There are only so many hours in the day. So how can you manage your time and create opportunities for career advancement at work?

Managing employees’ time to make them more efficient is a constant challenge that companies face. To address this, there are many solutions to consider such as automation, elimination of tasks, delegation and streamlining processes. As an IT professional, I’m constantly looking for ways to be more productive and make my company more efficient. By using automation systems, companies are able to free up employees’ time to complete alternate, higher priority tasks, rather than spend time on day-to-day, repetitive duties. In addition, this allows individuals to also focus on career development activities and keep an eye on advancing their position within the organization.

For example, through the use of PowerShell, a scripting language from Microsoft, I’ve been able to write scripts that cut down on the daily, repetitive tasks I was having to complete manually. Before PowerShell, I spent about 45 minutes each morning checking our network, servers, URLs, etc. to ensure they were running properly. PowerShell completes these checks automatically, sending me an e-mail with the results to analyze.

Now that I’ve turned these processes over to the automation service, I’m left free to complete other more strategic tasks or work on my own career development. In addition to having more time to devote to helping our sales team, I now have the opportunity to learn from the engineer above me and sit in on conversations or projects that I otherwise would not have had time for. These automation processes also allows our small team of four to appear larger than it is, because we can accomplish much more and do so more efficiently.

Any time you can increase productivity while cutting down on repetitive, often mundane tasks, I recommend taking advantage of the available software or technology that can assist you in doing that. By leveraging technology to increase efficiencies, you can help your organization improve its bottom line and have a more productive workforce.

Have you implemented any software or technologies that have helped your team or organization be more efficient? Share with us below.