Category: Productivity

Do employees work from home? Here are Top 8 Tips for Employee Productivity Tracking!

The world is facing a complete digital shift and the remote working comes with it. Also, virtual companies are getting common by the day, with teams dispersed around the globe.

This revolution brings with itself the concern for employers: Do employees work from home? If yes, are they equally productive as those in an office space? Another major question is to monitoring employees activity and productivity. Here are a few tips on how employers can perform employee productivity tracking:

8. Prioritize Work According to Ease of Completion

The first step to fully utilize the hours in an 8-hour work day. For this, it is highly important to prioritize tasks and organize them in a schedule where they can actually be carried out and completed. For instance, if there are tasks that require a remote employee to travel or communicate with some vendors, or companies, then the optimum time to carry out that task is generally in the afternoon when the workflow is prime.

On the other hand, if there are tasks that require an employee to be creative and imaginative, then the best time for that is in the early morning.  Since people are most likely to have fresh minds in the morning. This would save time, and allow easy employee productivity tracking via the number of tasks completed within a day.

7. Ensure Employees Work During Company’s Work Hours

Remote work can lead to increased procrastination. Employees can tend to be more relaxed due to the heightened comfort level around them when in their own spaces. This may result in employees working on their own hours and not when every employee in the company is active.

To avoid miscommunication of tasks, and effective employee productivity tracking, we advise you to set some rules for your employees. One may be that employees working remotely must work during the company’s work hours to improve team communication and timely utilization of work produced.

For example, if a remote content writer completes content for a website at midnight, the front-end developers implement it in the morning and require changes in it, they will have to wait till the next day to get those changes in the content done.

This will delay the task itself, which should not have taken more than a few hours. Therefore, for effective employee productivity tracking, it is essential for remote and in-house employees to be active and work in unison at the same time.

6. Regular Work Intervals Allow Employee Productivity Tracking

Let’s face it, no human can remain productive for 8 or 9 hours straight. Everyone deserves a break and some relaxation time in order to be productive, deliver targets on time and relieve work stress. For efficient employee productivity tracking, it is recommended to work in short intervals.

For instance, if an employee works for 1 hour, rests for 15 minutes and again works for 1 hour, they are likely to be more productive than if they work for 4 hours non-stop and rest for 1 hour and then work for 4 hours non-stop again.

Similarly, the last person with a 1-hour break is likely to be more productive than the person who works for 8 hours straight, without any break.

Hence, regular work intervals are the best way to accurately carry out employee productivity tracking as that’s when the human mind is not over-exhausted or cluttered.

5. Draw Up a Schedule to Include Chores and Meals

The needs of employees working from home would definitely be different than the needs of employees working in-house. The best way for remote employees to stay productive is to draw up a schedule and stick to it.

Furthermore, that schedule must be created by the employer, keeping into account the fixed time for chores and meals as well.

This way, if an employee has an 8-hour work day, out of which, 1 or 2 hours are for chores and meals, then their tasks can be assigned and divided throughout the day accordingly.

4. Opt for a Comfortably Designed Workplace

Being in a comfortable environment and working in one is what makes an employee more productive in the workplace. This is something your employees need to take care of at their end.

A comfortably designed workplace helps employees in working with complete focus and dedication. Once they are focused and successfully completing the tasks assigned to them, that is when their productivity levels are at their highest.

Employee productivity tracking is made easier when the work productivity is calculated of tasks that are completed correctly and on time. A comfortable workplace, be it remote, ensures a stress-free environment and a relaxed mind for high-quality work.

3. Employee Productivity Tracking through Technology

Using technology to your own advantage helps reduce the manual work that consumes the majority of the time. Be it working productively or monitoring employees, smart work always trumps hard work. One cannot only work hard or just work smart. Both must go in unison for effective employee productivity tracking.

Employees working remotely must use automated systems and technology to reduce manual work and improve productivity. Similarly, employee monitoring in-person consumes a lot of time and even hinders the productivity of employers. A remote monitoring solution helps in saving precious minutes and allows employers to assess employee productivity accurately.

With the latest technology available these days, remote monitoring is easily possible through screen sharing, live visual logs, and automated timesheets.

