Category: Employee Empowerment

How COVID-19 Will Reshape Online Education Forever

COVID-19 Will Reshape Online Education

Schools, colleges and universities too are part of the battle of survival along with businesses in this COVID-19 global pandemic. Students and teachers stuck at home with instructions given that classes must continue online. And in this endeavour to keep lectures and classes ongoing, educational institutes are finding that given the resources and software available, online education may be a possible way to get around this pandemic for the following reasons:

The Pros:

  • Institutions don’t have to face closure if classes can continue online
  • Students and faculty don’t need to travel, so they’re safe indoors during the pandemic
  • Students coming from different cities and countries will find it easier to keep studying from home
  • Material shared online can be constantly updated
  • Students can study in their own pace rather than trying to keep up with the rest of the class

However, with benefits also come some drawbacks. Many teachers are now on places like Quora seeking for solutions that could make remote teaching and studying easier because of certain issues like:

The Cons:

  • Students may not get questions answered by professors as promptly as they would in a classroom as interaction is limited
  • Students must have plenty of self-discipline to keep up with assignments and quizzes
  • Students may not find audio and video resources effective for learning as compared to the live experience
  • Students must find the technology easy to use to ensure the online system works properly for them
  • Conducting fair examinations may not be easy as preventing students from cheating becomes harder online without a way to monitor their activity.
  • It is difficult to able to tell if a student is legitimately paying attention to lectures or is busy with other things

But as the world is pushed into staying at home, technology has risen to aid with the difficulties created by the outbreak. Numerous applications and services have become popular now such as:


Zoom

Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing platform that helps make meetings, audio conferencing, webinars, meeting recordings, and live chat easier even if the number of participants is 100 at a time. Its technology can help make live video lectures easier for teachers to do for a whole group of students at a single time.


Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a free service for schools that helps them in creating a paperless way of creating and distributing study material and gradable assignments. It makes it easier for teachers and students to share files with each other.


Coursera

Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organisations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, and recently they have made their courses available for free to help people stay productive at home.


Remind

Remind makes it easy for teachers to communicate with students and their parents in real-time outside of the classroom. You can make class announcements, initiate group chats, or contact people privately through the app. Your messages, which can contain files, images, and links, can even be translated into more than 90 languages, making it possible to communicate with parents who are non-native English speakers.


StaffTimer

Although the name suggests its made for offices, its features are so extensive they can be used to help teacher and lecturers with lessons and quizzes. Here are a few features to explain how StaffTimer can be used for education:

Real-time Monitoring

Teachers can see in real-time what students are up to. Gone are the days where students think they can be busy watching other things or playing games on other tabs during lectures.

Intelligent Reports

StaffTimer makes it feel like being in a classroom again with in-depth reports showing students’ tasks and the amount of time they spent on them along with url and app usage reports. Their idleness and productivity can be tracked as well by noting how many keystrokes and clicks they’ve done per minute.

Instant screen capture

Teachers can make use of setting screenshots to be taken at the intervals of their choice. StaffTimer is capable of taking screenshots every passing minute. Even if a student’s internet connection is lost and in order to ensure genuine work, the software will keep capturing the screenshots and upload it to the work diary  once the internet is back online.

Voice Notes

Video conferencing is already data consuming as it is so it’s useful for teachers to be able to send instructions or small notes through voice notes when assigning students with tasks.

With these features and more, teaching won’t be a difficult task to do remotely as institutes and parents can take a sigh of relief that this academic session won’t go to waste.

10 Employee Engagement Activities in Companies

Employee engagement activities aren’t considered as important as they should be. But before you start crunching numbers and coming up with some new activities, know that employee engagement is essentially a mindset. The only way employee engagement activities can yield the desired result is if you keep your focus on the “why” of the issue.  

Don’t just look at the figures and statistics. Treat your employees with empathy because they are humans with their own ideas, thoughts, accomplishment, and problems. They are not just there to make money for your company, they are vital resources that need nurturing in order to deliver satisfactory results. 

Importance of Employee Engagement Activities 

The Importance of employee engagement activities can’t be overstated. They have time and again proven to:

    • Decrease staff turnover rate
    • Improve efficiency and productivity
    • Retain more customers 
    • Increase profits

Most importantly, engaged employees are obviously happier, both in their professional and personal life. Everything done with increased engagement has longlasting effects on the culture of the workplace. 

