by Claudia Jeffery

Micromanaging is probably considered one of the business management styles that are perceived with a negative connotation. And while retail managers do follow up with such practices, in a remote setting where workers are working from home, many face challenges to ensure whether their subordinates are making the best use of work hours.

However, in the wake of recent events such as the coronavirus pandemic, some surprising observations were found that contradicted general beliefs of managers regarding work from home opportunity. 

According to a recent study by Fundera, more than 5 million US employees work from home at least half the time, and telecommuting is more popular than ever.

Furthermore, it is estimated that 73% of all departments will have remote workers by 2028—two-thirds of managers who offer telecommuting flexibility report an increase in productivity of employees. 

Moreover, employers offer part-time telecommuting collectively save $44 billion each year. 

In light of this information, let’s take a quick look at some of the ways you can monitor employees for better productivity.     

• Daily Check-Ins & Weekly Meetings

This is a great way to ensure that your employees are on track. Your daily check-ins can also serve a reminder to your employees that even though they are home, they are still being evaluated for their performances and that work hours are not meant to be taken for granted. Daily check-ins should follow proper time, and your team members have to be punctual about them. 

They can take the form of a conference call which must be attended by all team members, and those who don’t make are marked absent. Lastly, you can also organize weekly meetings at the end of each week to discuss their accomplishments, milestones achieved, tasks delivered, pending tasks, and future collaborations. 

• Employee Monitoring Software 

There are various tools out there that you can use to ensure that your employees are making good use of their work hours and not wasting their time. These tools are specially designed to provide you with various analytics regarding your employee’s screen time, usage of applications, time allocated to a particular task, track their online activities, and much more. Some of the finest tools available include:

• • Time Doctor – a great tool that tracks your employee’s engagement based on allocated tasks and sends a snapshot of their screens every 5 seconds to your database. 
  • Teramind – it is considered by far one of the best when it comes to employee monitoring and offers you various features to track their activities and report negligence on their part. 
  • Goal & Time Tracking

By setting goals, you can make your employees responsible and accountable for their actions. Either you ask them to create content for your retail store, or want them to write my assignment UK, you need to track how much time is required for the task. You should mutually set SMART goals with your workers that are specific in nature, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-oriented.  

Conclusion 

Studies are showing that work from home and remote work opportunities are going through a rise in trend. Plus with supportive technology that can help employers and managers to track remote worker’s activity is paving the way to induce greater productivity levels for organizations and establishments.

I hope this post was able to offer you some meaningful insights as to how you can go about ensuring that productivity levels for your remote workers don’t dwindle. All the best for future endeavors!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Claudia Jeffery is Sr. Research Analyst & Digital Evangelist at Dissertation Assistance.