2. Home Work Space is a Sanctified Place

Some rules are implemented by the company and some are self-enforced by the individual. One of the most important rules is to keep the home and office spaces separated. Your home-office or workspace at home must be a sacred place, free of interference from your family members or distractions that hinder your productivity.

Employee’s workspace must be a sanctified place where you have things organized according to your requirements. During work, employee productivity tracking is made more efficient when employees’ time is not wasted in finding relevant resources or documents in the time of need.

Less wasted time equals more time spent in actual work, hence enhanced work output.

1. Organize your Workplace and Save Useful Minutes

An organized workplace is the key to saving the maximum time during work hours. Whether you’re researching for a report or need to look at certain facts or emails, making specific folders and tagging the emails will help you locate them easily.

Similarly, using project management tools can help you save time at the time of need. The most popular tool is Google Sheets for record maintenance and organizing tasks and numbers. Employee Productivity Tracking can be made quick and easy using work organization tools.

_________________________________________________

These 8 simple tips can help you maintain a work-life balance with maximum productivity and an optimum ratio of Smart and Hard work. 

6 Ways a time tracking software helps you save ‘invisible’ minutes!

“It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” – Steve Jobs

This above statement is solid enough to take care of the question of why must we save time in the first place. Now that we’ve gotten this basic concern out of the way, let’s focus on the real topics at hand:

a) How can time tracking software help you save time?

b) What is the time you don’t even know is being wasted?

 

Let’s get started!

1. Increase productivity by reducing the ‘busy’ time

Productivity is generally calculated by looking at the work output and the time taken to get it done. If both those values don’t add up, then there must be some time that is being wasted. Even though you’ve been busy all through the work hours!

Where is that time going? When each and every minute of your time is logged in timesheets, simply knowing that your work or computer screen is being watched makes you improve productive focus.

With a time tracking software, you can also take note of the actual time you worked and the time lost in operational, technical and irrelevant tasks!

2. You don’t need as much time as you think you do

Many a time, you think a particular task may take you an hour, whereas, if you dedicate all your focus and attention to it, you can get it done in half the time!
Here’s what happens: Your brain automatically keeps a cushion time to accommodate all the ‘extra’ tasks and distractions that may come up while you’re working on a task.

When all those distractions are eliminated, the actual time required to complete a certain task is not quite as much as you thought. A time tracking software can help you achieve more in a lesser amount of time. Hence improving productivity by a considerable amount.

3. Improve focus when you know each minute is counted

Have you heard of the ‘Hawthorne Effect’? According to Wikipedia,

“The Hawthorne effect (also referred to as the observer effect) is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed.”

Over time, there have been many interpretations of ‘behavior modification’. However, the generally accepted interpretation is that once you know you’re being observed, your productive work focus improves considerably, lowering wasted time and distractions.

An automated time tracking software involves accurate time logs, screenshots, and real-time video logs, which are a digital alternative of being observed. Therefore, the effect on you will also be the same. You’ll consciously try to focus on work, while making an effort to not waste time.

4. Be accountable for your time and work produced in it

How many times did it happen that your boss asked you about the hours you spent on a certain task and the work output that was never enough? I know. Same.

Tracking your time using a timesheet software can help you log your tasks and record the time spent on each. With the latest time tracking technologies, monitoring can be done through screenshots of your computer’s screens taken every minute, e.g. in StaffTimerApp, an AI-driven automated time tracking solution.

Such a time tracking software integrated within your work station makes you more accountable for your time spent to work output ratio. You can always stay ahead of the curve by minimizing wasted time and improving work productivity.

5. Identify and remove ‘invisible’ tasks by tracking time

‘Invisible Tasks’ – what are they? These are the irrelevant tasks that take up your time when you begin working on one of your assigned tasks.

These side tasks may include: running to HR and back to take care of administrative formalities, operational tasks and technical difficulties (e.g. installing software, taking care of a faulty computer system, etc.).

The best way to get rid of these tasks is to delegate them to the relevant people. So you can focus better on your own work. In simple words, tell the HR to fill the forms themselves, or the tech department to fix your PC before you arrive to work, so your limited time is not wasted.

Using a time tracking software, you can clock your hours efficiently, so you know exactly where your time went throughout the whole work day.

