Remote Work Monitoring Software- How To Ensure Employee Productivity?

Remote worker monitoring is a crucial term for organizations these days. Every business owner wants to get the most out of their employees, which seems a bit difficult during the ‘work-from-home’ module.

Employers across the world have been looking for a compelling employee management software amid Covid-19 pandemic. But, it's more important to reveal its upsides before implementation. 

In addition to giant corporations, small businesses are now turning their routes to affordable yet reliable software that accelerates productivity and growth within a company. So, if you are also planning to enter-in, then read out this article to get a clear view of remote work monitoring software and its positive impacts.

Perks of remote monitoring methodology.

Recent research and employers around the globe together conclude that employee monitoring has various advantages of monitoring employees for both the individual and corporation. See those benefits below:-

Timely Execution of work: When employees know that their activities are under surveillance, their work ability automatically boosts up and they perform much better than before. Consequently, they produce better outcomes for achieving targets on time. Nothing can encourage a worker as good as monitoring. They might feel shaky at first, but with the time flies, everything turns back to normal.

Germinating the seed of trust:  Remote worker monitoring is a big help in building trust between employers and employees. Employers can easily figure out the status of assigned work, the potential of workers, as well as, exact working hours.

Sound Management: For any remote workers, monitoring software offers enormous benefits, including their record of attendance, login/logout time, billing, and guarantees accuracy.

What is remote work?

Remote work is the same as workplace work, but takes place outside the corporate building or in other words, at employees’ homes. With the rise in Coronavirus patients worldwide, more and more companies adopt this working approach as a means of safety for their invaluable assets, that is employees.

An employer/manager doesn’t need to be a pro in employee management to carry out result-oriented strategies. Instead, he/she should learn some fundamental remote force management skills while initiating. 

Past evidence claims that a skilled manager can obtain approx 30% more productivity than workplace employees because remote employees get the flexibility to work round the clock. In this context, experts say that- “Workers won’t work for additional hours, until and unless they get a monetary or non-monetary appreciation for that extra time duration invested".

Also, have a look at the List of Top Remote work monitoring solutions.

1. EmpMonitor
2. Hubstaff.
3. Timecamp.
4. Hivedesk.
5. Toggl

A few best approaches to successfully implement remote monitoring at the workplace

• Before proceeding, think about the reason why you want to see your employees’ doing. Is it really beneficial or are your employees worth to be trusted blindly? In case your workforce already gives their best to organizational success, then the equipment of a remote work monitoring software will be nothing but a waste of money plus efforts.
• As soon as you determine a reason for employee monitoring, identify the necessary feature to get in the best remote work monitoring software. Here, features should be the ability to capture screenshots in real-time, web browser tracking, activity monitoring, keylogging features, app tracking, and so on.
• Now, when you choose the right fit for your organization, then it's time to make your entire remote employees aware of the policies regarding that software’s implementation, working abilities, and also the benefits it brings. This session must be brief yet effective enough to encourage your employees to support remote monitoring decisions.
• Even though your employees stand in favor of employee management software, it’s necessary to conduct timely check-ins and quick evaluation to find out if everything is going on the right track or not.

Are you ready to reach topmost heights?

From the description explained up to now, ‘remote working’ might not be a strange concept to business owners.  

Apart from concealing the safety & security of any organization, monitoring tools also provide great peace of mind to employers. Entire work and employees’ workplace proceedings is tracked and recorded in the form of videos or screenshots through performance indicators.

When you properly implement strategies, remote staff monitoring brings various upsides to your company. Timely improvement, certain appreciations, and praising employees’ work can help a lot to raise employee dedication and performance. It contributes a lot to the smooth operation of a business.

How To Track Employee Productivity This Quarantine?

Telecommuting used to be a luxury for all of us until a couple of months back. However, this lockdown changed the strategies of workforce management due to the commencement of WFH in all the corporations. The idea seemed bizarre in the beginning, as only a small section of employees were familiar with remote work. 

However, there's no other option right now. Coronavirus is spreading like wildfire, and the best way to stay safe is to stay at home. With people literally LOCKED DOWN inside their homes, WFH is the only way left for the corporations to keep their work going. Then why not stop whining about the situation, and find a way out, instead? 

So, how to know if the employees are actually working and not wasting their time on some Netflix series? How to track employee productivity along with ensuring your company's data security? Let's discuss some of the most effective measures in brief: 

1. Constant Communication

Uninterrupted Communication

Keeping constant communication is very important in any organization- be it a startup or a large firm. Communication barriers lead to a lot of confusion and disputes among co-workers, which, when combined with the monotony of telecommuting, leads to loss of productivity among them. 

