With about 1.3m apps available to Android users and approximately 1.2m apps available to Apple users, it can be hard to find an app that is user-friendly and effective. There are thousands of apps designed to help you be more productive whilst saving you time and resources.

We’ve rounded up our staff’s top 5 productivity apps to share:

       1. Evernote

It’s easy to see why Evernote is one of the most popular digital notebooks in the app market. Create notebooks, manage collaborative projects, take notes, create lists, manage expenses and more with Evernote.

Why our staff love it: Evernote’s tagging function makes it easy to search for files and keep everything organised.  

        2. Pocket

Save articles, videos and content easily with Pocket. A great app to keep track of articles and content that you want to take a look at later.

Why our staff love it: Offline reading and the sleek design makes Pocket a winner.

       3. TurboScan

Turn your phone into a scanner with TurboScan! An all round favourite, TurboScan helps us keep track of documents and ensures that everything is easily accessible.  It saves us time from rummaging through our drawers looking for miscellaneous pieces of paper!

Why our staff love it: Great to store business cards, invoices and has a great editing function.

      4. Mailbox

Mailbox is a great tool that helps users sort through their email quickly.

Archive or trash with a swipe. Mailbox takes the hassle out of going sorting your inbox.

Why our staff love it:  The ‘snooze’ email function is pretty popular. We love that it lets us focus on what we need to do now and reminds us to respond to other emails later. 

     5. Any.do

Any.do is the office’s favourite task management app as its interface is clean and lets us synch our lists, attach files to tasks and collaborate on tasks easily with other people.

Why our staff love it:  Seamless cloud sync and the function that lets us set recurring tasks make Any.do our preferred task management app.    

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.” 
― Dave Berry

A long-winded, unproductive and disorganised meeting is an effective way to demotivate your team. 

If you are looking to make sure that your meetings are more effective make sure you consider doing the following: 

Be well prepared

Ensure that you are well prepared. Create a clear schedule and meeting objectives. Confirm attendees. If it is a long meeting, schedule breaks so people can check their emails or use the restroom. Organise refreshments and ensure that any equipment (props, projectors, notepads, PowerPoint presentations etc.) is all in order. Assign a moderator who can diplomatically guide the meeting. Distribute the objectives of the meeting to all attendees before the meeting.

Keep focused

Make sure that the moderator ensures that the meeting starts on time and end on time. Prevent “Meeting Dominators” from taking too much time by tactfully acknowledging ideas and ensuring they will be redressed. Constantly redirect the meeting to the objectives that are clearly set out. Ensure that you get people to agree to act during the meeting. Follow up with everything after the meeting. Strive to end the meeting on time.

The key to effective meetings is to keep everything on track and be prepared!

If you want to ensure that your organisation is responsive to change and at the forefront of innovation in its field, it is pivotal to encourage your staff to innovate and think outside the box.

Here are some tips to help you foster an innovative culture at work:

Encourage productivity

“The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.” — Sergey Brin

In order to encourage your staff to generate and develop new ideas, it is important to create a culture that celebrates and rewards proactive thinking. This is a process and won’t happen over night. Incentivize proactive solutions, invest in training and ensure that your staff know that you are always receptive to new ideas. Make sure bureaucracy doesn’t stifle creativity.

Invite communication

“Colleagues should take care of each other, have fun, celebrate success, learn by failure, look for reasons to praise not to criticise, communicate freely and respect each other.” — Richard Branson, Virgin Group

Establishing open communication at work is critical to creating a proactive culture at work. Ensure that your team feels safe to critique workflow processes and always ensure that you reward open dialogue.

Hire passionate people

“No organisation ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies.” – Seth Godin

Passion fuels progress. Hiring people who are passionate about their work is a great way to make sure that your team will be more likely to work harder to improve.