 

   See Also: Time Clock Apps for Multiple Employees

Purpose of Employee Engagement 

The main purpose of employee engagement is to attract and retain top talent. Recent research has shown that more than a quarter of employees is at a high risk of turnover. The most worrying part is that one-third of those at risk are talented employees that go above and beyond what’s expected of them. They are eligible for other positions. 

When competition is fierce and the cost of training new employees is sky-high, employee engagement activities become vital. Plus, these activities can directly increase the productivity of a team and take it to the next level. 

How to Engage Employees

Some of the top employee engagement activities include:

 

  • Involving Employees in Your Business Planning

Have a big meeting with all of your employees every six months or so. Tell them about the most important issues faced by your company and how you plan to address those issues. Take your team on board while making future plans, assessing opportunities, and refining pre-existing business strategies to suit your needs. 

 

  • Creating an Efficient Knowledge Sharing System

High employee turnover rate means inevitably results in the loss of essential information. One way to avoid it is by creating a kind of knowledge sharing system. It avoids extra cost to some degree and has proven to be a great engagement driver for new hires. 

We recommend implementing a mentorship program that pairs new employees with experienced ones. It will quickly get the new hires up to speed and help familiarize them with the working process of your company.  

 

  • Showing Them the Financial State of Your Company

Don’t hide your company’s financial record from your employees. Flaunt it and instill your employees with confidence. 

Give a quick presentation at the end of every year or quarter. Show them the fruits of everyone’s efforts, set ambitious goals for the next phase, explain how everyone involved can meet those goals. This eventually becomes a set of activities that keeps the employee engaged and full of purpose. 

 

  • Creating a Learning Environment

One of the main reasons why employees quit companies is a lack of learning opportunities. They claim that employers always demand more but don’t provide an environment that encourages growth. 

Make it easier for employees to access the required knowledge and development opportunities. 

 

  • Hyping Upcoming Opportunities

Get your employees excited about upcoming events. Let them know that opportunity is knocking on their door and they better grab it with both hands. You can communicate these opportunities in your internal newsletter, directly, or during the monthly meeting. 

If your employees are optimistic about your company’s future, they’ll ignore those poaching emails from other companies. 

 

  • Start Your Own Internal Magazine

Create a magazine focused solely on your employees. Fill the magazine with witty columns, news, stories, and opportunities. We’re sure that most of the staff will love to be featured on the cover as Employee of the Month. 

The magazine could be in online or print form. You can even go for both forms; a monthly online and a quarterly print issue. 

 

  • Encourage Individuals to Take Responsibility

Each and every employee is the hero of their own story. They need to carve out their own career path and set goals for themselves. 

Have your employees write their goals on a piece of paper. Tell them to put the paper in an envelope and seal it. After six months or so, give them the sealed envelopes to let the see if they’ve accomplished their goal. 

 

  • Always Give Back

Get involved with your local social and charitable initiatives. Giving back to your community helps you get in a positive mindset. It also cultivates pride and loyalty. 

Have your team pitch some causes and start supporting the one you feel most strongly about. Make it your personal mission and not just some hobby. Get your employees involved as well. Let them feel and know that they’re making a difference. 

 

  • Act on Employee Feedback

Listening to employee feedback is just part of the equation. You won’t be able to build any engagement without actually acting on said feedback and making the necessary changes. 

This doesn’t mean that you should act on feedback from all your employees. Prioritize feedback from your high-performing employees. If they feel like their voice isn’t being heard, they’ll most likely look for other opportunities. 

If you’re not sure who your high-performing employees are, use Staff Timer to monitor and receive daily intelligence reports on employee tasks and projects.  

 

  • Allow Personalization at the Workplace

When you depersonalize the workplace, you end up dehumanizing your employees. Encourage them to put some personalized items on their desks. Normalize diversity and inclusion. 

In short, create policies that accept different hairstyles and clothing options that reflect their individual beliefs and values. 

 

  See Also: Task Tracker

Key Takeaways

Employee engagement activities are absolutely worth their weight in gold. There are countless benefits of having engaged employees that believe in what they’re doing and look forward to their day. 

Always remember, satisfied employees means satisfied customers. 

5 Strategies to Attract Women in the Workplace

In this 21st century, Gender equality is exceedingly under the spotlight, among industries. Women are profoundly shaping every aspect of work across the globe. Therefore, delivering results at an unprecedented rate in this never-ending race between Men V/S Women. Radically redefining workspaces!