Make sure you establish regular and solid communication with your team. Organize regular group calls, deploy a single chatting platform, host online meetings every day. This way, you can keep a check on their activities and discuss the upcoming tasks along with the status of current tasks. Pre-scheduling is very crucial when hosting meetings with your staff or else you will end up wasting your precious time in getting everyone on the line. 

2. Regular Updates 

Employee Updates

Keeping a regular tap on your employees' activities will ensure that you stay updated with the progress of their tasks. One way to do it is by asking the employees to send updates three times a day on any platform, for instance, Telegram. 
This way, it becomes very feasible to track employee activities without having individual conversations with them every now and then. Create groups for discussing the progress of assigned tasks and, as mentioned already, establish strong communication with them. This way, you can also check for their last task update by simply looking at your chatting platform. 

3. Tracking Tools 

How To Track Employee Productivity

One of the ways to track employees activities is by deploying a tool to track and record them in real-time. There are various tools available in the market that assist us in doing so, for instance, EmpMonitor, Time Doctor, ActivTrak, etc. 

Various tools can capture screenshots, record keystrokes, user logs, etc. to assist the users in capturing their activities and storing them in the cloud for future reference. But before you get started with any employee monitoring software, make sure that it is reliable in the first place. NEVER rely on any random tool. 

4. Cloud Monitoring 

Cloud Monitoring

A lot of organizations prefer storing their official data in the cloud instead of storing it in their devices. It not only saves space but also makes managing information a lot easier. This way, you get data access in your hands and can control the employees who can view or edit the information in the company's database. 

Also, this way, you get to track and monitor the progress of your assigned tasks in real-time and track remote staff employees productivity without any hitch. Regularly checking and maintaining data in the cloud is one of the safest and quickest ways to manage your online workflow. It also diminishes the chances of data leaking or breaching outside the premises.

5. Maintaining Records 

Record Management

One of the reasons why goldbricking is very common in any workplace is that the employees pretend to work more by updating you with the tasks that they might have already completed earlier. You can avoid this by keeping a record of their work updates. You can maintain multiple sheets, keep track of their work by regularly going through their updates, etc. 

This process becomes more feasible when working on data in the cloud. If you know how to maintain and monitor the records, you will know how to track employee productivity even when they work remotely, be it a home office or a field-work. 

Conclusion 

The year 2020 taught us how unpredictable our future could be. Nevertheless, the pandemic doesn't seem to cease any soon, and it seems like we have to continue with our WFH routines for the next few months. So let's polish our telecommuting skills and use a best employee productivity tracking software to ensure the best results out of your workforce. 

Also, Watch This Video If You Want To Check Productivity Of Employees According To days:-

03 Work From Home Software To Revolutionize Your Work

Many countries have been driven into lockdown by the COVID-19, causing hardship in the business, medical, tourism, and several other significant industries. The culture of work from home, popularly known as WFH, has leaped into the mainstream with a rise in social distancing and self-quarantining through different industries worldwide. But how ready are we technically to operate as corporates and as corporate employees?

WFH isn't too hard, particularly when you've got the right combination of equipment and software to support the workflow. Understandably, the basics needed for working from home are — a PC or a laptop, good LAN or Wi-Fi, and endless power supply. 

But, in case you are suffering from anxiety of separation from remote workers then these three tools will help you monitor the actual time of the particular task. Know, these tools only have the raw data for you. You ought to make a case-by-case interpretation of the findings. Also, it's a smart decision to track remote staff productivity with their full consent.

EmpMonitor 

EmpMonitor is said to be one of the trending affordable work from home software, which is highly preferred by most of the business owners. This software provides screenshots every 15 minutes and records every keystroke. It also keeps a check on the top applications and websites used by the employee in a particular time frame. It helps the employers to know whether the employees are reading a word doc or spending time plugging numbers into the excel sheet. 

The User Management panel allows managers to view information of members of their team, providing several transparency rates.

What's more, EmpMonitor has a user logs feature that allows you to see the user login and log out details. It can be a useful feature to know if your employee's login is late and log out early. 

Plans start at $3/user/month for up to 51 to 200 users and go to $5/user/month for one to 10 users. EmpMonitor requires a desktop download and is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It also integrates with any project management software, therefore, it prevents interrupting in between.

Trello

If you juggle on multiple projects with multiple remote employees, Trello has an easy solution to keep everyone on track. Simply install Trello on the employees working system. Then it will track the time and provide a complete report of the employees work time activities on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. 

