The pandemic has left many irreversible changes in the way people live and work. One of the biggest transformations that has affected workplaces is remote working. Some industries remained unfazed during the pandemic, like the banking sector or the essential services sector. The reason being that one had to face the customers in the daily course of work. However, many other companies allowed their employees to work remotely during that time and are still allowing their employees to work on a remote basis due to various reasons. Hybrid working is another option in which employees work from both the office and home.
HR teams are having a hard time adjusting to the new norms. Moreover, one big issue that faces organizations today is how to monitor remote employees. It is one of the biggest business challenges that has huge implications. So, organizations are looking for various ways to manage this crisis.
Before delving into the ways to handle employee productivity monitoring in a remote environment, you must know what it is.
Understanding Remote Employee Monitoring
When people talk about remote employee monitoring, they refer to the activities of the employees while working from home. You will agree on the fact that there could be numerous distractions at home, which can reduce the attention span of employees. Moreover, few employees can also disengage from their work and attend to private commitments unnecessarily. It hampers the productivity of the employees and, in turn, the profits of the organization.
Companies continue to pay the salaries without getting proper ROI for the same. Most HR departments realize the implications when a huge percentage of loss has already taken place. That is why tracking productivity for remote workers becomes essential.
You can use many types of employee monitoring software, activity monitors, checklists, and specific log-in/log-out systems. Additionally, workforce and operations management software available today has this built-in feature to monitor employee activities wherever they are. So, you can achieve higher levels of productivity by using such software. Furthermore, when employees know that their organization is using such systems, they will be at their best.
Best Ways To Track Productivity Among Remote Employees
There are several ways by which you can track remote employee productivity today. Here are a few of them that you may deem fit for your organization.
Conducting Frequent Manager-Employee Meetings
You can observe your employees through regular meetings. It is a great way to enhance the workplace culture, as employees feel they are a part of the close-knit office groups. The employees can also communicate their grievances. Plus, relationships are extremely important for employees who are working from home, as loneliness often sets in. As employees spend a greater chunk of their lives at the office than at home, they often miss the office camaraderie.
Implementing Daily Task Updaters
This is the simplest thing to do. You can create a task list for the employees on the cloud. So, a manager responsible for the said employees can check it whenever he wants to. You can measure employee deliverables and accomplishment of goals related to a certain project. If you feel that the employee is not able to complete the daily targets, you can discuss it with the employee or allocate the tasks to others. This is one of the simplest approaches to remote productivity tracking. You can ask your employees to fill in the details after each work day.
Using Task Management Applications
You can also go for task management applications that can be downloaded onto the employee’s mobile phones. Most task management apps help you to manage, plan, organize, and delegate tasks. If you are a project manager, you can assign a new project each time it comes to you and simultaneously assign the tasks to specific team members.
Turning To Remote Surveillance Software
You can achieve several goals through this software. They often have time trackers, performance trackers, and activity trackers, all bound into one. Many companies are already tracking productivity for remote workers through such software. These often provide users with data on how long the employees are away from their laptops and mouse in the course of their work schedule. You will also get data on the turn-around time of replies through chat and emails. Some of these also track employee activity on their monitors.
Tracking Email Activity And Response Time
Many employees have this habit of wasting time reading unimportant emails. You can lay your hands on software that gives the data so that you can analyze the time wasted on reading emails. Moreover, you can also check when an important work-related email is being opened so that the employee can get to work on it. Most organizations are already doing this, as this is one of the simplest ways to track employee productivity in a remote environment.
Implementing Self-Reporting
Many organizations today want to empower their employees by allowing them to self-report. It creates an environment of trust where the employees feel devoted to the organization. You can easily take this approach if the number of employees working from home is less. This is one of the ways to build morale and also engage the employee. This gives the impression to employees that the organization believes them and they are ready to give more than 100% in return. You can create a few objective questionnaires or Excel sheets where employees can fill in the quantitative aspects of their work, as well.
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Monitoring Remote Workers
You will get huge benefits for your organization by implementing remote employee monitoring systems. You should read about a few of them here.
- Employees become more alert and will not do something out of the ordinary. The feeling of constantly being watched can help control rogue employees.
- Some employees often complain of partiality when the time for appraisal comes. However, software data will give you the exact output of the employees, which you can measure against their KPIs. Thus, you get assistance during employee reward and recognition time.
- In a few companies, workloads are not distributed properly. Such software will help in distributing workload equally, which will help to control employee burnout.
- It can speed up the task accomplishment cycles. Moreover, management can recognize the loopholes and take immediate action for their rectification, as well.
However, some disadvantages may come forth.
- It can affect the morale of the employees, as they might feel that their organization does not trust them.
- You need to get permission to monitor employees at home, as legal implications can arise.
- Your employees may leave the organization if they see this as an intrusion into their personal space.
Conclusion
Thus, you have to ensure the best practices while adopting any employee productivity tracking software. You need to make sure that employees gain proper training and supervision to help realize their best outputs.
ProHance is one of the best workplace analytics and operations management platforms which numerous organizations trust. You can track remote employee productivity through real-time insights and implement the software with rapid deployment capabilities. Improve work-life balance and prevent burnout for your remote employees through easily navigable features. Compare metrics across various locations and balance workloads with ProHance today. Start using ProHance now!
