Master Solutions Blog

Productivity plays an important role in the business environment, but no employee is productive 100 percent of the time. No matter how disciplined an employee is, they will eventually succumb to the black hole that is social media. How can you keep your employees from wasting too much time on social media while also acknowledging that they too are human beings in need of breaks every now and then? What strikes a good balance?

Microsoft Office 365 can enhance a company's operations in a variety of ways. Yet, due to the fact that not every business is the same, your organization will benefit more from a solution that’s customized to meet your needs. This is a big reason behind Microsoft’s customizable offering: Office 365 Business Premium.

Let’s face it; the office is a pretty distracting place most of the time. You have people in meetings, discussions happening around every corner, the phone ringing every thirty seconds, and emails hitting your inbox left and right. With so much happening around you, how in the world are you supposed to get anything done?

April 1st is a day for jokes and laughter. Therefore, we thought we’d lighten the mood and consult the funniest and the furriest CEO we know for computer advice; that’s right, Old Spice’s wolf-dog hybrid, Mr. Wolfdog!

Some days, productivity comes naturally and you can destroy tasks like it’s no one’s business. Other times, distractions seem to pop up everywhere and you need all the help you can get, just to get anything done. Here are four productivity tips, proven to help you regain focus at the office.

Editing text can be a rather drawn out process. Thankfully, technology has made editing much easier than it was back in the day when papers were marked up with red ink and notes like “F- See me after class.” Here are two great editing tools that you will want to take advantage of.

Fun is often misconstrued in the workplace and identified as being unproductive, or even lazy at times. However, more businesses than ever before are embracing the power of fun and letting the creative juices flow. Using game-like elements to achieve your business’s goals, or to improve operations, is called gamification, and you can take advantage of it.

Your mobile phone is meant to be an extension of productivity while you’re out of the office, but some people can’t resist the urge to mess around with the numerous entertainment applications right in front of them. Unfortunately, nowhere is this more true than in the office. What’s that? Your employees don’t waste time with mobile devices? Withhold judgment until you see the statistics. Your people might be wasting more time than you think.

How much time do you waste on your mobile phone’s applications on a regular basis? With so much entertainment and social media at your fingertips, it can be tempting to just forget about work for a bit and zone out to Candy Crush. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of employees have this mindset. The Nielsen Company made some shocking discoveries about how much time is wasted on mobile applications each month, and the results are disturbing.

The smartphone was an incredibly valuable introduction to the business world, allowing entrepreneurs to exponentially increase productivity both in and out of the workplace. However, they are a double-edged sword, capable of cutting down barriers, or slicing productivity to ribbons with time-wasting apps and texting.

Have you ever wondered how in the world you’re going to get everything done, only to lose track of everything or get distracted? Some researchers believe that the tomato might be the key to unlocking the latent knack for productivity that lies dormant within us all. Albeit, not a real tomato, but the familiar tomato-shaped timer that counts down from 25 minutes.

No matter what kind of business you run, you’re likely to gain many friends and allies in the war of entrepreneurship. However, you’ll also gain a lot of enemies (i.e. your competitors) that you’ll need to one-up somehow. Of course, you could always just exploit what they are doing wrong, but what about what they are doing right?

When you hire a new employee, you make it clear what the job’s expectations are. You expect them to be productive, and you provide them with an environment that’s conducive to getting the job done. This leads us to ask a fundamental question about workplace productivity: How much responsibility do you have in aiding your employees’ productivity?