Introduction
Following the time of COVID-19, work-from-home culture has drastically evolved. From then on, companies and employees prefer to follow this trend. While the work-from-home culture benefits us in many ways, it also brings certain difficulties.
The biggest challenge that employers face is to manage their WFH employees effectively. If you are among those, facing difficulty in managing and monitoring your employees who are working remotely, then this article belongs to you.
Here, we will discuss tricks and strategies to monitor employees working from home.
Why should you monitor employees performing work from home?
Today the work culture revolves around the WFH trend. Organizations tend to hire employees globally to get most of their efforts. This has led to a surge in employees working remotely full-time or part-time. With this increasing trend, the need to monitor and observe remote team has become critically important for businesses.
This paradigm shift benefits both employees and enterprises, eliminating geographical constraints for employment. Employees gain the autonomy to manage their work hours, allowing them to avoid rush-hour traffic, set flexible schedules, minimize commutes, and enhance work-life integration.
The monitoring of remote employees is an integral part of this work arrangement. It enables managers to remotely oversee team productivity. This promotes a balanced workflow for distant employees and minimizes idle time. Monitoring employees via monitoring apps or software can save organizations and individuals money through reduced commuting costs.
Now let us explore the different measures an organization should consider for overseeing the employees working from home.
13 ways to monitor Employees working from home
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Tracking on Employee’s Email Activities – Tracking employees' email activities could be the biggest factor in measuring employees' work productivity. As per the reports, professionals these days spend maximum time of their work hours with their email inbox. Their 28-50% of time in a day is spent checking their emails, reading and sending emails, etc. But as an employer, you need to know what they are actually doing during those hours.
How many emails are they sending and receiving in a day? To whom they are interacting through their emails? How prompt are they to respond to the emails? This could help you to measure how effectively employees are using their email hours for the company's productivity. -
Implement Time Tracking Software – Implementing time-tracking software is another great option for monitoring the remote team. It helps you to monitor how your team allocates their time. These tools have built-in timers that employees start and stop whenever they begin a new task.
Based on your requirements, you could ask the employees for continuous tracking or limit it to specific projects. With both ways, you can gain insights into their time allocation. This could help you to understand which employee is occupied with productive work and who has spare time. - Monitor Employee Productivity – In today's fast-paced business world, productivity monitoring has become increasingly crucial. By analyzing employees' performance and dedication during working hours, you can easily grasp an overview of your team's productivity. If you have concerns about an individual's performance, there are various employee monitoring software available in the market. This software allows you to gain insights into screen recordings, files, folders, programs, and websites accessed during work hours. These insights can help you identify areas for improvement, ensure optimal resource allocation, and ultimately enhance overall productivity.
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Utilize Project Management Platforms – Using project management platforms could also help to monitor work from home employees. The purpose of project management platforms is to manage different projects across one platform.
Whenever a new project is tracked, as a project manager, you can create tasks related to the project and assign them to different employees. At any point in time, you can log in and check the progress of different tasks by different employees. -
Assign duties with deadlines – Setting clear deadlines is a crucial element for distant employees. By providing your team with specific due dates, you will give them the clarity they need to manage their time effectively. This is especially vital for time-bound projects, where every moment counts.
By setting clear deadlines and utilizing task scheduling software, you can empower your remote workers to plan their days strategically. This will not only enhance productivity but also develop a sense of accountability and ownership among your team members. -
Impose Managerial Supervision – Imposing managerial supervision could help monitor WFH employees. Also, it would be helpful to manage the workload. Instead of burdening your employees to voluntarily report their workloads, empower your managers to actively monitor, report on, and, if needed, rebalance employee workloads.
Give them the freedom to manage their workload using the company’s monitoring tool. Do not forget to provide the necessary resources to ensure their success. It will distribute the workload and also your employees will be easily monitored. - Track Employee Attendance – Having an eye on employee attendance helps you to understand which employees are sincere and which are not. For keeping track of employee attendance, you can use clock-in and clock-out in the area of geotagging through punch-in apps. These apps effortlessly maintain accurate records which you can check at any time, as per need.
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Examine Subjective Factors – To effectively monitor employee workloads, subjective tracking methods are essential, especially when monitoring remote workers. It can provide valuable insights, particularly regarding employee morale.
It is important to understand their side of the story too. You cannot impose a load on an employee without knowing their situation and capacity. Understanding these subjective factors and distributing workload wisely will give a notable boost to the productivity of the organization. - Stimulate Self-reporting – Reporting emerges as a powerful tool in effectively tracking employees' activities, even in their early stages of employment. Various employee monitoring apps allow WFH personnel to conveniently report by themselves on a daily basis. It helps to keep track of their availability. Also, the self-reporting practice keeps the employee aware of their workload and can manage tasks accordingly. Encouraging self-reporting cultivates the sense of motivation and energy within the employee.
- Keep in constant touch – Staying in touch with the WFH employees constantly is crucial to manage them efficiently. You should communicate with your workforce to know their issues and solve them immediately. There are many tools that you can use to connect with your employees. Some of the popular tools are Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, Slack, Teams, and much more.
- Send Alarm notifications – Sending alarm notifications could help to ping the employees about the pending tasks effectively. Whenever you assign any task to any employee, if not accomplished, you can send some reminders to them. But remember to respect their privacy and send a gentle reminder prompting them to finish the task ASAP.
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Evaluate Employee performance based on reports – And here's your final step of systematic monitoring and surveillance. The reports generated from various processes above or employee monitoring software should be collectively assessed.
This will aid in evaluating employees. The reports will give an insight into employee performance, and understand whether they have completed their tasks in time or not. Also, you will come to know which tasks they have finished successfully and whether they are the appropriate choice for the next project or not.
Benefits of monitoring employees working from home
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Increased productivity
Monitoring WFH employees provides crucial insights into their activities, enabling proactive identification and rectification of time wastage. The result is a workforce that operates at high efficiency, powered by targeted interventions and streamlined processes. -
Employee Recognition
Employee monitoring systems have emerged as an effective strategy to cultivate a culture of responsibility and productivity in the absence of the workplace. Through the monitoring, organizations can confidently verify whether employees are meticulously adhering to their designated duties and successfully achieving their ambitious targets. -
Less stress and burnout
Continuous monitoring would give a constant insight into the progress of your tasks. Knowing the progress of the projects will eventually lead to less stress, burnout, and healthy mental status. -
Work alignment
Monitoring remote employees can be a valuable strategy for aligning work effectively within an organization. By monitoring the team, organizations can identify potential bottlenecks, address challenges promptly, and ensure that everyone is working towards common objectives. -
Self Motivated Employees
Regular Monitoring provides employees with a reflective tool, showcasing their accomplishments during work hours and inspiring self-motivation to strive for even greater achievements.
Conclusion
As the boundaries between work and home continue to blur in the era of remote working, innovative strategies are needed to monitor employee productivity. In this article, we have given complete insight into the strategies to monitor WFH workers.
From utilizing digital tools to fostering open communication, these techniques not only enhance efficiency but also nurture a sense of trust and motivation among remote teams. By embracing flexibility, adaptability, and empathy, organizations can unlock the full potential of a distributed workforce.
The future of work is here, and it is time to embrace it with open arms and endless possibilities.