Organizations, on the other hand, are evolving, plowing ahead in bridging the gender gap by eliminating gender-based barriers and supporting a diverse culture. Additionally, companies seem to be changing the way they hire and promote women, with better performance and good business. They are now more inclined towards improving women’s representation no matter the color, cast, or religion they belong to.

There would be no exaggeration to say…

… that we’ve made significant progress in pushing diversity forward, things have taken a turn for the better. Women are increasingly participating in all walks of life and their motivation is beyond comparison.

According to a study, 2019 sees the highest percentage of women in senior management on record, at 29% as compared to last year.

Still, there are many ways in which we can make the workplace a safer and more hospitable place for not only women but for people from diverse cultures.

Let’s take a look at some of these key trends:

Say ‘No’ to Workplace Harassment!

The first and foremost responsibility of the company is to ensure comfort to its female employees. Harassment of any kind should be considered as unwelcomed conduct and should be taken seriously. In short, have a zero tolerance policy!

According to Women in the Workplace 2018 report released by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org., stated that 35% of women have experienced sexual harassment at the workplace in 2018.

What should you do?

Managers, supervisors and human resources, collectively, should deal fairly when they come across any knowledge of harassment within their teams and departments. No matter how minor the issue is, all complaints should be taken into consideration. Appropriate action and prompt investigation should be in place to prevent any kind of retaliation and reoccurrence of such events.

Not only this, companies spend thousands on their creative recruitment practices. What good are these procedures, when they can’t even retain employees? That’s why, the employers have to ensure that the female employees are not facing discomfort and also, regular training should be conducted for male employees in order to explain the severity of this issue.

Having said that, it is mandatory for a company to strictly punish those who are in violation of harassment policies, in order to make a safe working environment for women.

Offer Flexible Work Schedules

Another most important aspect of attracting women to the workplace is flexible work timings. Simply adjusting their timelines, can give them an opportunity to maintain a work-life balance!

Maintaining a professional life with personal can be a bit of a challenge for women all over the world. It becomes intense when their work starts to take over their personal priorities.

Strict timings are actually the main reason that stops women from joining a company.

Be flexible!

If you want to squeeze productivity out of them, then it is your duty to give women the liberty to choose the schedule that favors them. Help them manage their time and effort, by providing comfortable working hours to your female employees. If sometimes, your company is unable to provide the required timings; pay them over-time, facilitate transport and ensure safety.

‘Congratulations, it’s a girl’

Yes, we are talking about Maternity leaves here. Motherhood brings about a lot of changes in a woman’s life!

In order to ease this growing challenge, it’s important for the companies to best support women by providing them with decent maternity leave packages. Because if you can’t support women after having a baby, you probably don’t deserve to utilize their talents to grow YOUR business!

If you want to attract top female talent to your workplace, offer them full salaried maternity and paternity leaves. As it is one of the most effective ways through which you can show concern and commitment to working women and families. Go above and beyond, in promoting gender equality and inclusion at the workplace.  

‘Yes’ to Women Empowerment

Want to attract talented and capable women to your thriving company? Then, initiate ways through which you can empower them.

Include them in decision-making procedures, provide your female employees with company perks, give them growth opportunities, offer exceptional benefits and market competitive wages and give them the tools to succeed.

Make sure that women in your workplace are appreciated and recognized for their work. Promote them as much as your male employees, show them that they are being valued, help them grow their potential and skills.

Women as Future Leaders

Women are the leaders of the future. Companies that are serious about recruiting female talent should make sure that they provide infinite possibilities for women in leadership roles.

With challenges specific to women, such as maintaining a work-life balance, pay gaps, and gender inequality, sometimes hinder their growth.  As s company, you should help them climb up the corporate ladder.

Having women in strong leadership roles is actually benefiting the companies as it brings diversity into teams and enables success.

A Long way to go…

Companies with strong anti-harassment, and equal rights policies and that have taken successful steps to address the imbalance, are progressing towards success every day.

There is so much more that companies can do for their female employees. It’s important that they focus on making small changes, only then can you attract talented women to the workplace.

What steps are you taking for the safe future of women in the workplace?

5 Simple ways you can Empower Employees at the workplace!

Do you know with great leadership comes great responsibility?  Well, of course, you do!

