How To Be Super Productive At Work

Instruction Manual: Tips To Boost Your Office Productivity

Decipher jargon and uncover the statistics relating to workplace productivity. Learn how mental wellbeing improves workplace productivity and tips to better manage your firehose of emails.

Learn to master email management and make sense of jargon relating to productivity in the workplace.

Jargon Watch

Tech Jargon

SaaS = Software-as-a-Service. On-demand, online computing services with a pay-as-you-go subscription model. Traditionally, software is bought and installed on a physical server. SaaS hosts the software on the cloud and allows access to it via the internet. Examples include file hosting service Dropbox and collaborative software Slack.

VoIP = Voice over Internet Protocol. Technology that allows voice calls to be made over an internet connection. Voice signals are converted into digital packets of data, transmitted over the internet, and decoded back into voice signals for the receiver at the other end. Skype and WhatsApp calls use VoIP.

Public Service Jargon

FWA = Flexible Work Arrangements. The Ministry of Manpower’s Tripartite Standard on FWAs highlights three key areas: flexi-time (staggered work hours), flexi-place (telecommuting) and flexi-load (job-sharing).

DRC = Dependency Ratio Ceiling. The maximum allowed ratio of foreign workers to total workforce a company is allowed to hire. In the 2019 Budget, it was announced that the service sector DRCs would be reduced so that businesses become less reliant on foreign manpower and become more productive.

Say It Like This

Camaraderie: Feelings of mutual trust and friendship between people who have spent a long time together. It has five syllables – pronounced as Kah-muh-RAH-duh-ree, not Kahm-RAH-duh-ree.

In Numbers

Must-Knows of Employee Productivity

Three ways to help improve employee productivity

Get Wired

Essential email habits

Be a pro at sending and reading email.

Strong subject lines

Make your email stand out in crowded inboxes: Use a concise and informative subject line that summarises your email’s contents. Include calls-to-action if the email is time-sensitive, such as ‘urgent’ or ‘important’. A good subject line gives an idea of what to expect and prompts recipients to prioritise your email too.

Organise your time

Follow the two-minute rule: If an email takes less than two minutes to read and reply to, take care of it right away. For emails that need more time to respond to, archive it for future reference.

Create an archival system by sorting your emails into relevant folders and labels. You can try broad categories such as: “Action Items”, “Waiting” and “Reference”.

Designate brief check-ins of 10-15 minutes for reading and replying emails. You can also try scheduling email after long hours on highly-focused work, when your energy and creativity are at the lowest.

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