As you may have heard us say before, productivity can be a frustrating concept. The reality is, we all work at our own pace and it's inevitable that some of your employees are simply more productive than others. Fortunately you can improve on how you and your team measure productivity to enhance it across the organization.

We believe in developing an organizational culture of continuous learning. We do our best to foster such a culture in our company, and we love to partner with organizations who are taking that approach, too.

If your organization's human resources department and managers are onboarding new employees at a rapid rate, it can only mean one thing: You're growing, and that's a good thing. On the other side of the spectrum, if you lack the resources your new hires need to settle into their roles, they may become self-reliant, which isn't always a good thing. So how do you achieve the former, and provide your employees with proper training? And who should take responsibility of onboarding your new employees?

Well not exactly. Microsoft is offering a free download of Office 2016 preview. Just to be clear, Office 2016 is still in beta testing and Microsoft is looking for Office enthusiasts to test and share their experiences to help develop the final version of Office 2016. Microsoft expects to release Office 2016 sometime late in 2015.

Having well-trained employees is the dream of every organization. If your current training program isn't covering enough ground or providing enough value, your employees will never receive the adequate training they need to create a competitive advantage for your organization. To overcome this obstacle, establish clear objectives for your new and existing training programs, plus a few key performance indicators to gauge the effectiveness of your program. This way, you won't waste time, effort and money on training efforts that provide little to no value for your team and your organization.

In an article he contributed to Fast Company entitled "4 Reasons Your Company Needs A Collaboration Upgrade, Stat" Jacob Morgan writes: "An organization is no longer limited to a physical structure or proximity; an organization is now limited only by its ability to connect employees and information together." So, what if that problem—among others—could be alleviated with one simple solution?

Hi, I’m the lead product manager here at KnowledgeWave, and I wanted to share with you some of the rationale and expertise that is behind the design of KLS, the KnowledgeWave Learning Site.

Change is inevitable, but it can be costly to your organization—especially if it manifests in a revolving door of employees. Did you know, however, that you can decrease the number of employees that turn over each year by improving the way your human resources staff recruits and onboards new hires?

What is a PivotTable, a PivotChart and a Slicer in Excel? These are features that work very well together to create an interactive separate report. Take raw data and build that report and change the way it looks and analyzes your data. A PivotChart is an interactive chart where you can change the view, suppress things and instantly see your changes. A Slicer is push button interface that allows people to drill down and see specific results from your report. So, how can you create a report with a PivotTable, a PivotChart and a Slicer on one sheet? Check it out!

Behind every successful business is a well-trained, enthusiastic team. As you may have already found in building or contributing to your venture, however, success doesn't happen overnight, and neither does a thriving team. It all starts with investing in your employees, so in turn they will invest in you and your organization. One way to emphasize this is through employee development and training. According to allBusiness, "Investing in your employees’ continuing education demonstrates that the company values its people and wants them to grow. Even after an individual joins an organization and the “honeymoon” period has passed, companies should continue to provide training on an ongoing basis for any skills that may be pertinent to the employee’s job."

We’ve all had those moments with software or other technology where we just don’t get it. Sometimes adapting to new technology is hard. But it’s also critically important.

When you are in a position to lead an organization through technical change, it’s your role to help everybody on your team work their way through the stumbling blocks and adapt successfully to the new software platform.

"By its very nature, technology evolves quickly, racing to address the new situations and problems created by the implementation of previous technologies, so that even young employees who enter the workplace with advanced technological skills can find themselves quickly falling behind the technological curve," writes Edward Mercer in a contribution to Chron.

Productivity can be an elusive concept. Even if you feel you and your employees are working effectively, projects can still bog down and somehow, mysteriously, end up missing the je ne sais quoi needed to really contribute to your bottom line. But you can move the needle if you take a careful look at your strategic training methods. If strategic training methods are already in place, but they're solely focused on leadership development, you may be missing out on a key opportunity to increase productivity across the board.

Sorting, Filtering and using AutoSum are great ways to work with your data to present report-style spreadsheets but there’s a better way! How can you present raw data in a way to show subtotals and then suppress and expand to make a great looking Excel spreadsheet? This is an amazing feature that will add a row displaying a subtotal without having to write formulas. Here’s how.

In an article featured in Inc. entitled "7 Ways to Improve Employee Satisfaction," April Shetrone writes: "Employee attitudes typically reflect the moral[e] of the company. In areas of customer service and sales, happy employees are extremely important because they represent the company to the public. Satisfaction, however, is not linked solely to compensation. Sure, a raise or benefits will probably improve employee contentment, at least temporarily, but small, inexpensive changes can have a long-term impact."