And one of these responsibilities is giving your employees the autonomy to work, to take initiatives and encouraging them to be the best versions of themselves. We admit, being a leader is not easy, but it is your duty to help your employees without constant micromanagement. Looking beyond employee benefits, there’s a lot that the organizations can do to best support their employees at the workplace.

In rather fancier terms, Empower them! By employee empowerment, you are giving them a chance to make certain decisions on their own, giving them a chance to work independently and most of all giving them a chance to learn and grow! Bottom line is, empowering employees can have ginormous benefits not only to the team but to the company as a whole; it improves accountability, job satisfaction and helps you in finding the solution to all your problems, collectively.

Harvard Business Review conducted a meta-analysis of all available field experiments on leaders empowering subordinates – examining the results of 105 studies, which included data from more than 30,000 employees from 30 countries.

Their study showed that empowering leadership can motivate employees and also, fuels workplace creativity. Empowered employees are happy employees and happy employees are more productive.

Are you interested in the empowerment of your employees? Follow these 5 simple tips and transform your work culture:

Must Believe in Your Employees

According to Steve Jobs  – a force behind leading Apple to corporate success:

“It’s not the tools you have faith in–tools are just tools–they work, or they don’t work. It’s the people you have faith in or not.”

Building trust in your workforce is one of the key factors. Successful business relationships are founded on the sacred principles of trust, and respect.

Without this, the ability to overcome challenges and workplace issues is greatly compromised. There are many reasons why you can not afford to not trust your employees. Trust inspires confidence and confidence leads to success, which helps employees to further their own career and growth. It will make employees more inclined towards taking on new challenges and pushing themselves beyond limits to achieve the best, not only for them but for their organization.

In short, believe in your employees and encourage them to do the same, others will follow.

Inspire Creativity

Do you feel that your employees are not creative enough at work? What are you doing wrong? Business creativity starts with employee creativity! Well, that’s a given. There are many reasons why employees lose their creativity for example not enough resources, lack of autonomy, lack of recognition, so on and so forth.  Now, what you can do to stop that?

Start by accepting their ideas and inputs. Make them a part of an active decision making or even goal-setting. At first, they might face difficulty and hesitation while making a decision on behalf of your team but you learn as you live.

Additionally, it’s not just about decision making, its’ also about finding better ways to accomplishing a task and solving problems, rather than using the same age-old techniques. Encourage your employees to bring creative ideas to the table. Not only, will it help empower your employees, it can also open up doors for many new and innovative ideas that might have the power to lead your company to greatness.

Makes sense, right?

A little appreciation can go a long way!

You have to admit, that we all crave appreciation and recognition in one way or the other. Either it’s work, or not, it’s always helpful to receive some applaud.

Have you ever noticed that we human beings have a tendency to repeat behaviors, good or bad? Similarly, positive feedback reinforces a spark in employees. Showing employees the appreciation for their work well done makes it even more likely that they will continue to be creative, and innovative.

It ensures continued high-quality work in the future as well.

Whether it’s a goal they have achieved before time or a report that was presented flawlessly, let them know when they have done a good job! It doesn’t cost anything.

Autonomy, give your Employees Autonomy!

Do not let your employees view their jobs as simply ‘work for pay’, and nothing more, nothing less.

Employee autonomy is crucial for learning. As a leader, yes it is your job to manage your employees, but instead of worrying about the small details, direct your focus on the goals and strategic objectives of each individual team member. Let them exercise choice and take care of the minute details. Rather than micromanaging, communicate the end-result and then help them build on that.

Bonus: Granting autonomy to employees improves workplace retention!

Have an Open-door Policy

Well-defined open door policy is what every workplace should have and need. No, it doesn’t mean it gives employees an opportunity for continuous complaining and nagging, No.

Maintaining an open line of positive communication with your team is an important aspect of running a successful business venture. It leads to higher job satisfaction and shows employees that you care about what they think. In order to truly empower your employees, carefully listen to their opinions and let them know that they are valued. It will enable them to play an active part in your company.

A simple gesture as this can do wonders!

And the list continues…

The success of organizations depends on the success of its’ employees.

Managers need to understand that empowering employees in the workplace is crucial for companies to thrive.    

The bottom line is, empowering employees at the workplace is about accountability and trust. However, if you follow the ways outlined above, you’ll be able to achieve a healthy workplace.

