Angeli is the Founder and COO at Workast. Her team ensures our users have an exceptional customer experience with Workast and takes care of all user issues.
Armor People Link, a Canadian based recruitment agency, prioritizes connecting employers with skilled workers in the industrial, manufacturing, and administrative sectors. After purchasing the company 7 years ago, Geoff and his wife have worked to build and evolve the business. Their core team stands 12 strong.
On a weekly basis, Armor People Link is responsible for anywhere from 500–1000 skilled employees out in the field fulfilling the needs of various clients. As a staffing firm, the goal is to do more and more business utilizing fewer and fewer employees. Sound complicated? Yeah, that’s because it’s not an easy task.
“The world is always changing and technology is a big piece of it. The staffing industry has been impacted by changes in technology, pressures on margin, and it’s a very competitive business. So coming in and finding a way that we can drive productivity through new technologies, systems, and processes. That’s why we leverage tools like Workast to help us achieve that goal.”
Level Up: Productivity Edition
Prior to choosing Workast as a project management solution, Clendenning and his team used Google Hangouts to connect with clients and each other. Unfortunately, Hangouts didn’t work out.
There was simply too much noise and overlapping voices. Imagine standing in a room giving a speech while everyone was talking at the same time. That’s what it was like working with Google Hangouts. Geoff has just six words to describe the experience:
“Awfully noisy with lots of conversation.”
As the self-titled “change agent” for Armor People Link, Geoff was always looking for the best project management solution for the company. After switching to Slack and having his team use it, he found that it was lacking when it came to setting and assigning tasks. It was great finally having a fully-functional software that helped to keep everyone on the same page, but there was room for improvement.
Two Peas in a Pod
The team wasn’t exactly thrilled when Geoff introduced a new work management software, but after learning how to use Workast properly, they sang a different tune. Especially considering how deeply integrated Workast was into Slack. Like peanut butter and jelly, they’re just better together.
Other task management tools would pull employees out of their workflow and move them to different platforms. Workast kept things centralized.
“This business is so busy, we get orders at 9 am for 15 people and they have to be on location at 3 pm in the afternoon. Things are happening quickly. Employees don’t like to be pulled out of the work environment.”
Poetry in Motion
With Slack and Workast in their arsenal, the team at Armor People Link discovered the power of the two software tools. Geoff notes that his team uses Workast as a task management tool within Slack 99% of the time. Why?
Workast is a team-oriented task manager built around the channels in Slack. Now employees can build out their tasks using the to-do lists, change due dates, and assign things to people. They have the power to reassign tasks, comment on them, and see what’s been done. For Geoff, the change was very noticeable:
“Productivity levels have skyrocketed. Not having people overlapping on tasks has been beneficial. It’s improved the ease of communication amongst different team members by allowing everyone to see what needs to be done. Chasing the same client twice for the same problem is a thing of the past.”
Thread on Thread on Thread: Taking a Page Out of Twitter’s Book
In an ever-changing industry, it’s important to always make room for growth. Geoff knows that fact well. When asked about what features he’d like to see, he quickly shifts to how well threads work for his team. When discussing details about tasks or adding information to them, his team usually justs writes comments around the task.
Geoff would love to see the option to build a thread around a task where members of the channel can add comments. This would keep comments in the channel and prevent users from being pulled out unnecessarily. It also makes sense from an organization standpoint. Comments clutter the interface, with a team of contributors it’s easy for details to get lost. We love hearing feedback from our clients. We’re passing the suggestion on to our team.
In the meantime, Geoff had plenty of positive things to say about Workast.
“It is giving back hours to our employees. The only thing we sell as a company is the hours that our people can spend filling jobs. The more efficiently we can spend our hours, the fewer employees we need to deliver the same or even more revenue.”
Do you have a favorite duo? Two things that just work together perfectly? Let us know what your favorite duo is! Whether it’s salt and pepper, ketchup and fries, or you and your best friend; we want to hear about it. Use the hashtag #FavDuo on Twitter to share your favorite pair of things, tag @Workast and we might just give you a shoutout!
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