6. Automated and intelligent reporting mechanism

How would you know what you or your team achieved in a day? Yes, intelligent reporting is just for that purpose. In an automated reporting system, you can better figure out where your work lags, and then take care of that issue.

It could be about employee availability or any work-related or personal issues they may be facing. By looking at their work reports, you can figure out the difference in productivity levels. Also,  initiate communication with them to trace out the reason for that change.

If the productivity levels are higher, then the change could be adopted by the entire team in one way or another. If its the other way around, then their problems could be dealt with, according to their nature.

Using artificial intelligence, what if your time tracking software can sort your day’s screenshots task-wise? In many of the latest softwares, this feature allows you to see exactly what task was performed, how was it performed, and where was the time wasted.

Once that judgment is made, then all the distractions can be identified and taken care of. This type of reporting also allows you to see the number of productive hours. Which helps you form a transparent invoicing and billing system.

These were the 6 major ways in which time tracking solutions can help you identify the areas of wasted time. Also, a solution to how you may reduce them. Most of the time, we are so engrossed in just getting things done.

Making some minor hindrances in our work the cause of our frustration. To regulate the workflow and enhance productivity, it is highly necessary for you to track time. And keep the energy levels of your team up.

Have a great, happy and productive work day! 🙂

________________________________________

Proven ways to track employee’s productivity in today’s world

Employee Productivity is the buzz word of current times. Many people are trying to be more productive in their personal lives. Many more are trying to enhance their work productivity.

In some peculiar settings like a remote work environment, it becomes more important to track employee productivity.

Defining Employee Productivity

Employee productivity is the measure of the efficiency of an employee or a group of employees. It is often assessed by the quality and quantity of work produced.

Employee Productivity is a relative statistic. For an individual employee, it is assessed by comparing the individual’s productivity to that of a group of people. Employees with high productivity levels are often more productive than the average team. Similarly, people with low productivity levels are often not able to produce the average quality or quantity of work as compared to the rest of the workforce.

Why is productivity important?

Productivity is one of the more important agendas of the management, in the Corporate World of today. The reasons are manifold.

Cutthroat competition is inevitable in today’s corporate sector and having a slow and lazy team is simply not an option.

Much of the profitability of the organizations depend upon the workforce. So it is quite important to have a dependable and diligent team of employees.

The trends, expectations, and demands of the market are constantly changing. To keep up with the evolution and changing the landscape of the market, it is important that the employees are intellectually productive.

Tracking Employee’s Productivity

Having established the importance of employee productivity, let’s discuss some of the ways by which it is measured.

1. Track their time

Often it is a duty of the Project Managers to assign individuals with a list of tasks. Tracking productivity by means of tracking the time it takes to get a job done is one of the most common ways of measuring the productivity of an employee.

For this purpose, many organizations deploy Time Tracking Software. These tools let the employees measure the amount of time they spend on each individual task. They also help employers get a transparent idea about employee productivity.

2. Assess the value

There are many situations where just the measure of time is not a good indicator of productivity. For example, the productivity of a painter is measured by the time it takes to finish a piece. So, either the productivity will come out to be dismal or the efforts to enhance the productivity will result in poor quality work. Therefore, time is not always the best indicator of the productivity of an employee.

One of the widely used metrics of employee productivity is assessing the value that an employee brings to the table. The presence of a certain individual can bring value to your team in many ways. For example, an HR manager might be a source of motivation and positivity for the rest of the team.

An executive might be a good mentor for training newbies. A marketing executive with a stellar personality might boost your sales. An individual with great skills can affect your team in more than one ways and assessing the value they bring to the organization is a useful way to measure their productivity.

3. Cost-profit analysis

Making profits in the universal aim of all the businesses around the world. An employee is productive and profitable if he helps the organization generate more profits then the cost of retaining him in the company.

The cost of keeping an employee on the payroll consists of compensation, benefits and other expenses of the housing. If the revenue that he assists in generating are greater than the costs, then the employee is definitely productive and a valuable asset for the company.

4. Measuring Employee’s Productivity

Having established the importance of employee productivity, let’s discuss some of the ways by which it is measured.