In the work time, It provides you with a few snaps of employees screen activities, to check that your employees are on task and not spending time on non-productive activities.  This best work from home software also provides the overall productivity ratio of each employee in a graphical form.  It helps the employers to know how their employees are working and also helps the employees to remain productive even while working from home. 

The price starts at just $9.99/user/month to $20.83user/month as per your business requirements. Simply install the software in your system and it's compatible with Windows and Mac both. 

OrangeHRM

For business owners who are looking for the best CRM software, there’s OrangeHRM. Well, the programs are not just about human resources management. It is more than just this. OrangeHRM offers cost-free, open-source solutions to people out there. Nevertheless, it is not stripped of its technical and business HR management solutions.

It has some incredible features that can really rest your work from home issues like, performance measurement, attendance management, recruitment management, etc. 

It comes with a free starter pack with 30 days free trial!

Wrapping Up 

These are some of the best yet cheap work from home software to better handle your work from home. However, after evaluating the three of them separately, we came to a conclusion that says EmpMonitor is the best for remote management of work. Well, because it includes all sorts of monitoring activities, including remote control, office surveillance, and much more. What do you think? Do share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

05 Pro Tips For Successful Work From Home Monitoring

The act of managing workplace employees is more apparent than managing a team of remote employees. A fresh study surveyed over 50+ businesses to reveal the proven methodologies an organization can embrace for employees working from their homes.

Most of the businesses that participated in this survey pointed out that the approach of remote working is a win-win scheme for both the employee and the employer. Here, the way you manage remote teams becomes the ultimate key to achievement in work from home monitoring practice.

An ideal employer should have the knack to implement precise strategies and employ helpful tools for a better outcome. And, For those who are new to this game, this article contains a handful of valuable tips that are indeed necessary to consider.

Hire deserving employees

Hire Right Employees

Let’s be realistic- everyone can’t be proficient at the ‘work from home’ pattern of working. While people relish the ease of remote work, not all carry enough sincerity and honesty to contribute 100%. So, a recruiter must look for some qualities that demonstrates the capability of individuals who will work from their homes with thorough dedication. Always prioritize the  employees with sound communication skills since they often result in great triumph.

Keep your expectations and work clear.

Work Goals

Instead of making assumptions, put clear & straightforward work expectations before your employees. Moreover, “expectations” shall apply on the manager too. Set up a quick meeting to discuss the essentials of a project, illustrate the expectations and the underlying reason.

Through expectation, it means the goals, deadlines, work execution of different phases that are going on. Or else, your company might be undergoing the worst situation of productivity crisis with loss of potential clients as well.

Don’t Overlook One-On-Ones Approach.

One-on-ones Approach

Team solidarity is essential, and so is managing time to discuss with employees one-on-one. It helps you in addressing the issues a member probably faces but becomes nervous when it comes to talking in a group or writing through emails. In such circumstances, having words with each team member proves to be a great help in eradicating existing issues and aligning their job role according to the goals they have in mind.

Organize Video Conferences

Video Employee Conferencing

However, breaking bread together strengthens a team, but the idea has nothing to do with remote employees. Thus, video conferencing becomes a sweeping means of interacting with everyone and spending quality time. Yes, meeting over a video call can’t be effective as gathering together physically. It boosts teamwork, helps newly joined personnel to open up, as well as, create a favorable image of the employer in the mind of employees. Research claims that video is a way better than meeting in person referring to all of those who are shy.

Focus on the result, not working hours.

Final Outcome

Even though a manager puts in his entire effort, he can’t keep a sharp eye on each employee. Therefore, when your team is located at different geographical locations, don’t put too much pressure on workers during work from home monitoring working suits. Provide them flexibility and let them work independently to make most out of them along with measuring the number of routine operations.

Leave the office behind: Additional tips for better workflow.

The supervision of remote workers comes down to two crucial elements, that is communication and uninterrupted communication. If everyone in your team stays tuned with each other, there won’t be any severe trouble anymore.

Make sure your employees feel valued and at the same time responsible. Meanwhile, they must keep in mind the goals of companies to push their caliber beyond the limits. Apart from setting up strategies and policies, choose top-notch tools that are meant to flourish a business.

In case your team fails to establish unbroken communication with other members, then provide them with proper resources and outline to make them proficient.

Conclusion

Although remote team management is like a hard nut to crack,  compelling work from home monitoring software has been helping businesses a lot these days. Hopefully, this piece of information cools your jets and gives you the power to raise the productivity of a company operating through remote workers.