We all are guilty of wasting time at work. Some of us are more than others. But I am sure that none of us can claim to be an angel with no fouls. Wasting time at work is a universal problem that plagues all the organizations around the world. And it results in a loss of billions of dollars! Lots have been spent on research and innovation to minimize the time wasted at work and to come up with tools that help employees in staying more focused.
Why are Employees Wasting Time at Work
It is innate human nature to be lazy and to lose interest after a certain amount of time. But sometimes the circumstances make people more prone to wasting time. These circumstances could be handled and controlled. And in turn, the time wasted at work could be minimized.
Some of the problems that push employees towards wasting more time are the following:
A work environment where there is no break culture makes employees waste time. Employees need to take breaks during work hours and rejuvenate their minds. But if the environment doesn’t allow, they would find backdoors to relax.
If the employees are not happy, they will become a lot less focused. They will feel angry and have harbored resentments. They will be passive aggressive and will waste time as a revenge.
Slack employee monitoring policies could also result in loss of focus. It gives the employees the liberty to make use of the time as they like. And more often than not, this could result in wasting of time.
Unnecessary meetings and informal socialization at the workplace can result in a lot of wasted time. Water cooler gossip is a common reason why a lot of time is wasted at work.
How to Minimise Waste of Time
There is a lot that the management can do to minimize the waste of time. The most common issues in the workplace that cause time wastage can be easily addressed by the management.
Make your employees happy. Find out why they feel inclined towards non-work related activities. Small acts on the part of the organization make employees happy. For example, a pay raise, good food, a leisure trip—all these efforts can make your employees much more loyal to the organization. And they will tend to be more productive at work.
Take into consideration the human psychological and physical limitations while cultivating the work environment. If you have a culture that is flexible and understands the employee psychology, the employees would become much more productive.
Use the right tools to make your team more productive. By using applications like Time Tracking and Employee Monitoring Software, you can boost the focus of your team and push them towards achieving maximum productivity.
Conclusion
Managers can save a tremendous amount of time by using the right employee management strategies. And in turn, an insane amount of money as well.
A few decades ago, no one would have considered working from home as something practical. Working from home was pretty much limited to cottage industries and women who were stay-at-home moms and worked on the side to generate an extra income. But anyone with serious career aspirations would never have considered remote working even in his wildest dreams!
But today, the world is a different place! The advancement of technology and the dependable connectivity and networking services have made possible the unthinkable. Today, remote jobs from home are not only practical but are also becoming the first choice of contemporary professionals and especially the millennials.
Why people enjoy Remote Working
Due to the following reasons, more and more people are opting for remote working options and making the rise of the remote work a reality.
Remote jobs from home save time. The time spent on traveling to and from the formal workplace is saved. Moreover, while in an office, colleagues spend a lot of time on water-cooler gossips and extended meeting periods. While working from home, this time is saved.
Remote work saves money. The freelancers and telecommuters do not feel the need to spend an excessive amount of money on maintaining up-to-date wardrobe. They also save the money that is spent on commuting to the office. The employers also benefit from Remote working options as they do not have to pay the overhead costs of having in-house workers. Also, from the employer’s perspective, the employee is only paid for the work that he has delivered. Therefore, the employer saves money as well.
Remote workers find it desirable to work from the comfort of their home office. They like being the boss and master of their own schedule. With the option of working from home, the employees can schedule the day according to their own personal needs. A night owl and a day lark can work without disrupting their natural tendencies.
Telecommuters cherish the ability to work from home as it allows them to have a balanced life, without spending long hours in the workplace. Many women opt for work from home options when they start having children. This enables them to stay in touch with work while having a fulfilling personal life.
How Remote Work became a Reality
Remote Working has become possible due to the following reasons.
The availability of the internet and its improving quality. Just a couple decades ago, the internet quality at most places around the world was not dependable. Fiber optic faults under the sea made the internet unreliable. But now, the situation is very different. Stable internet connection is a reality at most places in the world.
The innovation of networking applications and their availability to the users at low cost. For example, Time Tracking Software like StaffTimerApp has enhanced the trust of employers in their distributed teams.
The increasing demand for knowledge worker and less focus on physical availability and more on getting good quality work done. Today, professionals like software developers and computer scientists can work from anywhere and are always in demand!
Conclusion
The Rise of Remote Work has become a reality of the modern workplace. It is predicted that more than half of the workers in the USA will be working remotely. This is due to the democratization of amazing technology that makes collaborations for the remote teams easier!
The upsurge in the market of Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams and employee monitoring tools suggests that long gone are the days when the employers were limited to the local talent pool. Today, companies and businesses do not feel confined to the 50km radius for hiring the employees.
