Working with a remote team, it can be much more difficult to track their productivity than when you are physically working alongside one another. When you are managing a remote team, you need to trust that your employees are working productively and that they are contributing toward your business goals. However, as a business owner, it is good to have some reassurance that your team are performing to their usual high standards.
There is a range of strategies that you can use to track your employee’s productivity. Each of these tactics can help you to track how well each employee is performing, so you can make changes where necessary to keep your business running optimally. Whether your employees are students always asking each other ‘do my paper for me‘ or adults, sometimes, their performance needs to be monitored. Understanding employee productivity will not only give you more peace of mind that your team is doing what is expected of them when they are working remotely. It will also allow you to analyse the performance of your team to ensure that you can plan for the future with more certainty, provide additional training where necessary and build a team that you can depend on moving forward.
Let’s take a closer look at four ways that you can track employee productivity while working remotely.
Track Time Worked
Using top-rated timesheet software, business owners can track the hours their employees are working with ease. Employees can clock in and out virtually, helping you to track hours worked for payroll purposes and to measure performance. If all of your employees are working the same hours but one team member is only getting half the work done, this will be a clear indication that they are not being productive during the hours they are “at work”.
Monitor Email Activity
If your business relies on a lot of emails being sent to clients and prospective clients, monitoring email activity can be an accurate means of tracking employee performance. In many businesses, the more emails a person is sending and receiving is a clear indication of how busy they are. To monitor the productivity of your team, you can use a number of different email analytical tools that will allow you to accurately track your employee’s email activity to measure performance.
Project Management Tools
There are countless project management tools available to business owners nowadays, offering a range of different functionalities. These platforms are not only a great way for your team to collaborate and communicate with each other on different projects, but they can also help to keep your team on track. Setting project milestones with deadlines will ensure that your team will work hard to complete the allocated work on time. With these tools, you will be able to clearly see which employees are the most productive and who needs to pick up the pace.
Use Task Lists
Task lists are essentially a to-do list that is assigned to each employee. These can work in conjunction with project management tools, which often include an option for task lists, or they can be an entirely separate entity. Task lists allow you to track the progress of each individual employee in completing their task list. To ensure fairness, it’s important to assign similar tasks to each of your employees and put a realistic timeframe in place for the various jobs to be completed.
Track Your Remote Employee’s Productivity With Precision
When you are managing a remote team, it’s important that you stay in close communication with your team and monitor their progress carefully. It’s also essential that you provide encouragement, help and support when your team needs it, just as you would if you were working together in the same location. Tracking your employee’s performance is important in not only helping productivity but also assisting those employees who need it. With the right systems in place, you will be able to track your team’s productivity with more precision and make the changes necessary to bolster your business going forward.
