Remote working is here, and employees are much happier for it, but if you don’t already have remote employees it can be a daunting thought.
‘How do I keep a track of my employees?’, ‘How do I know they’re not just lying around all day doing no work?’
When implementing remote working trust is key and the statistics seem to prove that it works:
Statistics from a survey completed by Buffer say that;
90% of remote workers plan to work remotely for the rest of their careers.
94% of remote workers encourage others to work remotely.
43% of workers agreed that the biggest benefit of remote working is having a flexible schedule.
So, the statistics show that remote access works and that your remote employees are just as hard working and productive as if they were in the office. But to keep those worries at ease here are a few ways that you can monitor your employees work amount, without seeming like you don’t trust them.
One way you can easily track your employees’ work is time tracking; this is becoming a vital tool in a business’s drive to be productive and successful. Through time tracking you can see how much time your team spend working on projects and this can maximize billing.
You can also gather information on how much time your employees spend on none work related things. By having this information your employees can minimize time wasted and work on increasing their productivity.
5 apps you can use to track your remote workers;
• Tick
Tick is not just about tracking your employees’ working time but focuses on helping you to run more profitable projects and use the data to learn which of your customers are the most profitable.
• HiveDesk
With HiveDesk you can use features such as random screen sampling and easily check in and out for your remote team meaning they don’t have to notify you every time they return e.g. from a break. HiveDesk is great for keeping track of productive time from your employees.
• TimeCamp
TimeCamp is great to use as it has automatic time tracking for applications and sites being used actively. By downloading an add on you can see sites which your employees may be spending too much time on.
• Timely
Timely uses an automatic time tracking feature using AI and your data is kept in a secure, private time line. Timely’s AI uses your recorded work and groups it together and suggests time entries, so you don’t have to log anything! You can check these entries to see if Timely got it right and, if not, you simply just change the entry titles.
• Tsheets
Tsheets is a great, easy way to track your employees’ work; they are able to clock in and out with just one click. Tsheets works on both mobile and desktop, [It] works wherever you do. Other features include reports, logging overtime and scheduling.
Another way you can monitor your remote employees work productivity is through good old communication.
It is important to keep up communication with your remote employees to see how they are work wise as well as socially. 21% of remote workers agree that loneliness is a disadvantage of remote working.
Communication is important for productivity and healthy colleague relationships. You should talk to your team regularly about their goals. Inform them about upcoming big team projects, so they can prepare themselves and communicate with your whole team effectively; both in office and out of office workers. This is key as without effective communication some remote workers could feel out of the loop, affecting their work if they aren’t involved in decision making.
Communication with remote users doesn’t have to be difficult if you go about it the right way. Use technology to your advantage with programmes such as Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams as you can get all your employees together in one call at the same time, so nobody is left out.
We (Everything Tech) can help you to implement Skype for Business into your business. We love to use Skype for Business as it allows us to communicate via video conferences, send instant messages to one another for fast replies, screen sharing, file sharing and much more handy communication tools to keep the team communicating and up to date from our Admin Team to our Senior Technicians on site.
Through good communication you may not even need any time tracking apps to see your team’s productivity.
You don’t even have to be 100% remote working either. You could set days for employees to work at home and some days in the office or simply just use remote working as a last resort if something happens where you employee can’t get into work; they could work from home instead, reducing both time wasted getting into the office and stress for your employee.
Remote working is a great way to give your employees flexibility and a good work-life balance.
