Challenges

Your guide to creating and managing Challenges in Produce8, to help measure the effectiveness of new initiatives and techniques across the team.

Challenges in Produce8 allow you to define and track productivity initiatives or techniques across your organization. By measuring the impact of these changes on the workday, Challenges provide valuable insights into how new practices affect productivity. You can view before and after averages for all participants, offering a clear picture of what’s working and what might need adjustment.

Table of Contents

1. Why Use Challenges?
2. How to Use Challenges
3. Managing Challenges
4. Challenge Insights & Metrics
5. Challenge Targets

Why Use Challenges?

Challenges in Produce8 serve as a powerful tool to enhance productivity and assess the effects of changes within your organization. By utilizing Challenges, you can address specific issues and track progress in a structured way. Here are few ways how they can benefit your team:

Promoting Focused and Intentional Work:
Many teams struggle with the disruptions caused by excessive messaging, emails, and meetings. These frequent interruptions often lead to context switching, which can disrupt focus and diminish the quality of work. With Challenges, you can set targeted initiatives that encourage your team to minimize these distractions. For example, you might create a Challenge aimed at limiting the time spent on email each day or reducing unnecessary meetings. By monitoring these efforts, you can help foster healthier work habits across the entire organization, promoting sustained focus and better overall performance. 

Assessing the Impact of New Tools and Processes:
When your organization implements new technology or processes - such as a CRM system, project management tool, or even a new communication platform - it's crucial to understand how these changes affect your team's productivity. Challenges allow you to set goals related to the adoption and use of these tools, and then track the results over time. For instance, you could create a Challenge to measure how effectively a new CRM is being integrated across the company, or how a new project management tool is being influencing project completion rates. By comparing the before and after metrics, you gain insights into the overall effectiveness of these changes, helping you make informed decisions on whether to refine, scale, or reconsider the approach. 

By implementing Challenges, you're actively guiding your entire organization towards more effective ways of working, ensuring that new initiatives and processes are delivering the intended results. 

How to Use Challenges

Before getting started, it’s important to note that only Admins, Owners, and Report Users have permissions to create Challenges. Challenges are set at the organizational level, meaning they apply to all members of your organization. This ensures everyone is aligned and working toward the same goals.

Starting a Curated Challenge

Produce8 offers a variety of curated Organizational Challenges designed to address common productivity goals. To get started with a curated Challenge:

1. Log into your Produce8 Web App Account.
2. Click your name on the top right corner to open a list of actions. 
3. Select Challenges.
4. Browse the list of curated Challenges and select one that aligns with your organizational goals. 
   
5. Select Start Challenge to initiate the Challenge for your organization. 
6. You will be prompted with a screen that displays the Name, Description, and Documentation URL for the curated Challenge. All of these fields are pre-filled, but you can edit them if necessary to better fit your organization's goals. 
   
7. Once you're satisfied with the details, click Next.
8. On the next screen, you can set the Start Date, and choose the Duration of the Challenge (e.g, 1 week, 30 days, or custom).
9. After setting the start date and duration, click Next to proceed to the summary page. 
10. The summary page will show all the Challenge details, including the start date, duration, and description. If needed you can go Back and edit any of the details. 
11. When you're ready, select Create Challenge to confirm and launch the Challenge for your organization. 

If you don’t see a curated Challenge that fits your needs, you can always create a custom Challenge tailored to your specific goals and objectives.

Creating a Custom Challenge

1. Log into your Produce8 Web App Account.
2. Click your name on the top right corner to open a list of actions. 
3. Select Challenges.
4. Within the Challenges page, select the + Create Challenge button. 
   
5. Fill in the following details:
   1. Name (Required): Provide a name for the Challenge. This should clearly reflect the focus of the Challenge, such as "Reducing Meeting Overload" or "Four-Day Workweek Trial".
   2. Description (Required): Describe the objective of the Challenge, explaining what you hope to achieve. For example, "Encourage the team to try a four-day workweek to see how it impacts productivity and work-life balance."
   3. Documentation URL (Optional): Link to any relevant documentation or resources to support the Challenge. This could include organizational guidelines (e.g., meeting or messaging policies), documents explaining the expected impact of the Challenge, or additional context for team members. 
      
6. After clicking Next, you'll be prompted to choose the start date for your Challenge.
   1. Use the calendar to pick the desired start date.
7. Next,  choose the duration of the Challenge from the dropdown menu. You'll see options like: 
   1. 1 week
   2. 2 weeks
   3. 3 weeks
   4. 30 days 
   5. 60 days
   6. 90 days 
   7. Never Ends: For ongoing Challenges
   8. Custom: Choose your own end date
      
8. After selecting Next, you'll see a Summary of your Challenge, including:
   1. Name
   2. Description
   3. Start Date
   4. End Date
   5. Duration
   6. Documentation URL
9. Review the details, and if you need to name changes, click Back to edit.
10. Once you're ready, click Create Challenge to finalize and launch it. 
    

Managing Challenges

Editing Challenges

After the Challenge is created, you can still make changes to key details if necessary. However, only the creator of the Challenge can make edits. 

From the Challenge details page, follow these steps to make edits:

1. Select the Actions ... button on the Challenge details page and choose Edit Challenge.
   
2. From here, you can edit:
   1. Name
   2. Description
   3. Documentation URL
   4. Start Date (If the Challenge has already started, you cannot edit the start date)
   5. Duration
3. After making your changes, select Save Changes.
   
   

Deleting a Challenge

If you need to remove a Challenge, the process is straightforward.

