How to Measure Employee Productivity When Working From Home
Since the global pandemic, there has been a tremendous shift in the labor market. With the advent of the covid era, working from home has become the rule rather than the exception.
Over 70% of companies are figuring out how to use hybrid or remote work models. However, there are also difficulties associated with working remotely. Several distractions, such as kids, pets, or an unstable internet connection, would sap your work-from-home team’s focus.
As luck would have it, research shows that remote work increases productivity and helps companies keep their best employees. A recent survey found that 82% of companies believe remote work effectively retains top personnel. But how can you measure your team’s productivity when they’re working remotely?
That’s where we come in. We have put together practical tips you can use to measure your team’s productivity while they work remotely. Keep reading to find out how to go about it.
Create a Remote Worker Productivity Policy
Productivity is the amount of work completed in a given amount of time. Most workers don't measure productivity by output. Employee productivity is more accurately gauged by looking at workers' impact on the company's bottom line rather than just their output.
You can better assess employee productivity by adding business-oriented metrics like customer satisfaction, sales, and website visitors. Making a policy that specifies how you will measure productivity is the first step. It will assist you in establishing efficient systems.
Workers will be aware of every metric you use to evaluate their performance. Staff confidence will grow as a result, and they will be better able to set priorities.
Set Key Performance Indicators for Your Remote Team
When workers clearly understand what is expected of them, they are likelier to put forth an honest effort. Therefore, depending on their position and responsibilities, each employee should have a set of five to ten KPIs.
For example, a social media manager's KPI may be to gain 30 new monthly followers. Also, a salesperson may be expected to make 20 deals per quarter. You could also evaluate a customer service team's efficiency by looking at how much its monthly average response time drops.
If you know what you're supposed to accomplish and how you'll gauge your progress using the predetermined KPIs, then it's just a matter of deciding how much money you're willing to spend and rewarding those who deliver results. By establishing KPIs, you can measure employees' output, regardless of location, and single out those falling short.
Set Up an Internal Feedback System
Improving key performance indicators is only part of the solution to increasing productivity. With the correct data, you can pinpoint workers who need additional assistance, but it's ultimately up to managers and HR to provide it. Practical, helpful, and motivating feedback requires prompt delivery.
This method helps estimate the output of telecommuters. Ensure that your remote team completes short surveys describing their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of their coworkers' performance and attitude toward work.
The survey needs to be incorporated into regular performance reviews for the remote worker. Such feedback is usually unfiltered and pure, leading to either rewards or disciplinary action for the person in question.
Set Goals and Effective Follow-Up Strategy
Goals should be broken down into more manageable subtasks to monitor progress more efficiently and reduce employee burden. Companies focusing on productivity will set goals and deadlines for remote employees, like their in-office staff.
Metrics are the key to optimizing the performance of your distributed teams. The relevance of particular metrics to your company will vary. Most important is the follow-up on the set goals. You can start regular email reminders to follow up on your team. This could be an excellent chance to make sure each employee is focused on the common goal.
Embrace Collaboration and Productivity Tracking Tools
Manual methods and policies need to be more robust when measuring the output of remote workers. The biggest barrier to effective remote work is the failure to implement suitable technological measures.
Pick a good project management tool that lets teams collaborate online to produce, update, and store documents and data files. It will facilitate real-time viewing and editing, cut down on the paper trail, and more.
Additionally, it may be the perfect anecdote to satisfy your curiosity about the timing of managerial actions. Check the page's popularity using an analytics tool. You can get a feel for who contributes the most to the team by keeping tabs with one of these tools. It's a fantastic tool for remote workers to communicate and collaborate with their colleagues.
Productivity monitoring software can be useful for companies with mobile workers who spend part of their day at a client site or another location. It prevents employees from clocking in early and allows for correcting late or missed punches. Finding time-tracking software that also has a mobile app is preferable. Importing data for payroll purposes and managing attendance would be a smooth process. It simplifies attendance tracking, allowing workers more time to concentrate on their work.
Try engaging your virtual team using file sharing and synchronization services like Dropbox, Cloud storage, Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. Teams that work well together and share information are more effective than those that don't.
Employees can improve their teamwork through collaboration by working on the same tasks simultaneously, reporting their progress, and offering assistance to one another in real-time.
Embrace Collaboration and Productivity Tracking Tools
Most managers' biggest concern when working with remote employees is keeping them motivated; a simple "good job" would go a long way toward achieving this goal.
If you want to get more out of your remote workers, it's not enough to just set goals for them; you also need to reward them when they're met. For instance, HeyTaco allows you to constantly celebrate the successes of your remote workers, while you can extend Slack with apps to provide even more functionality.
Colleagues can share feedback and appreciation via a Google form survey. It can also be used as a gratitude and morale-building tool to share at a regular online company or team meetings. In addition, you can combine this feedback with your objective observation to award prizes for particularly noteworthy efforts, productivity, and so on.
Do you wish to increase your team's efficiency while saving one day per week? Make an appointment for a complimentary consultation today!