Four Key Tips to Encourage Collaboration at Work

four key tips to encourage collaboration at work

Workplace collaboration serves important purposes. It helps employees work more productively. They complete projects by pooling their various abilities and insights. They’re also less likely to feel isolated, cut off from each other and from your company’s culture as a whole.

When managed wisely, collaboration opens up new possibilities for efficiency, innovation, and improved morale. The following are four tips to encourage collaboration at work:

1) Give them a sense of purpose

It’s easier for employees to collaborate when they understand why they’re doing so. What’s their shared goal or mission? What’s the point of the specific project they’re teaming up for? Give them clarity about their work and about the benefits of collaboration for the business as a whole and for each employee as an individual.

2) Create a culture of trust and respect

Employees are less likely to collaborate with each other when they’re afraid of speaking up and sharing their work. Maybe they’re concerned their colleagues will turn on them in some way, or that they’ll suffer ridicule and humiliation for their ideas and other contributions. Collaboration depends on mutual respect and trust; it doesn’t thrive in a cutthroat environment.

3) Show them by example

One of the best ways to demonstrate that you encourage collaborative activities is to participate in them yourself in meaningful ways. Granted, you have to be careful not to intrude too much or micromanage your employees, which will wind up dampening their collaborative spirit. But you can demonstrate collaboration by soliciting feedback and suggestions, and showing an understanding of your employees’ strengths and how each of them can uniquely contribute to your business. Don’t complete all of your own work in isolation.

4) Equip them with the right tools

There’s a proliferation of digital tools that encourage collaboration even among employees who aren’t in the same physical location (or time zone). As discussed in a recent article from IT World, not all tools will prove popular or useful for your employees; you need to choose them carefully, based on your employees’ needs and preferences, along with what works best for your business.

Because so much of communication occurs via computing devices, strong IT support services will help you foster collaboration among employees. Don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss how you can create a collaborative environment at your workplace.

Learn Basic Excel Formulas And Streamline Your Business

learn basic excel formulas and streamline your business

Basic Excel Formulas follow a simple, yet powerful pattern and can be used to accomplish automatically a number of functions that would many hours of manual calculation.  The structure of a basic excel formulas takes the pattern of an equals sign followed by a command, then parenthesis.  Inside of the parenthesis, you specify the values or cell references that serve as variables to the command.

Basic Excel Formulas

Examples of basic excel formulas you can use right now!

For example, you can use =SUM(7,7) to add the numbers 7 and 7 together.  While this simple example may not seem highly useful – after all, it takes less time to just put in 14, rather than this formula – it’s power expands when used with cell references.  As a second example, you may have the value 9 in cell A1, and the value 16 in cell A2.  To add these together in cell A3, you may put =SUM(A1, A2) instead.  You’ll still come up with the correct sum (25), but if you need to later change one of those values, say from 9 to 45, the cell in A3 will automatically update to reflect the change and give you the correct value of 51 without any additional input on your part.

In addition, most basic math functions can take many arguments. To continue our example using SUM, you can specify up to 255 discrete values or ranges.  So your SUM function may look like this: =SUM(A1-A295, B7, B23, 3.1415, 16, 32, 64, 256, D495) or even longer.  Note that this may look like it’s taking more than 255 values because of the range described in the first variable, however, ranges count as one value.

Some other basic functions that can be used in this manner include AVG (or AVERAGE depending on your version of Excel), SUM, COUNT, COUNTA, SUMA, AVERAGEA, MAX, and MIN.

SUM gives the SUM total of all entered arguments.  COUNT gives the total COUNT of all arguments in the range, COUNTA gives the COUNTA of all non-empty values in the range, AVERAGE gives the mathematical average of all the arguments in the range, AVERAGEA gives the mathematical average of all non-blank cells in the range, MAX returns the maximum value from the arguments, and MIN returns the minimum value from the range.

For more awesome computer tips for office users, contact us today or check out our blog at https://www.4cornerit.com/blog.

How To Avoid Screen Burn

how to avoid screen burn

Many office users fail to power down their peripherals at the end of the working day, and this causes undue power usage throughout the evening. Consider powering down all of your peripherals at the end of the day to conserve energy costs.

