As the world of remote working continues to expand in recent times, more and more people find themselves working from home. In fact, many businesses have managed to keep afloat during tough economic times thanks solely to being able to manage a remote workforce. Of course, dealing with employees that work from home can prove to be challenging in a number of ways, one of which includes ensuring that employees are keeping productive and making progress with their tasks and activities. In today’s article, we have a look at how business owners and managers can easily track employee progress while working remotely, so read on to find out more!
1. Tick Tock Tick Tock
If you are a business owner, one of the best ways that you can keep track of employee progress is by using a time clock app for your staff. This incredibly handy tool will allow you to record exact times on shift, allowing employees to track their hours and breaks with ease. By simply downloading the time clock app on a mobile phone, tablet or laptop, your employees simply have to clock in and out at the touch of a button. High-end time clock apps even come with GPS tracking, allowing employees to show employers that they were in the right place, at the right time. As a bonus, time clock apps also help business owners streamline the payroll process by ensuring accurate records that prevent any delays in monthly payroll.
2. Project Management Software
Project management software is a vital tool in running any successful business. Whether your team is working remotely or not, project management software serves as an incredibly helpful tool for your employees to keep track of their projects and deadlines. Most project management software comes with tools such as deadline trackers, progress updates and much more. The entire team is also able to keep an eye on colleague deadlines, which helps spur momentum and motivate team members to ensure that they are on progress with all their tasks and never lagging behind.
3. End Of Day Report Summaries
When working on multiple projects simultaneously, it is not uncommon that employees may lose track of their accomplishments throughout the day. After all, once one task is checked off, another almost instantly takes its place. This is why the end of day report summaries are so helpful – the daily summary can be used as a tool that helps your remote team identify opportunities for improvement, outline potential issues and come up with solutions for those issues. A progress sheet is also a fantastic way to motivate remote workers who may sometimes lose motivation due to the inability to reflect on how much they have actually gotten done for the day.
4. Team Meetings Are Critical
One of the downsides of remote working is that it can be quite an isolating experience. With lack of human interaction and the hustle and bustle of a shared work environment, employees may find themselves making less progress than is ideal. This is why it is critical that business owners and team leaders schedule regular meetings through programmes such as Skype or Zoom. Face to face interaction can make a huge positive impact on employee progress and allows for the team to come together, brainstorm, come up with solutions for problems and most importantly – simply interact with one another. As a manager or team leader, you will also be able to better communicate and get a grasp of how your team is doing during these scheduled meetings.
5. Make It Simple
Last but not least, the best way to ensure that your team is on track and making progress is to make it simple. Your remote employees will be more focused on work if they have full clarity on what is expected of them. This means being clear in your instructions, and giving succinct guidelines when it comes to tasks that need to be done. The best solution is to engage your employees with transparency and to hold them accountable for their tasks. Ensuring that you set clear ground rules is also a great way to ensure that everyone is on the same page. At the end of the day, it is also less time consuming, less expensive, and the best way to keep employees motivated and as productive as possible.
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Managing a remote workforce doesn’t have to be a stressful task – by setting some ground rules, engaging in healthy team communication and checking in with your team regularly, you’ll find that remote working can be as productive if not even more productive than you ever imagined.
