Productivity is the heart of every company. It does not matter the kind of product or service you deliver; if your employees are not productive enough, your business will suffer. Clients would be disappointed and leave you for your competitors who will serve them better. Prolonged non-productivity in a company will lead to a waste of resources. And no company wants that to happen.
Even companies working in the same industry and serving similar customers are unique and distinct in some factors, so it would be useless to think of a one-size-fits-all technique to tracking productivity. Also, your company probably has varied elements with employees doing disparate things. The productivity scale for one aspect of your business would be different from the others. Thanks to technology and gained industry intelligence, now there are numerous ways you can monitor the productivity of employees.
Let us look into the top 10 ideas to monitor & evaluate your team’s productivity.
1. Set precise deadlines for remote employees
Your team should know how and when the work is to be completed. By establishing clear expectations, your remote employees will be able to handle their time appropriately. Some managers fail to set a clear deadline for their staff duties. This can create confusion for both employers and remote employees. When the manager expects the work to be submitted, the remote employees cannot do so because they did not plan out their time appropriately from the beginning.
Therefore, your employees must know when they should be submitting the work, especially if the project is time-bound. You can plan tasks easily with the help of various project management & productivity tracking software. This way, you won’t have to wait for the work completion deadline and can track the work at each stage. You can also communicate easily with your team, remind them about the deadline, and track your employees’ productivity.
2. Provide frequent feedback to your employees
Rather than waiting for the end of the quarter or appraisal time, provide regular feedback to your employees so that they can comprehend their strengths and weaknesses. Your employees will be able to enhance their work and improve their productivity. Having a monthly or quarterly feedback culture is necessary to make employees work efficiently. Your employees will also be able to understand where they are lacking and what they need to do to improve their performance.
Therefore, the management should be regular in providing productive feedback to your employees. Feedback will help determine any bottlenecks in the work and fix any disputes. Many time tracking tools help you monitor productivity from time to time and also compare against the team’s performance.
3. Check-in every day
Check-in meetings every day might feel like micromanagement, however, when properly executed, they are efficient and valuable to measure problems, performance, and opinions. Daily check-ins display employees that managers care about performance and want to stay updated about productivity. Additionally, tracking employee productivity is an excellent method to set realistic targets for the future.
4. Give your team members responsibilities
Making a team member answerable for the work creates a sense of responsibility regarding their work. Now, giving responsibility can take various forms like leading an assignment, handling the responsibility of a task, etc. It indicates that you have entrusted your team members and their abilities to manage a specific job. And when you do this, you discover that there is nothing more effective than building someone’s self-esteem in your company.
5. Employee time tracking software
Employee time tracking apps allow you to monitor how much time your employees are spending on the job. When this system is installed, ask your employees to use the timer as against recording manually. Time tracking tools are perfect to analyze how much time it takes to complete each individual task.
6. Keep track of employee digital activities
Employees might get distracted on the job even when the time tracker is ticking. But by utilizing employee activity monitoring apps, you would be able to monitor your employee activities and find out if they have spent the hours productively or get distracted often with social media and other unproductive digital channels.
7. Use of project management software
Project management apps are great for small to midsize companies because they keep everyone on the same page. Ideally, you should select one that allows employees to view their tasks and documents when they get done. You should furthermore give information through the software; otherwise, you may have to use email or secondary apps for communication.
8. Track attendance and leaves with employee tracking software
You need employee attendance and time tracking software if your employees often complain about any differences in their attendance or payslips. If your HR also finds it challenging to manage all the data, the time tracking software can make it easier to deal with it. Even if you have a small workforce, digital time tracking software is important to improve efficiency and productivity in the team.
The time tracking software should also let your remote workforce apply for any holidays in a few simple clicks. In this way, you can cut down the paperwork and dismiss the need to track emails.
9. Praise a job well done
Praising an employee/team encourages a healthy work culture in a company, which also helps in increasing team productivity. Praising a staff member in front of the team works in boosting morale. Instead of showing appreciation via email or in a room, this public act of appreciation motivates others in the group to do their best.
10. Reward your employees
Employees want their work to be appreciated monetarily as well and they secretly desire to have a little more than just a pat on the back from their managers. That’s why so many companies choose to use incentive programs to motivate their employees.
There is no one specific way to motivate your teams and get them to be more productive. However, you can lay the basis of a productive environment with specific strategies, technology adoption and regular practices. If you continue to provide the employees with feedback, motivation and support, in time, you’ll see a substantial rise in the employee productivity.
Want to get the most out of your junior employees? Start a free unlimited trial of Handdy today and find out how your organisation could benefit from all-in-one workplace management software.