Ever since remote work started to become more popular, more and more employees have jumped at the opportunity when offered to them. But at the same time employers have often struggled with the challenges involved in actually managing a remote workforce.
One of the main solutions to that problem has been employee monitoring – and we’re going to take a look at 6 of the best ways to use it to effectively manage remote workers:
Set up regular fixed meetings
As much as remote work can provide tons of flexibility, a certain amount of structure is required especially when employees need to communicate and collaborate. Regular fixed meetings are part of that structure, and will provide a means for taking stock of progress, issuing new tasks, dealing with roadblocks, and communicating with employees in general.
Take advantage of modern tech
The right tech can go a long way towards facilitating remote work. That includes project and task management tools, employee monitoring software, collaboration platforms, video conferencing apps, CRM systems, and so on.
Before implementing remote work, take some time to figure out what tools your workforce will need and how you plan on using them.
Track attendance and work hours
A big part of managing remote workers is to check their attendance and work hours – and the best way to do that is employee monitoring tools. In Controlio that data is readily available in its activity reports and will show you exactly when employees started working and stopped working each and every day.
More importantly, Controlio’s monitoring tools will also break down the time when employees are active or idle – so you can measure work hours more precisely. If you find it more convenient you can set it up to deliver these reports to you on a daily or weekly basis.
Measure productivity
In the office it is easy to see whether employees are focused or distracted – but the same can’t be said of remote work. That is why you need to measure productivity using employee monitoring.
The features in Controlio make this easy as you can see all of your employee activities including the apps they use, websites they visit, and so on. On top of that it’ll even calculate a productivity score for each employee so you can determine exactly how productive they are at a glance.
Optimize task distribution
Ideally you should distribute tasks to remote workers not just based on their existing workload, but also their strengths and skillset. Using task and project management tools can help on this front, as can employee monitoring.
By using Controlio to track how long different employees take to complete various types of tasks. Based on their performance, you can assign tasks far more effectively.
Detect and avoid burnout
One of the biggest problems with remote work is that employees are at higher risk of experiencing burnout. This is due to the fact that remote workers tend to work longer hours, take fewer breaks, and feel more isolated.
With Controlio’s data you can identify whether or not any employees are overworking and intervene if they are. It will also let you see if there’s a drop in productivity – which is another sign that employees are at risk of burnout.
Make no mistake, effectively managing remote workers is going to be challenging in a very different way from managing employees in a fixed workplace. Hopefully by this point you understand why that is the case, and are prepared to deal with it using the methods that are listed above.
As long as you approach these challenges proactively, you should be able to reap the rewards of remote work successfully.
Also Read: Best Refurbished Mac Setups for California’s Remote Workers