 

5. Indications about the strengths and weaknesses

When you track employee productivity, you get useful insights about the strengths and weaknesses of the workforce.

The managers get to know about the employees that outshine the rest of the team. They get an idea about the team members who are unable to deliver the desired results. The management gets to identify productivity blockades and hurdles.

The data also becomes useful to identify low performing individuals. By correct identification of the problems, the management can take steps towards improving the situation.

6. Guides you about the budget

Managers who know the production capacity of their teams are in a good position to make good financial choices.

Productivity tracking is so much more than just the number of hours worked. It delivers insights into all kinds of available resources. These insights empower the management to make sound decisions related to budgets and financing.

7. A basis for performance appraisal

Everyone needs appreciation for the work they do similarly, employees do too.

Productivity tracking provides ample data for the managers to officially recognize the work and efforts of the team. Therefore, time and productivity tracking, as boring as it may sound, helps employees in making their efforts known to the management.

Praise and rewards can help increase the motivation level of the team. And this, in turn, can help in boosting the productivity of the whole team.

8. Makes employees more productive

It is a scientifically proven fact that individuals tend to be more productive when they know that they are being watched. Just like that, employees tend to be more productive when they realize their team leads are monitoring their progress. 

Moreover, when one employee gets praised for the work that he does. He sets a positive example for the rest of the team which in return establishes a positive work culture. 

Conclusion

Track employee productivity to find out hidden truths about your team. This will not only improve the organizational culture in many ways but also the profitability of your organization!

Like what you read? We have more for you:Top three-time tracking applications for remote employees

Proven and Simple ways of Effective Team Communication

Making Today, Human Resources are the most important kind of resources an organization holds. Fortunately, most organizations acknowledge this fact and work on the nourishment and growth of these resources.

Team Communication is an insanely important part of the Team building process. It is hard but definitely rewarding.

What is Team Communication?

Business Dictionary defines Communication as a two-way process of reaching mutual understanding, in which participants not only exchange information, news, ideas, and feelings but also create and share meaning.

We can say that Team Communication is the process of exchange of information between the members of a Team. Since the people in a team are joined together due to a shared vision or mission, this exchange is often directed towards achieving a common goal.

Advantages of Team Communication?

Communication is the most important group dynamic and it is due to the many advantages that it has.

According to a survey, 86% of executives believed that faulty and incomplete communication between the team members is one of the major reasons for workplace failure.

Some advantages of effective communication among the team are:

  1. It helps the project management process.
  2. Improves the organizational culture of a company.
  3. Results in team cohesion.
  4. Pushes people towards a common goal.

Proven ways of effective Team Communication

The following are the proven ways of effective Team Communication.

No such thing as a stupid question

There are no stupid questions, only some stupid answers. If this idea is inculcated in the minds of all the employees, no one will be afraid to ask a question. Seemingly trivial and silly questions can help identify problems otherwise overlooked. Sometimes, these questions can help in identifying crucial but unnoticed problems.

Recommended For You: How Time Tracking Software makes Freelancing easier

Open door policy

Authoritarian leadership is an outdated concept. Laissez-Faire is the trend of the day. The managers and bosses who keep an open door policy report that the team members are happier and in tune with the mission of the organization.

Leaders who do not communicate with the team members reflect that the employees are not much important. Making employees feel disconnected and unimportant is the leading cause of employee dissatisfaction.

An open-door policy assures the employees that their opinions matter!

Democratic Decision Making

Today, most businesses cannot survive without a democratic environment. 

Therefore, it is of utmost importance to ask for the input of your team members. Decision making that is based on the input of the team members leads to beneficial results. This is because the input of varied and diversified minds can propose options and directions that were not conceivable for a single person.

The group participation results in improved Team Communication.

Clear Feedback

Among all the group building efforts, Feedback is the most important element. It has a wide range of advantages on the personal level and collectively as well.

Feedback is the stepping stone of motivating an employee. Positive feedback pushes employees towards doing even better, according to psychologist B. F. Skinner. Negative but controlled feedback can become the basis of doing better and improving the state of affairs.

Feedback can help individuals develop a high-quality skill set. This way an employee can become a great asset to the organization.

