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:-

Remote Workplace and Best Practices: The Coronavirus Workplace Updates

connecting to the VPS of the system from anywhere, employees have the flexibility to work from anywhere, anytime. Either you have regular work from the home system or if your employees are adapting to work because of bad weather or illness or any pandemic situation like COVID-19. It's important to let your employees remain productive. 

Shifting from workspace to remote working employees plays a vital role in minimizing the consequences of any novel situation.  Though it's a little adjustment for the ones who have not worked in this telecommuting environment before and it could also be somewhat stressful. Thus, proper communication and planning play a key role in managing remote employees. 

Let's know check, what are the benefits of adapting work from home culture - 

The WFH system provides tons of benefits for both employers as well as their employees. As per the recent statistics, remote work helps to increase productivity, which helps organizations to grow high. Employees become more efficient towards their work as they get less distracted and less stressed as they don't have to deal with commuting, etc. Similarly, it helps to reduce operating costs to run their business smoothly and also reduces the employer's compensation claims. 

What Are The Best Practices When Creating Work From Home Programs?

Organizations that are planning to move their on-site to the remote workplace should create some guidelines, considering all the key things to ensure what all they need. So, here are some of the key elements of work from home policy that should get shared with all the employees. 

Adopting advanced technology

Remote Workplace

The latest version of computers or laptops, high-speed internet connection, quick access to required tools, phone conferencing software, productivity monitoring software, etc. 

Using a secure connection 

Remote employees should have a proper internet connection and work with trusted VPN. The VPN system is a buffer between your operating device and wifi-connection. It saves the encrypted data from intercepting or tampering.  

Implement communication apps 

Communication Apps

Keep in contact with workers who operate from home via Skype, Zoom and other chatting options. Remote workers can often feel disconnected from the rest of the team so it is important to stay in touch with them through telephone, email, texting, or video conference.

Set Clear Goals 

Build a strategy function with your particular program's goals. The policy should include guidelines for the daily work schedule of an employee, overtime policies for the company, summary of a dedicated workplace, guidelines for reporting personal injury and damage to company equipment, and security of confidential business information.

Test The implemented programs 

Test Your Programs

If you are implementing a work from home policy, take the time to evaluate its effectiveness thoroughly. Adjust the program based on your findings and bugs.

Trust Your Employees 

One of the most critical aspects of a home-policy function that is not included in the document itself. Employers need to support and trust your workers while they are not working on-site to get their jobs completed.

After implementing the work from home policies, there might occur some risks. So, let's know How to prevent risks and take safety tips?

A key best practice for ensuring protection and minimizing claims for workers' compensation is to develop guidelines for working from home that will help reduce the potential risks. The policy should include guidelines on risk management that are related to research from the above-mentioned home security criteria, including:

Create a workplace ?

Create Workplace

Even when the employees are working remotely, Employees should set up a  dedicated workspace where they have limited distractions to concentrate on their job. 

Check the work area 

The workplace should be checked to ensure that it is free from any risks, including problems with fire and ventilation, slipping and dropping risks and other regular risk factors.

Learn the workplace injuries

Teach all your employees how you can prevent workplace problems that may arise both in the on-site and remote workplace. 

Conclusion 

These are a few of the best workplace practices along with the risk prevention tips that will help employers. Apart from that, the best remote workplace monitoring software can also prove advantageous to manage to work calmly during this pandemic situation.

Also, See This Video To Manage Remote Work Easily:-

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.

03 Exquisite Tips To Uphold Data Security with Remote Employees.

Amidst the coronavirus outbreak, most of the companies have been turning their routes towards a remote working approach to save their employees. The government is encouraging citizens to embrace the social distancing approach and asking more people to execute their duties from home.

While employees feel it convenient to work from home, the risks of data breaching or leaking of valuable data hovers over managers’ minds. The method of remote employees is slightly different from working at an office since employers no longer have full control over employees’ proceedings. 

But, there’s always a solution to a problem, including the complicated ones, and so goes with ‘Data Security’ measures. A blend of compelling monitoring software and employees’ devotion results in boosting the ROI of any business, regardless of the working culture it implements. Calm down! Read our article ahead for valuable pieces of information.

Getting Started…

Data Security Measures

The first yet crucial step of putting work from home practice is to make sure you have a dependable authentication to the entire devices that employees are going to access. Organizations should focus especially on the security of those devices on which delicate data cached. In simple words, it’s vital to keep an eye on workers who keep up the company’s valuable data so that they won’t indulge in activities like data transferring or selling. 

Track Remote Workers, Remotely.

Remote Employees

‘Monitoring’ is indeed necessary for companies that rely on remote workers, so that they can figure out what their employees are doing online and how much time they exactly spend on doing their job. You further need to make a wise decision while choosing an efficient monitoring solution. There are dozens of powerful employee management software available out there, but you should choose one that stands out from the rest.

An ideal monitoring software counts down the actual working hours, determines the ongoing projects, and can capture screenshots immediately whenever required.

Certify your security & data protection policies

Data Security

Regardless of the strict instructions you pass on, employees can’t take it seriously unless they get documented security policies in hand. Therefore, frame down entire policies into a written form and highlight the sensitive provisions to gain optimal protection.

As soon as you are done with framing policies, next tell your employees to go through it and ask questions that appear in their minds. For higher protection, make it mandatory for everyone to read work from home policy deeply before moving out from the office, plus get their signature on policy papers for acknowledgment.

Examine Your Devices & Technology

Evaluate Devices

BYOD (bring your own device) is popular among the organizations operating remote teams, but the same might be risky as it often gives ease to hackers for invading your company’s data security shield. Be careful, abolish BYOD and assign company-owned devices to remote workers, with all kinds of software installed for 100% desired outcome.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, all you can do is to consider every possible data safety measure while hiring remote employees. Based on the current scenario, we can anticipate that work from home will remain in trend for the coming few months until coronavirus winds up from the globe. Till then, a brief message for remote workers- “stay home” “work honestly” “safeguard your company’s policies”, and the most important one- “wash your hands in every 30 minutes”.