Put a Name to It: Impatience Before you can fix anything, you have to admit that there is something that needs fixing. Sometimes individuals might let their emotions do the talking rather than the rational parts of their brain, and this can cause a lot of friction in the workplace. It?s important to take a step back and realize when you are losing patience and what is triggering it. Whether it?s a looming deadline or a coworker?s incessant questioning, you?ll now have knowledge you can use to address the issue in a healthier way. Adjust Your Outlook It might feel like it?s you versus the world, but this is far from the truth. Once you realize that it?s nothing worth fretting over, you can go back to work with your productivity unhindered. Stressing over something is not going to affect the outcome in a positive way, so you?re better off realigning your thoughts with a more positive outlook. This will make you more receptive to collaboration and put you in a much better mood in general. Listen Before You Act Not everything requires a strong reaction. Be sure to take in what is actually being said before you respond; otherwise you could very well overreact for no good reason. A little patience is enough to save you from making assumptions and foolish decisions, so slow down for a moment and make sure you understand the situation before you say anything. Address Stress Management Issues Stress is often at the core of overreacting, so if you find yourself losing patience with yourself or others, there is a very real chance that you have a lot of stress without an adequate or healthy outlet. If you think you might be in danger of overreacting, you should consider removing yourself from the stressful situation before you respond to take a few moments and collect yourself. If you can find a healthy and productive way to cope with your stressors, you?ll be less likely to let them rule you. One of the big frustrations in the workplace comes in the form of your technology, and White Mountain IT Services can help to remedy these issues with our managed services. To learn more, call us at (603) 889-0800 today.

Traditional Telephone Systems are Antiquated Traditional telephone systems are notorious for costing businesses money because they require their own specific infrastructure, which often means running wires, knocking down walls, and adding endpoints throughout the office. Furthermore, it?s difficult to scale a phone system according to your needs, as there is a limited amount of physical space in your office for this infrastructure. Meanwhile, there is a good chance you are paying for bundled-in services like television that you don?t need for your business to run smoothly. It?s just not effective compared to VoIP. VoIP Has Plenty of Benefits for Your Business If you are considering VoIP for your telephone needs, you can expect the following benefits that will prove helpful to you as you go about your business. Lower Costs Since VoIP uses your Internet connection?something you already pay for anyway?you are getting more bang for your buck, so to speak. You can add new users and scale according to your business? needs. Plus, since the VoIP application can be installed on existing hardware, like desktops and smartphones, you don?t have to worry about procuring handsets (unless, of course, you simply want them). More Flexibility With your traditional telephone system, you are limited to your office where your work phone is located. You can?t exactly take it on the road with you without forwarding it to your personal cell phone, and who wants to do that? With VoIP, you just download the app on your smartphone and there you go; you have your work phone on your cell phone, whether you are in the office or on the move. Feature-Rich Systems You might enjoy call forwarding, voicemail, and extension assignments, but VoIP does far more than your typical telephone system. You can implement or integrate it with instant messaging capabilities, video conferencing, and so much more, all of which enriches your employees? experience and allows them to be as productive as possible in their everyday business. Get Started Today! VoIP can be a tremendous help for just about any business. To learn more, call us today at (603) 889-0800.

All that being said, AI has advanced to the point where smaller businesses and individuals can take advantage of its capabilities?something that you may be doing even now. Let?s discuss some of the most common modern uses of artificial intelligence in the workplace, and how they foreshadow what could very well be next in workplace AI. AI Helps to Automate Processes that Do Little But Eat Up Valuable Time In fairness, process automation isn?t exactly a new thing?people have been figuring out how to automate aspects of their workload since the advent of the wheel and agriculture. Having said that, artificially intelligent tools can adapt to new information, unlike most of the process automation we?ve seen in the past. Most of the automation we?re accustomed to seeing in the workplace today can be defined as process automation, as it effectively takes care of tasks that would otherwise require human time and attention to be completed. In deploying tools that utilize artificial intelligence to carry out processes, your human resources are freed up to attend to other responsibilities that require a more human creative process. AI Helps Generate Insights Quickly and Effectively Businesses thrive on data?the more of it that is properly organized, the better. Obtaining, organizing, and analyzing this data, however, is a job that many businesses find to be prohibitively time-consuming and error-prone. The algorithms that artificially-intelligent tools rely on can and do make this procedure much more attainable on all fronts. Not only can data be compiled and arranged far more expeditiously, but modern programs can then take that data and infer valuable predictions based on it. In short, an AI can often see patterns that a human can?t, giving the human putting the AI to use actionable data that generally results in better outcomes. AI Helps Improve Customer and Client Communications Who would you rather work with: a business that repeatedly asks you to provide the same details and statistics about your business each time you reach out to them, or a business that uses what it knows about you from your past interactions to create a more accurate and personalized experience for you? If you?re anything like me, you?ll want to work with a company who knows who they are talking to and what you generally want from them?it saves time and makes your experience far less stressful. Various forms of AI are more often being used to either provide these kinds of answers, or support human employees as they work to do so. This is what is known as cognitive engagement, and it serves as a key source of customer service capabilities and streamlining processes. In the medical field, a physician can focus more on patient care, confident that the treatment plan an AI serves up will fit a patient?s needs properly. Businesses could use this kind of AI to handle some of its communications, too, whether that?s through setting up an artificially intelligent chatbot to field basic support questions at all hours, or using it for internal communication and engagement. In No Uncertain Terms, AI Can Be Useful Just About Everywhere? ?and we predict it may very well be! The best part is, there are many ways you could be using some version of AI in your processes right now. Give White Mountain IT Services a call […]

