we're working with uh internally and externally on getting feedback on what what companies especially small businesses need today to implement to help improve uh their their automation across um their entire organization so be on the lookout we're excited about uh plans for 2025 yes definitely and if you guys are using tools anybody listening you have some favorite tools let us know in the comments or let us know if you have questions but thanks everybody for listening and thanks Nathan now thank you Sher and thank everybody uh for joining us on this podcast please make sure you uh like And subscribe leave some comments and uh we look forward to a great 2025 [Music]
2025-01-03 07:18
