The way that people are working is changing rapidly. Remote working is becoming an ever-more popular method of managing your team. Over the last five years, the number of people working from home has risen by 44 percent.
Tip: Most importantly, please do not wait for your computer to be hacked. And then take the safety precautions of using a VPN. The best defensive is the best offensive. The best time to secure your computer against a hacker is between yesterday and tomorrow – NOW. Click here to start protecting yourself!
There are some great benefits for businesses to employ and manage a remote workforce. These range from financial savings in office costs through to the ability to hire the best talent without the need to worry about their geographical location.
But with concerns over whether your remote workers are working when they’re at home, how do you manage employee performance when your team is so far away?
In this article, we’ll discuss how to monitor remote workers to ensure that they are being productive.
How to Monitor Employees That Work Remotely
Set Tasks That Have Clear Deadlines
There is a fine balance between making sure that your team is pulling their weight when you can’t see them, and being intrusive. If your team feels as though you’re spying on them, it could cause them to become demotivated.
A great way of ensuring that your team actually gets the work done is by having clear deadlines set for them.
If you are upfront with your expectations and you’re insistent on receiving the work within a specified timeframe, then you’ll be more likely to see the results.
Ask for Regular Working Updates
Employee monitoring needn’t make your team feel as though they can’t be trusted. One of the best ways around this is to check in with your team as often as possible.
If you ask for updates, or to see work in progress throughout the working day, then your team will know that they need to get on and work.
By asking for updates, you’re setting transparent expectations. Your team knows exactly what is expected of them, and the updates are a great opportunity for you to provide ongoing feedback that will lead to better work.
Hold Briefings
One of the best ways of making sure your team is on track, on the same page, and know what is expected of them is to hold regular briefing sessions.
An ideal time to do this might at the start of each day, or week. You can carry this out using software such as Zoom.
Hold Daily Summary Meetings
In much the same way as you might hold a daily or weekly briefing, you could also consider holding daily summary meetings. In these meetings, you could ask for an update on the day’s progress or performance from each of your team.
Knowing that they are accountable for the amount and quality of the work that the complete might provide your team with the motivation that they need to get the job done.
Use Software to Track Employee Performance
If you want to know how long your remote employees are at their desks for, and how long they’re spent working on the work that you’ve assigned them, you can use software to track them.
Before you implement software to track an employee’s performance, you will need to set up a company policy. Make sure you are clear about how and why your team will be tracked, and ensure that it is used equally and fairly across the entire team.
In the same was a factory worker might clock in at the start and end of a shift, there are ways of clocking into your workstation. Knowing exactly how much time is being spent on tasks allows you to budget accordingly.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor allows you to see the tasks that your team is working on, and how long they’re spending on them. You’ll be able to see when they log in and out. From all this, it is possible to track their attendance and their billable hours.
if you own a small business or you are a parent and you would like to monitor your employees or your kids with Time Doctor click here!
Clocking in and not working is also a concern. But Time Doctor has an inactivity tracker that will look for periods of inactivity of more than three minutes. If there is no keystroke or movement of the mouse at this time, then the timer gets paused.
If you want to make sure that your employees aren’t just on social media or playing games, then Time Doctor will nudge your employees with pop-ups if they’re on social media. The software can also track the sites that your employees visit, and take screenshots.
If you want to review your employees’ performance over time, you can pull up reports that look at their activity. From this, you can look for patterns that may be a cause for concern.
The information garnered from these reports can be used during employee reviews or disciplinaries. They are concrete evidence of your employee’s performance.
In addition to this, you can process your employees’ payroll through the software. It can also be linked up with lots of project management apps including the likes of Slack, and Basecamp. And last but not least, you can conveniently use Time Doctor from your laptop.
Employee Monitoring Made Easy
Monitoring employee performance should be something that you do instinctively in any workplace. It follows that you would want to do this when your team is working from home.
Ensure that you use transparency in the way that you communicate with your team and implement the right software on their machines. Set these standards in your company’s policies and procedures and make sure that you fairly monitor them.
If you’re looking for the right laptops for your remote team, be sure and check out the best equipment for your work-from-home workforce.