Separate monitors, for example, have no impact on the computer systems they’re attached to. No IT department in the world would ever ask you not to turn off a separate monitor, and you really should for two reasons: one, to conserve power, and two, to avoid screen burn.

How to Avoid Screen Burn

“Screensaver” application were designed for computer users that couldn’t turn off their computers. They display a changing set of images so that phosphorus dots on older monitors did not become over- or under-energized by having the same ‘dots’ active for long periods of time.

Once the ‘screensaver’ was firmly entrenched in the user-space, it became a matter of habit to activate and use it as a justification for not powering down, but with the invention of LCD and other non-phosphorous based imaging devices, the need for a screensaver has completely vanished.

While older, phosphorous based CRT monitors could experience ‘screen burn’ from as little as 3-5 days of constant exposure to the same output, more modern LCD screens can experience several weeks’ worth of continuous stimulation without experiencing ‘screen burn’. But, they still draw power when they’re on. And many draw power, even in the ‘standby’ mode that may be programmed into them by either the computer they’re attached to, or by the manufacturer. This allows them to return to a working state very quickly, but with a constant, low power draw. Turning them off delays return to a fully functional state by a mere few seconds, at most, and requires less power than leaving them in standby mode overnight.

It’s more than worth it to turn off your peripheral monitor at the end of the day, and simple to do so. From our experience, we’ve learned that’s how to avoid screen burn. Just press that little circle with the dash in it on the front of the monitor and walk away. Your screen will appreciate you, and your boss will appreciate you trying to save him some money, and the environment.

This has been another computer tip of the day, brought to you by your tech experts at 4 Corner IT.

Common Computer Problems: Not Powering Off Your Work Station

common computer problems not powering off your work station

Power off. At the end of the business day, unless your IT department has specifically instructed you not to do so, you should power your work computer off completely. Even if the IT department has told you not to leave your computer off overnight, you should still power down before you leave work for the day. Its one of the most common computer problems, but it’s important to be mindful of this habit.

common computer problems

If your IT department has told you not to leave the power off, make sure to turn it back on before you go (this is called cycling the power).

Avoiding common computer problems by powering off

Computers use memory to process actions at the users’ request. Some of the applications we use to effect those requests write information to memory, but when they are done with it, fail to remove it from memory (this is called a memory leak). Cycling the power on your computer forces all the memory in use to be emptied, clearing it up for future use and increasing the speed and availability of memory for other applications to use.

Almost all applications have some sort of memory leak. From the very minor for well established applications like the Microsoft Office suite, to much more major leaks from extremely memory-intensive applications such as AutoCAD or 3DSMax manager. End users can’t do anything to fix the leaks that are already present in these applications, but we can reset the severity of the leaks by powering off our systems or cycling the power at least once per day.

This is just one of the common computer problems that you can to avoid to help ensure that your work computer operates the best it can for you and the business you work for.

For more tips, subscribe to our blog, or go ahead and contact us today.

Computer Tip of the Day: Managing Account Settings

computer tip of the day managing account settings

computer tip of the day

Windows users enjoy a plethora of options for applications and web viewing. For many, shared computers are a necessity. For the computer tip of the day, learn to manage your account settings.

By managing your account settings everyone gets what they need while the primary user makes sure no one accesses anything they shouldn’t.

From your desktop click on the windows start button located at the lower-left corner of the screen. For newer windows updates it is four white squares, older editions may appear as a box or circle with four boxes that are red, green, blue and yellow. Scroll up to settings, and click on accounts. You can manage many things here, let’s focus on the section labeled ‘family and other users.’

On this screen, you have two options. Add a family member or other users. When adding family members the main administrator gives each member their own sign-in and desktop. They can assign kid safety options so they may view appropriate content, games, apps and may also set time limits. Other users would be those who are not members of your family with fewer search and app restrictions but no access to personal information.

By creating a sign-on screen for each member of the family adults can leave work stored safely on a family computer where kids cannot accidentally make changes or delete any vital information. Parents can also ensure their children are making appropriate time management and safety decisions when they are not being actively monitored.

If you have any questions about user accounts or other IT related inquiries, please contact us.