Patience is not a new concept, and it is a sought-after character trait that allows people to work their best with a high degree of consistency. People who get worked up and angry need time to come back from that state of mind, and you can bet that people who get like this are not working their best. Those who are somewhere in the middle and can maintain that level-headed attitude are able to keep their composure, minimize impulsive decision making, and work under pressure. Here are a few reasons why you should encourage patience in your employees. Patient People Have Better Time Management Skills Patient people aren?t so prone to their emotions being disrupted by any little mishap, meaning that instead of complaining about circumstances, they are more likely to sit down and figure out how to address the problem at hand, despite the tight schedule or timeline. They meet deadlines more effectively and they do so with fewer errors. Patient People Are Less Stressed Patient people will still get stressed out?that?s just a fact of life?but they won?t let it affect their work as much. They are more grounded and less prone to suffer from burnout or overwhelm. Burnout is a serious issue that can affect workers on both the individual level and the organizational level. Patient People Are More Creative Creativity is something that patient people are generally more effective at, as coming up with actionable ideas rather than just simple concepts is more challenging and requires more attention to detail. Patient People Are More Productive If a business has productive employees, then the business will operate more effectively. Patience is crucial to productivity. They might not be the hotheaded firebrands that inspire others, but they will generally outperform the less patient folks over time. Now that you know the importance of patience and its relationship with productivity, check back next week for how you can improve your own patience so that you can be more cognizant of how it affects your own work performance.

Today, this approach has many modern computer scientists wondering if that was the wrong question to ask, and if reframing the relationship between AI and human workers away from competition and towards collaboration is the right path to take. Has Pursuing Turing?s Standard Created Economic Inequities? Director Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford?s Digital Economy Lab certainly seems to think so. According to Brynjolfsson, advances in AI have created some serious problems, as he has argued in D?dalus, a journal produced by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his contribution to the Spring 2022 issue of the journal, The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence, Brynjolfsson states that the goal of AI swiftly became a mission to overtake the capabilities of the human mind. That, he says, was the big mistake.  Brynjolfsson?s paper posits that the aforementioned obsession with creating a human-like machine has done little but exacerbated wage inequality. According to Brynjolfsson, the AI that?s been created has done little but remove the need for human employees, and while this has had positive impacts on productivity, the benefits of this productivity tend to float up to business owners and leaders. In fact, Brynjolfsson points to this divide as the cause of wage stagnation amongst workers while millionaires and billionaires just get richer. It?s a phenomenon that he had dubbed ?the Turing Trap,? as indicated in the title of his article. Comparing the creation of AI to the inherent desire for apotheosis that humans have repeatedly demonstrated in stories throughout history?creating life in their own image, like the golem of Jewish folklore, the automatons that the ancient Greeks told tales of Dedalus creating, as well as the efforts of inventors in real life from the early Islamic kingdoms to the minds of the European Renaissance. Modern popular culture has continued this pattern, depicting artificial intelligence as human-like, often featuring AI seeking out a greater level of humanity. Brynjolfsson feels that this is the wrong approach. According to Brynjolfsson, AI Would Be Better Used as ?Augmentation? Let?s explain what he means. Human employees can do certain things very well. AI can do certain things very well. And?this is key? the things that your human employees can do well aren?t always the same things that an AI can do well. Therefore, posits Brynjolfsson, it only makes sense that AI be used to supplement the capabilities of human employees. Not only would this help to promote improved productivity, the benefits of doing so would remain with the workers who are ?partnered? with AI, as their work becomes more valuable as well. Unfortunately, substitution or replacement is considerably more attainable than augmentation, simply because there?s no precedent for it in many cases. It is also important to note that other research has shown that there are very particular tasks that people do and don?t want automated as a rule?so things like ?cleaning toilets? were popular ideas, while ?opening gifts? was decidedly not. In terms of professional uses, however, augmentation demonstrates much more obvious cases. Many people have presumed that automation powered by AI will be used as an excuse to replace the human worker, but others have argued that AI?s use only covers a small part of what different jobs contain in their responsibilities. So, Artificial Intelligence Should Be Seen […]