It is amazing how rapidly workplace norms have changed since the March of 2020. People have shifted their work from spacious desks to living rooms, guest rooms, and even kitchens. The oh-so-new adjustments have been challenging people to deal with working alone, without the touch of managers and co-workers.
Workers have found a never-seen-before spike in email and direct reports throughout the day, yet the upper management does not see the necessity of a reinforcement. Employees may remain busy sending those emails at all hours, hoping that the management sees their work never stops.
Productivity is the vital component of every business, regardless of the industry you operate in or the kind of service you offer. If your employees aren’t productive enough and if their performance is low, this will ultimately cause you and your business to suffer. Prolonged non-productivity in business is nothing but just waste of human and capital resources. And as a business owner you never want that to happen.
Since productivity is crucially essential, how do business owners or managers measure their employees’ performance to get the best possible outcome?
Thanks to technology and artificial intelligence, there are many ways you can do it. The good news for them is that employee productivity tracking software provides much-needed visibility into their schedule, including the productive and idle times. The employee monitoring system has come a long way in the last few months. Instead of just helping in managerial observation, the software also allows companies to understand individual productivity levels, set predetermined goals for employees and teams, and ensure their work efficiently communicates with each other.
Tracking the performance of employees also helps to identify the poor performers and who are the most productive, this will help managers to cut the poor performers loose for the good of the entire team or to support them to increase their output.
How is employee productivity tracking software handy?
Employee productivity tracking software comes in handy in five ways:
1. Improvement of work-life balance for each employee
Every business operates in a different way. Even businesses operating in the similar industry and serving similar consumers are different in many aspects. So, it is futile to think of a one size fits all approach when you’re measuring the productivity or performance level of your employees.
In the same way, you cannot tell what is the ideal work schedule- it is a rather subjective issue. Some teams prefer to work 9 to 5 and finish it within that time. Others may find it productive to sit in the quiet time before kids are up, or hitting the keyboard right after breakfast. When people know their most productive time-frame, work gets easier to complete.
Not just the hours, employee productivity varies from days in a week, some employees feel more productive on Sunday while others may find it tough. Viewing productivity trends allows us to optimize work schedules based on facts, and prevent missing project timeline and reporting.
Experts from various fields are assuming that the 9-5work schedule will turn down within the next decade. Many already consider that a fixed work schedule is bad for business in some cases. In such cases, without a proper tracking tool it would be impossible for an employer to know who is working on what and how they are actually working. No matter how much flexibility you give to your employees, at the end of the day what matters most to you is the work that your employees do.
2. Flexible work hours lead to more productivity
Employee monitoring tracking software allows employees to work at their flexible time. Employees have full-control is making decisions about stopping the clock and pausing the screenshots vs wasting time is actually helps employees to be focused. Employees can take a break whenever they need to, which allows the brain to relax and when they return to work, they are again back with high energy levels and able to focus better.
When operating a big workforce or remote employees, this type of real-time employee tracking software can give you granular data of their work hours. As an employer will know actually how many hours your worker worked, how productive they were and how many breaks they needed. So, whenever an employee needs to go for any task that is unrelated to work, they can pause and you will never have to pay them for their personal work time.
A good software will quickly analyze everyone’s activity. This type of software is not only specialized for remote workers, you can also use them to monitor employees who work in the office.
3. Opportunity for balanced workload to prevent burnout
Chronic stress is one of the biggest reasons for turnover. When an employee experiences exhaustion for an extended period of time, it increases lack of concentration which result in decline in their overall performance.
As Gallup found, employee disengagement causes 37 percent higher absenteeism, an 18 percent reduction in productivity, and an overall 15 percent decrease in business profitability. No company would want its employee to leave the job for not being able to cope up with the pressure that was once easily manageable.
Not tracking employee productivity costs big time for the business as owners are not sure for the reason of turnover. Some employees could be working 60 hours a week, which their bosses may never know unless there is a tracking policy of their work. Employee productivity tracking software helps employers know who has an excessive workload, and can decide if he needs support or additional resources from his team. Employees can also show statistics and ask for well-balanced workload as well.
For managers, employee monitoring software ensures full visibility into employee working activities and shows statuses, progress and deadlines for projects in real-time. For employees, knowing the fact that their performance is being measured in every step, it boosts their motivation to perform even better.
4. Helps to assess employee output
Management needs to know who the frontline employees are and what they are doing for the company. Some companies do check-in daily, while others prefer to keep in touch on a weekly basis, and some companies only desire the end product.
Ultimately, too much work pressure eventually hurt employees in a number of ways, ranging from reduced productivity deadlines missing, poor performance, increase in absence. Employee productivity tracking software helps pinpoint where a workers’ time goes at work, and if any of those activities are unnecessary for the actual project. For example, if an employee finds it hard to complete any project within a given deadline due to excessive workload, he can show the breakdown of the time spent and discuss with his manager to lessen to the workload and add some more employees to the team.
You can also identify employees who are under performing, it could have been a tricky situation with a monitoring tool to catch them. But with the record from the monitoring tool you can easily share the reports and make them answerable for not being productive enough. This type tracking tool will help you to ensure progress is being made at every stage.
Besides only monitoring, managers can also conduct group discussion sessions and aware employees with their responsibilities along with the monitoring process.
5. Communicate with Your Workforce and Provide Right Feedback
When managers notice employees are using any specific tool to get the job done effectively and efficiently, they want to invest money into it to give a premium version of it to the employees. For example, if employees prefer to use Slack than email, the company may consider buying a premium Slack account for his employees so that employees can perform better.
And now again managers can track how these tools are being used by the employees. This way you will always have the peace of mind about your investment when you will see fruitful results out of it. Productivity monitoring platform keeps tabs on webpages and running applications, allowing managers to notice inefficiency, adopt the right tools and reduce frustration while saving time.
Create a win-win framework for businesses and employees
By leveraging employee productivity tracking software, businesses and their remote workers can enhance work processes. Having the actual statistic at their disposal allows employees to optimize work productivity. So, balance employee workload and prevent burnout with the productivity monitoring tools, and boost organizations’ ROI while accelerating employee careers.
Now that you understand everything about remote employee monitoring tracking software, it’s time to decide whether you should implement it in your company to run it with increased insights. CloudDesk is a popular employee monitoring software that automatically tracks time spent on tasks, lessens distractions faced by employees during work, and prevents your employees from passing off idle time as work hours.
You will have screenshots of what your employees are doing and have real-time reports to help with productivity analysis. Remember, with the right set of tracking tools, your company will flourish in no time.
Interesting related article: “What is Productivity?”