From the Challenge details page, follow these steps:

1. Select the Actions ... button on the Challenge details page and choose Delete Challenge.
   
2. A confirmation window will pop up asking, "Are you sure?" You can then select Yes, Delete Challenge or Cancel if you change your mind.
   

Admin and Owners can also delete Challenges from the Company Account → Challenges section. 

1. Navigate to the Company Account page in your Produce8 account by clicking your name at the top-right of the page and select Company Account. 
2. Click on the Challenges tab.
   
3. Select the Ellipsis (...) next to the Challenge you wish to remove and select Delete Challenge. 
   
4. A confirmation window will pop up asking, "Are you sure?" You can then select Yes, Delete Challenge or Cancel if you change your mind.
   

Challenge Insights & Metrics

As a Challenge progresses, Produce8 gathers valuable insights to help you understand the impact of the initiative. The Challenge details page provides a summary of changes to key insights since the Challenge began, enabling you to compare work patterns and behaviours before and after the Challenge. 

Produce8 provides insights into the following metrics for Challenges:

• Scheduled Meetings: Observe how much time is spent in scheduled meetings and compare it to previous periods. You can filter all events, internal meetings, external meetings, or focus time. 
• Time in Calls: See the time spent in Zoom, Teams, and Slack calls, helping you measure shifts in collaboration habits. 
• Time in Categories: View how time is allocated across different app categories. You can filter by interactions or duration, and by specific categories or all categories.
• Time in Apps: Compare app usage by interactions or duration, across all apps or by individual apps.
• Sentiment Score: Review how team sentiment evolves over time and see whether workdays are improving as a result of the Challenge.
• Digital Working Hours: Measure the overall time spent working digitally each day.
• Focus Score: Understand how much of the workday is dedicated to focused, uninterrupted work.
• Digital Intensity: Assess the balance between time spent working online versus taking breaks or engaging in offline activities, helping you ensure a healthy work-life balance.

Each metric allows for day-over-day or week-over-week comparisons. Produce8 compares your average during the Challenge to the equivalent time period before it began. Weekly views tend to offer more meaningful trends, providing a clearer picture of progress.

Account Metrics

High level information about Challenges is also available on the Account Metrics page. 

Using Challenge Insights

1. From the Challenge details page, select which metric you'd like to explore from the left side of the Challenge insights page, showing before and after values, along with the percentage change.
   
2. You can select Daily or Weekly comparisons at the top.
   
3. For metrics like Time in Categories or Time in Apps, you can filter by interactions, durations, specific categories, or apps. This helps you pinpoint where significant changes are occuring.
   
4. Focus on desired outcomes. Pay attention to metrics and insights that align with the goals of your Challenge. For example, if you're aiming to reduce meeting time, keep and eye on Scheduled Meetings and Sentiment scores to access if team members are reporting that they are having better workdays.

By exploring these insights, you'll gain a clearer understanding of how effective your Challenge has been and what areas might need adjusting to drive continued improvement.

Challenge Targets

Produce8 now allows you to set specific targets within Challenges, helping you and your team track progress on key productivity metrics over time. Challenge targets let you define goals, measure results, and visualize progress throughout the challenge period.

Setting Targets

As a Challenge creator, you can set multiple targets for a variety of metrics:

• Digital Working Hours
• Focus Time
• Digital Intensity 
• Time in Apps
• Time in Calls
• Scheduled Meetings: Total, internal, external, and focus 
• App Usage: Both Interactions and Time in individual apps
• Time in Categories: Both interactions and Time in apps 
• Self-reported

Targets can be aggregated by daily, weekly, monthly, or your own custom time frame. Provided you choose one or more days of the week (and select a full day).  

You can choose to measure progress by maximum, minimum, or percentage change based on your goals. A recommended average value will be shown for each metric based on the Account average. 

Managing and Editing Targets 

After the Challenge Targets are created, you can still make changes to the targets if necessary. However, only the creator of the Challenge can make edits. 

From the Challenge details page, follow these steps to make edits:

1. Select the Actions ... button on the Challenge details page and choose Manage Targets.
   
   
2. From here you can update, delete and even add new targets to your Challenge. However, any changes you make will be applied going forward - we will not update past records for the participants. 

3. When you update the target value, the chart will automatically refresh to show the latest information. You’ll see the updated Today’s Value, along with the % difference from the Target and an adjusted Target line on the graph.
   
   

4. When deleting a target, you will be prompted with a warning message, select Yes, Delete Target to proceed with deleting your desired target. 

Viewing Progress on Targets

On the Challenge Details page, you can view progress on each target you’ve set. Targets are displayed in the order they were created and include individual metrics as well as account-wide metrics, providing insights into both personal and team achievements.

The Target Report will include the following for the defined targets:

1. Target Definition: Displays the goal you set, such as "Maximum 8 hours of Digital Working Hours per day". 
2. Users Metrics: 
   1. Today's Value: Shows your current metric value for the day (e.g., “1h 30m”).
   2. Success Rate: Displays the percentage of days the target was met, calculated as the number of successful days divided by the total number of working days since the challenge started. 
   3. Average Before Challenge: Displays your average value before the challenge began.
   4. Average During Challenge: Displays your average during the challenge start date to current date. 
3. Account Metrics:
   1. Today's Value: Shows your current average value across the account, based on the average per person, per day. 
   2. Success Rate: Displays the average percentage of users who met the target each day. 
   3. Average Before Challenge: Displays the average value across the account before the challenge began.
   4. Average During Challenge: Displays your average value across the account during the challenge start date to current date. 
      
      

Challenges with Self Defined Targets

For self-reported targets, users can record their responses for the current day directly on the Challenge Details page. This daily entry helps track progress on goals that may not be automatically recorded in Produce8.