Team Building by extracurricular activities

Work can be mundane, monotonous and sometimes boring. But extracurricular activities are definitely not. And they are a great way of enhancing team cohesion.

Extracurricular activities motivate employees to get together as a team and make use of the collective skillset. Teams that play together, stay together!

Conduct surveys

It is of utmost importance to find out what makes your employees uncomfortable. Do they feel that their compensation is justified? Are they happy with the Corporate Policies? Do they agree to Corporate Culture?

It is important that you communicate the answers to these questions to the higher management without any distortion of the facts. Sometimes it is advisable to conduct anonymous surveys to protect the employees.  Still, these surveys are of immense importance in the world of today, where employee and human rights are given unprecedented importance.

Conclusion

Effective Communication in the Corporate Sector is extremely important in the contemporary world. It is the linchpin of collaborative efforts that are necessary to deliver top-notch products and services!

Increase Employee Productivity at work | Effective ways to make big changes

Do you know that studies tell us, the happiest people in the world are consistently very productive?

We are in the era of cut-throat competition. There is no time to slow down or take a break. All these things are more than true for the Corporate World.

Businesses do not want to compromise on progress and productivity at all.
But the irony is that being lazy and unproductive, at least for a small chunk of time, is the reality of most employees around the world. What makes us more productive in the workplace is definitely a hard nut to crack!

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.

Defining Employee Productivity

Business Dictionary defines Productivity as ‘A measure of the efficiency of a person, machine, factory, system, etc., in converting inputs into useful outputs.’

So we can say that increasing employee productivity would mean achieving higher outputs with the same resources or accomplishing more from limited available inputs at our disposal.

Achieving higher productivity is directly proportional to the increased productivity of human resources at hand. Motivating employees to increase their productivity is quite a challenge. Implement the following strategies to increase productivity in the workplace.

Four Quadrants of Eisenhower’s Matrix

The key to becoming more productive is prioritizing the tasks and getting them done at the right time. But how do you know which ones should be done before the others?

Eisenhower’s Matrix is the shrewdest tool to categorize and schedule the tasks. By using this method, you would find yourself impeccably organized and never in a deadline crisis.

Eisenhower’s matrix was conceived by Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States of America (1953-1961). He was a leader at the dawn of the Cold War and hence was busy all the time. To prioritize his tasks, he came up with the Urgent/Important Matrix.

An urgent task is the one that requires swift action. A failure to provide immediate attention to the task can result in adverse outcomes.

An important task is one that is inevitable for smooth performance and functioning. Neglecting important tasks can have short and long-term disadvantages.

Discovering Advantages & Disadvantages:

  • Urgent and Important
    Urgent and Important tasks are the ones that are either left to be dealt with at the last moment. Or they are the ones that come up out of the blue. Customer Support is also an Urgent and Important task because Customer Satisfaction is the top priority of many businesses.
  • Urgent and Unimportant
    Urgent and unimportant tasks are the ones that require quick attention and swift action. They are the means to an end. So missing out on them and not doing them on time can cause distress and even loss in the long run. For example, replying to emails, data entry, maintaining records.
  • Non-urgent and Important
    These tasks are not urgent and sometimes get overlooked. But they are tremendously important for the smooth running of a business.

    If your employees are not properly managed your projects can be derailed.Some examples are the Research, Analysis, Project Management, HR management, etc.

  • Non-urgent and Unimportant
    These tasks are neither urgent nor important. They are just a building block of the Corporate Culture that we know today. These tasks often leach valuable time and productivity. Eliminating these tasks can give a boost to productivity. For example, water cooler gossip, office grapevine and other activities that employees use to waste time.

Thank you, Mr. President, for making it easier for us. We owe you!

Some of the best productivity tools for you:

Employee Productivity Tracker

These three magical words are a treat for the managers and bosses. These tools bring out deep insights into the progress and productivity of the employees. There are some tools that retrieve flawless statistics about the time spent on work-related and non-work related activities.

The use of Time Tracking tools has proved to make the employees more focused and boost productivity.

Pomodoro: Fancy yet effective

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management trick put forward by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. This technique is based on the scientifically proven fact that the human mind and body cannot generate high-quality performance for a long period of time. The gist of the technique is to work in small chunks of time with small frequent breaks in-between.

