Time is Money: A Productivity Management Case Study
Training on Microsoft Outlook Vastly Improved Email and Time Management
Medtronic is a top international medical technology and healthcare services provider. Over 85,000 employees around the world contribute to Medtronic’s mission of developing innovative medical technologies and procedures that save and enhance patients’ lives.
Medtronic’s L&D team needed to improve their email and time management capabilities. A new methodology needed to be adopted to save the hours spent in addressing a high volume of emails, while also enabling employees to better prioritize and maximize their output.
Because so much effort was directed towards email, employees suffered from a poor work-life balance in scrambling to keep on top of communications and other daily tasks. A novel approach was also required to alleviate employee stress and harmonize their professional and non-professional lives.
Training Approach
Priority Management collaborated with Medtronic in creating a training plan that streamlined their email usage and freed them up for more value-add work with the following key points:
Personalized Content
Priority Management tailors every training for a client’s requirements. For Medtronic, this meant taking part in a pre-training discovery meeting to hash out the group’s priorities. With this information, the WorkingSm@rt with Outlook content was curated to meet Medtronic’s specific goals.​
Transforming Conception
A major challenge for the group was rethinking their view of Microsoft Outlook. Rather than using it as an email management system, we encouraged them to approach it as a business planning software. When harnessed in this way, Outlook transforms into an application that allows users to quickly pivot on changing priorities and work with better focus.
Features and Set-up Review
Outlook is only as helpful as the manner in which it is set up and utilized. We worked with Medtronic in identifying and arranging features that fit into their workflow, with an eye towards overcoming productivity roadblocks. In addition to reviewing applicable application tools, we also discussed eliminating habits that are ineffective, and cultivating those that support quality production.
Follow-Up for Lasting Results
Our highly experienced instructors follow up with all clients to ensure that classroom instruction translates into real-world action. In this way, on-the-job behavioural improvements are made concrete. Medtronic received online coaching following the initial training session to ensure the development of lasting habits.
Training Results
The results of the Medtronic post-training survey, given to all participants, illustrate how much time has been saved on specific tasks, as well as improvements to their work-life balance:
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Microsoft Outlook is a powerful application that can be a major productivity hindrance or asset, depending on how it is mobilized and incorporated into a workflow. More than an email system, Outlook is designed to optimize your planning, communication and strategizing abilities to unlock your full potential.
For Medtronic, the WorkingSm@rt using Outlook training identified opportunities for improved efficiencies, allowed employees to feel more in control of their work and enabled better business planning. All of this naturally added up to enhanced team collaboration and employee satisfaction.
WorkingSmart Results at Medtronic
66%
Improvement in Managing Emails
72%
Improvement in Planning & Organisation
53%
Improvement in Teamwork
49%
Improvement in Balancing Work & Life
“Very helpful - I wish I’d done this training years ago. It empowers people with effective time, project and people management.”
“I have recommended this course to everyone I have spoken to over the last few weeks. Excellent course, I will be arranging the same for my team as soon as I can.”
“I am more structured in my day-to-day activities, and I am starting to scope future activities based on the methods – there is an art to planning and prioritising which so many of us assume we are doing when we are not!!”
