The expectations from today’s business professionals continue to increase with an ever-changing modern world. Heaps of documentation and document creation needs add on to often already heavy workloads. Yet, there is limited to no help managing administrative tasks. As a busy office manager, there are always work processes to be improved, time to gain, and more efficient ways to bring to screen and paper what needs to be documented.
When handling our day-to-day work, we often don’t think of how we could work more efficiently and are caught up in outdated processes. We try to create our documents the most straightforward way we know—by typing them ourselves. But what if you could make a small change that could be a huge time saver? As suggested by Phillips Dictation SpeechLive, here are four habits you could try to adopt in your daily work routine:
1. Use your voice, not your keyboard
Have you ever typed for hours on end on your computer having the feeling you haven’t accomplished one single task? Making it seem there is no end to those long emails, meeting minutes, reports, and other paperwork?
Talking is at least 3 times faster than typing, so you can be more productive using your voice instead of your keyboard for your documentation needs. You could try a solution that includes automated speech-to-text. This allows you to speak and either see the text appear immediately on screen, or use it after recording your voice to create a first document draft. With today’s cloud solutions, you don’t require any installation and can try it out before you commit.
2. Take work beyond the office as needed
Feeling trapped at your desktop when having a busy day—trying to combine professional and personal life? When opting for hybrid ways of working, you can easily combine the two without sacrifices. Does it feel daunting picking up your kids from school right after an important meeting that requires to get meeting minutes done and distributed? Voice technology allows you to hop in your car and start dictating on your smartphone hands-free what you would have typed. Send the recording to speech-to-text and upon return you’ll have a first draft in our work list. Maybe you are busy professional traveling from one place to another with little to no time to sit at a desk? Mobile dictation solutions on your smartphone will be there to capture your most important thoughts and minutes.
3. Stay organized electronically
Have you noticed the papers piling up on your desk with no specific purpose? Avoid losing paper notes when using voice memos and keeping track of essential information. All your voice recordings, notes and documents are stored in one place. You can easily decide what requires to be converted into text while other notes can simply be kept as recordings. Share work with colleagues and teams, prioritize recordings that need to be transcribed while keeping an easy overview of the documents in progress.
4. Stop thinking dictation is old-fashioned
Dictation is often wrongly associated with words such as huge IT setup, cumbersome training, and an old-fashioned way of working. Today’s voice technology and speech-to-text solutions offer a wide range of possibilities. They are making it possible to combine different solutions for voice recording—from smartphone to microphones and headsets, transcription and speech-to-text—and allow for individual setups according to your needs and preferences. You can work independently and bring in team members as needed.
Chances are some of your staff are already using voice technology, perhaps your attorneys or transcribers. Consider trying it yourself to help organize your work as a manager.