What have you done in your workplace to empower your employees?

Top 3 Time Tracking Apps for Remote Workers

Many people around the world have welcomed the trend of Remote Work. It is exciting, it is diverse and it is a great experience. Thanks to the innovative tools that were born out of the recent technological advancements that this new trend persisted.

Tools like Online Project Management Software and Time Tracking Apps have helped people connect, collaborate and work together no matter how far they are located physically.

A quick Google search reveals a plethora of Time Tracking tools. We have used the following 3 applications extensively and analysed them to find out their strengths and weaknesses.

The List | Top 3

The following applications are extensively used by Freelancers and Remote Workers all around the world. They all have many great features and solve many problems for the distributed teams. Here, we have covered these applications and mentioned the Pros and Cons for the users to decide which application sounds best for them.

 

FreshBooks-All-In-One Small Business Invoicing and Accounting Solution

Freshbooks is a cool tool for remote employers. Its features range from Time Tracking to Online Invoicing.

Pros

  • It is a simple employee monitoring app that requires the users to log hours manually or with the help of a timer.
  • It presents a simple and yet elaborate invoicing system. The users can bill directly after tracking the time. Since this software provides integrated time tracking and invoicing, the clients do not need to use multiple applications for tracking their time and Invoicing.
  • Freshbooks has a major focus on Invoicing. Hence, it provides a lot of payment options for users. This feature comes in handy especially when your remote team belongs to different regions of the world and have different banking preferences.

Cons

  • The application requires manual clearance of all the invoices paid through various payment gateways.
  • Freshbooks gives a lot of leverage to the Employers and not so much to the employees. It gives employers the option of declaring an invoice ‘disputed’. In some cases, this resulted in payment fraud.

Staff Timer App – The time tracking solution for remote workers

Staff Timer App is the perfect time tracker app for remote workers. It has a lot of features that have been designed keeping in mind the growing trend of remote work.

Pros

  • The application is completely automated and it uses Screenshots to calculate the time spent by the user on all the activities done during the work hours. The employer gets an estimate for the time spent on work-related and non-work related activities.
  • The application is very simple to use. It is a minimum viable product so there are no unnecessary frills. Just the features that are absolutely important!
  • The remote monitoring features like Instant Screen Capture and Real-Time Screen monitoring are vital for a remote manager.
  • The low price is a very strong point for StaffTimerApp. At $2.99/user, it provides a lot of useful features and services.

Cons

  • The application is in the development phase and the design needs some improvements.
  • The Snapshot that is acquired through instant screen capture is not saved and accessible for later use.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is one of the most widely used Time Trackers in the market. And it truly deserves the top spot.

Pros

  • The interface of Hubstaff is very appealing. It is simple to use and the UX is pretty self-explanatory.
  • The application captures the screenshots of the employees randomly. These screenshots are very important for Remote Employees.
  • You can view the Time with respect to projects, team members, and tasks. You can see the breakdown very clearly. This feature gives a lot of clarity to employers with extremely detailed reports. They can view the number of hours spent on each task.
  • Hubstaff offers a flexible payment system. It lets the employer choose individual payment plans for all the team members. The employers can choose from a vast array of payment gateways.

Cons

  • It is a mix of Time Tracking, Time Management, and Invoicing Software.
  • The customer service of Hubstaff is not its finest quality. The CSRs take a lot of time to reply and more often than not the replies are useless.
  • The activity level statistics can be misleading. For optimum activity level, the user needs to log keystrokes all the time. We know that in the real world, it is a very bad indication for calculating productivity.

Conclusion

All these applications have some amazing features and all of them have some loopholes as well. It is really important to pick the right time Tracking Software that is fit for your needs. The right choice can greatly enhance the productivity of your teams and generate better profits!
Do you have any tools in your mind that we can add to our list? Don’t forget to share it!

Like what you read? We have more, for you:

 

Increase Your Productivity at work | 5 effective ways to make big changes:

There are a number of automated tools available in the market either for communication or collaboration or employee task monitoring. But before we move on, let’s define employee productivity.

Best Employee Time Tracking Apps for Mac and Windows: 

Employee time tracking app for Mac and Windows are becoming a necessity throughout the business world. But is time management that important? Everybody gets the same number of hours to work every day i.e. 24 hours. Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mahatma Gandhi, Julius Caesar– all these great men only had 24 hours as well.