With the release of our new Google Calendar Integration in mind, we figured it would be a good time to talk about staying organized. Not only are we going to walk you through the steps of using our latest tool, but we are also going to give you some awesome tricks that will help your firm stay organized in 2018.
No matter what industry you work in, whether you work for a company or for yourself, staying organized is an important part of being productive and knocking things off the ever-present to-do list. For some this comes naturally, but for others organization is an elusive concept – oft preached, seldom practiced. Regardless of which side of this proverbial fence you find yourself on, there is always room for improvement. Don’t be afraid to explore ways to improve both your personal and professional organization – of course, for funeral directors, the two are intrinsically bound. Currently, there are so many resources available for the hyper-coordinated and haphazardly alike. In this post, I am going to share 3 of these helpful tips & tools, including our new Google Calendar integration, that can help get your funeral home team on the same page and improve your organization this year.
Treat Your Inbox Like Your Bed
Now, if you like your bed messy and are content literally sleeping with clutter, then you may need some more help than this post can provide. However, if you are like most people and enjoy keeping a tidy place to sleep, then this will be a helpful tip. STOP neglecting your inbox and treating it like it is anything less than the most important business tool you own. Join me in closing your eyes and imagining the feeling of jumping into a freshly made, clutter free bed (works better if you are at work during this exercise). Wait for it. That is the exact same feeling of walking into work, or leaving for that matter, with a clean inbox. Now, clean does not mean empty – it just means neatly organized and not overwhelming. If you want to experience that feeling everyday, simply take a few steps to ensure that your inbox is always manageable.
For starters, limit the number of folders and sub-folders that you have. Try your best to only keep folders that generally categorize the most important types of emails that you receive. Next, set aside some time at the beginning and end of every work day to go through your inbox to either reply, delete or organize emails into folders – much the same as you would set aside time to make your bed. By simply making every effort to clean your inbox, it will be much easier to stay organized and will provide you with far more manageable outlooks on the days and weeks ahead.
Shake-Up Your Meetings
Who really likes staff meetings, anyway? Sure, some people enjoy the regular old staff meeting and there is certainly plenty of merit to the practice. I mean, if it didn’t work then businesses wouldn’t do it. That being said, such gatherings present the opportunity to waste time if they are not used properly. It is important that you honestly evaluate what real contributions your daily, weekly or monthly staff meetings make to your overall productivity. You may find that there is a better potential use for the time or you may find that they are a useful part of your routine. To either end, do yourself a favour and shake things up for 2018.
One of the strongest takeaways that anyone can have from a staff meeting is a sense of purpose and accountability. Take a look at your staff meetings and think about ways to give your team members a greater sense of responsibility and ownership of their task lists. This is something I like to call selective delegation. In order to make sure that everyone on your team knows what they have to do and, more importantly, is inspired to do it, try opening the floor and have people present their own week at a glance. The more your “what’s everybody doing?” starts to look and sound like a brainstorming session, the better. The byproduct of this meeting is that your team will know what they are individually responsible for and give them an idea of what everyone else is up to. This may not work for every team, but do your funeral home a favour and come up with something new that will help your employees. It is easier to stay organized when people take pride in getting stuff done.
Use Our New Google Calendar Integration
Agendas, day planners, pocket books, physical calendars. The list of ways to organize one’s schedule is pretty endless – layer in online resources and mobile applications and you start to have an even larger pool to choose from. At FrontRunner, we identified this as a major issue for funeral directors and have developed a solution that will help keep our clients effortlessly organized. Eventify, is a native integration between our award-winning Pulse Business System and Google Calendar, that allows funeral directors to see a complete list of all future services and visitations in one dashboard, giving them the option to export these events straight to their personal calendar. In addition, the integration allows each member of the team to have their own calendar integrated with the system. All you need to do is sign in to your Pulse dashboard and click Eventify to get started with setup.
The process of setting up and using the integration is simple. When logging into your FrontRunner system, you will be prompted to register your Google account, accept the permissions allowing the system to manage your calendar and then the integration is ready to use. Personally, my Google Calendar is everything and it guides me through each week. If you are like me, even a little bit, then this organization tool should have you very excited. Stop worrying about staying on top of your services and organize everything in one place – without having to do anything extra.
Organization Is For Everyone
At FrontRunner, we know that there can be many challenges and distractions in the lives of funeral directors. However, we love building technology that solves problems. That is why you can constantly find us trying to come up with new ways to save funeral homes and death care professionals time. After all, there are few things more valuable. We have always maintained that with time, funeral directors can focus on serving their communities. Not to mention, it is important to have a good work-life balance.
I hope that you have found this post helpful and that keeping your funeral home organized is going to be a priority for your firm in 2018. If you do commit to taking a renewed approach to saving time and staying organized – the results may surprise you, as surely the dividends will also follow. If you want to know more about how FrontRunner can help save you time, contact us today.
Brandon is the Marketing Communications Manager at FrontRunner Professional. He holds a Social Sciences degree from McMaster University and a Graduate Certificate in Integrated Marketing Communications from St. Lawrence College. His creative writing and innovative ideas bring new life to the company, FrontRunner’s clients and funeral directors world-wide.