If managers take into account human limitations and implement a ‘Go, take a break’ culture, employees can become much more productive and happy.

Block Applications

Most of us are guilty of being addicted to some sort of mobile application. And this is one of the most common reasons for low productivity. If you block the applications that make you lose focus, for the work hours, you can save a lot of productive time.

There are some applications that allow usage only for a preset amount of time. For example, you can set Facebook usage time to be 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the application will be blocked.

Conclusion

The research and innovation to – date are enough to make us very productive. We just need to implement the tricks and tools!  If you’re not taking advantage of any productivity tracking software whether you are working a full-time job or remotely, even traditional ones, you’re very likely missing out an opportunity to stay focused and organized.

Wondering whether you’re not productive enough? The answer to your question lies right here.

Best Time Tracking app for Software Developers

Estimate how much time will be spent on a project and bill accordingly

Many software agencies charge clients by the hour. Many freelance developers do the same. A developer or a software house can only give a reasonable ballpark figure only if they know how much time it takes to implement the project.

To develop such insights, previous knowledge of Project Management and effective Time Tracking proves helpful. And this knowledge can be acquired by using Best Employee time management.

Track time to improve productivity and get rid of distractions

It is only natural to feel distracted at times. A software developer who spends a major chunk of his day working in front of the screen is bound to spend some time wandering across the social media applications.

While spending a few minutes here and it isn’t really very harmful, but if these sprees become a regular habit and intervene in the progress of a developer, it can cost a lot to not only the developer but also the clients. Best Time Tracking Software is a great project management tool that is used by many developers around the world, remote or not!

 

Track time during developing projects as sometimes it can take longer than expected

A software developer often hesitates when he is asked about an estimate for a software project. This is a fact because software development is a tricky business. Time-consuming bugs are often lurking around and only become obvious when you’re deep into the abyss of development.

Hence, an initial estimate of time and project cost might not remain relevant. Time Tracking can help the developers a great deal as it chronicles all the ups and downs of a project and this information can be used in future negotiations.

Track time and achieve a work-life balance

 

Many people opt for remote jobs so that they can achieve a great work-life balance. They want to stay at home and spend time with their partners. They want to take time out to water the plants.

They look forward to going to watch their kids at soccer practice. But working from home is no walk in the park. It takes a good deal of time management skills and habits. Many people end up spending more time on work only because they get distracted a lot, become lazy and lose focus.

There is, however, a solution to these issues. Best Time Management Software, that runs in the background and takes note of how you spend each minute can keep a developer on track and save him from losing the focus.

For Managers

Get an idea of what the employee is up to

The managers need to know what their employees are up to. It is important in order to ensure the health of the projects, make better plans for the future and keep the human resources happy. Deep insights into the activities of an employee are the basic information for management in today’s day and age.

Track to make better estimates with best developer time tracking software

Managers track time for the developers in a software house so that they can pitch better estimates to future clients. It is the job of a manager to come up with useful and reasonable estimates in terms of time and money.

Good estimates turn into profitable business relationships. And good estimates are only possible with the help of successful Time Tracking and Time Management.

Acknowledge the challenges of Software Development

Ever have to explain how Instagram works to your elderly grandpa? Imagine the frustration. It is quite like that when a software developer has to explain the nitty-gritty details of the challenges that developers face every day to their layman managers.

However, the manager can acknowledge the challenges faced by the software developers if they can actively track the progress. If they get real-time insights about the amount of time that is spent on fixing a bug or implementing a seemingly simple feature, managers can truly acknowledge the challenges faced by programmers and developers.

Don’t pay more OR less

If a manager has to pay a remote employee by hourly rate, time tracking becomes the key method of calculating billable hours. No manager wants to pay more than what the effort is worth.

To solve this conundrum, time tracking is the perfect tool. With a remote time tracking application, managers will only pay for the real work and nothing more.

Similarly, the developers will not be paid less for doing more work simply because their time is properly tracked.

Manage projects better

Time tracking can help a manager in extracting sound insights related to employee capacity, talent utilization, and time management. These insights can help managers do a better job of making plans, executing projects and bringing in business. Hence, Time Tracking is of utmost importance in the Software Engineering Business.