Remote working is common, especially after COVID-19; most companies prefer to work from home. This working model has some benefits followed by drawbacks. For instance, a dedicated employee will keep the consistent working capacity from home, whereas a lazy one keeps you concerned about his performance. The question is how to monitor employees working from home? There are many effective ways to monitor remote working. Let’s find out the easiest yet most effective methods to monitor employees working from home.
Why is Monitoring Employees Essential?
You can’t deny the importance of proper monitoring of your employee, especially when he is working from home. Here is the importance of employee monitoring software.
- To control the critical situation of date manipulation or loss
- To stay updated about the ongoing work
- To improve the employee-employer relationship
- For maximum transparency
- To identify and eliminate mistakes in work
- To enhance productivity and profit
How to Monitor Employees Working From Home- 6 Easy and Effective Ways
1. Viewing Team Activity Regularly
Transparency is the most critical factor when it comes to remote work. Once you have properly structured and organized everything, it’s time to select a good team and present them with a clear and bigger picture.
It will help to ensure that each team member knows how he/she fits in, what’s needed of them, and above all, what their deliverable is. Each team member will realize how their efforts fit into the team result.
Communicating expectations to the team and seeking their given feedback will help to transform your team’s effort to a whole new level. Don’t forget to include everyone’s review before making a decision. Check your team activity on a regular basis and include the entire team in those checks.
2. Setting tasks with Deadlines.
This is another effective strategy to monitor remote work. The task mine is a basic structural unit of the work. You can conveniently assign tasks with deadliness using different apps like ActiveCollab. It is essential to ensure that your team fully understands the entire scope. If you are unable to provide good structure to your employees, you will have to monitor each member’s activity individually.
On the contrary, when you provide them with a good structure, it will be easy and result-oriented for a team. Tasks with deadlines are the best way to achieve them.
Also read: what is employee monitoring
3. Monitor when Employee is at his desk?
Instead of stalking employees, devise a set of rules and processes that enables your team to organize their time perfectly. If everything else fails, monitoring your remote team, whether they are at their desks or not, is the final measure.
You can come to an arrangement on whether all team members are online at the same time. You can organize refinements, meetings, workshops, reviews, brainstorming, and many more. Organize such activities in a time slot and let the team members organize individual activities according to their needs.
When you realize that your team is failing to reach daily goals, it’s time to create a tighter work schedule. However, it is recommended to talk to the team and know the problems they are facing. It will help to understand why they are not able to reach their goals.
4. Supervise Employees Remotely
Transparency is everything in working from home. There is no better way to supervise employees remotely. However, it doesn’t mean taking a screenshot of your Employee after one minute.
You have to position yourself as the best team leader to gain the pros and cons of employee monitoring. Define a procedure that enables each and every team member to validate and provide feedback on every task.
A core foundation of every team is a joint effort to produce a mutual goal. When you include every team member in planning and tracking, there is no reason to forget them in the validation phase. This tactic is very effective if your team is interdisciplinary and team members can give a decent contribution when it comes to analysis and feedback of other people’s work.
If they are unable to do so, it is a good time to recognize every team person and give them a bit of a spotlight. It helps to identify problems and is much more satisfying when the solutions are widely recognized.
5. Tracking internet usage
Do you think intrusion into the employee’s personal space is a good decision? Not at all, as crossing the line is in the wrong direction and may result in an unpleasant situation. It will de-motivate your team and put an unnecessary amount of anxiety and pressure into an already stressful situation.
So, what is the best alternative then? Transparency makes your work more efficient and results-oriented. Include the team members in every aspect of your planning process. Make sure you are available for essential inquiries and provide them with needed guidance. Let them realize they have your trust.
6. Report Summary of the Day
While working on different tasks simultaneously, a team may lose track o what they have accomplished during the day. Your daily summary should not be about listing the things that were done, but it can be much more efficient than that.
A daily summary can be a tool to help you identify the opportunities for improvement, mark positional problems and show the steps to the team to achieve goals and overcome issues.
You are free to select the form of these routine summaries. However, a daily team meeting is an excellent way to ensure everyone is on the proper track, every task is validated, and free from misunderstandings.
Final words
Remote work is the future, and leaders from different industries are looking for effective ways to empower, motivate and enhance the performance of their team. It is easy to monitor employees working from home with the proper plan, reporting, and defined goals. Remember, your business depends on the employee’s performance, and you are the one that is responsible for taking his performance to the next level with regular monitoring.