The unfaltering connectivity has made possible for people situated thousands of miles away from each other to connect, collaborate and push towards common goals.
This new trend in the business world is supported by the many wonderful collaboration tools including online time tracking tools that we have at our disposal. These tools are crucial for a distributed team to survive.
Why Distributed Teams need Online Collaboration Tools
Lack of Proximity: Proximity is of great importance when teams want to work towards and achieve a common goal. People who are close to us inspire us and keep us motivated. And clearly, considering this point, distributed teams are at a disadvantage. Collaboration Tools make up for the lack of proximity and create a more human connection among the teams. While various online time tracking tools, help keep track of on-going projects.
Different Time Zones: When you are dealing with remote teams, you are dealing with people who come from diverse countries. The morning for one teammate might be the evening for the other. Nobody wants to work the graveyard shift every day. This problem is also solved by the collaboration tools that are available in the market today. Remote contractors work their part and update the online tools for the other teammates to find out whenever they log in to work. Hence, no matter what time zone the team members belong to, they can collaborate and deliver the results using the online tools. On the other, an employer can easily measure productivity through automatic time tracking systems, no matter the time.
Communication Gap: Good communication is the key to success for a team. If there is a communication gap in the remote team, people might feel disoriented and confused. Fortunately, this is not a problem today. Instant messaging services like Skype and real-time monitoring like Staff Timer App, have brought teams closer and made their voices heard, no matter how far they are from each other.
Lack of employee monitoring: The employee Monitoring tool is the key trick of ensuring the productivity of your employees and pushing them towards achieving the goals. Previously, remote employers found themselves handicapped when the question of Employee Monitoring came up. The situation has changed drastically. Many online Time Tracking tools and Virtual Office Softwares equip employers with employee monitoring tool capabilities.
Communication with employees can be messy. Communication with clients can be messier. And when the remote employer has to communicate with many employees and many clients, things can get confusing. But Highrise can rescue from all the hassle. Highrise becomes the personal database and online assistant for all the communication. And the employer can control the visibility of the activities by granting access to the employees so that they can assist the employers as well.
The user can also create and track the tasks for the employees through Highrise. It also lets him manage and follow the business deals with the clients.
So if you want to monitor remote teams and you want to be on top of every conversation, use Highrise.
Many times in the past, employers felt unsure about hiring telecommuters and remote employees. This is because of the limited employee monitoring capacity while working with remote teams. But now there is a solution.
Employee Time Tracking Software like StaffTimerApp solve all the problems related to remote employee monitoring. It captures screenshots of the employee’s screen after a regular time interval. These screenshots are then processed to calculate the billable and non-billable hours.
Hence, a remote employer does not need to fear being ripped for low quality work. Moreover, the employer can view the real-time progress and productivity of the employees by using the features of Instant Screen Capture and Real-Time Screen Sharing.
Working on a project while living away might seem like a bad idea. But it really isn’t. The problem of the communication gap is solved by Basecamp.
Basecamp allows all the team members of a project to engage in collective chats. This way, no one misses out on the important discussion and everything that’s said is on record. Basecamp also gives a common space for saving up the documents. There is no hassle of CCing everyone while sharing the documents.
With this tool, whenever a team member logs in, he can see who did what by when. It also lets the users make interactive To-do lists so that all the projects are under control. So BaseCamp is the ultimate Project Management tool for distributed teams.
The phenomenon of remote work is very thrilling as it opens many doors of opportunities without crossing the physical boundaries. BeeHopr takes this up to another level by building a platform for online business networking. By using BeeHopr, you can meet up like-minded professionals from all around the world.
You can conduct business meetings online without actually leaving your home. You can further your dreams and business goals finding the people who are a great fit for your team.
So if you have a distributed business and you want to find the right employee, use BeeHopr.
Skype was the way to communicate a few years ago. Today, users want much more than the Instant Messaging feature of Skype. Slack provides all that and much more. With Slack, users can have common communication. They can search through the chats for relevant information. Users can create channels relevant to a certain subject.
They can also converse privately. It is a great platform for official communication for a Remote Team. The application is pretty simple to use and has applications for Android and iOS as well. Therefore, users can stay connected no matter where they go.
Conclusion
Using the right tools and mastering their use for collaboration can make the life of a remote team easier and simpler. Using the tools to their full extent can tremendously increase the productivity of the remote teams!
Additional Business and Productivity Trends Resources:
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Employers need to prioritize efficiency. They should let employees make a list of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. By creating a list, they will have a structure and plan to stick to. This will also give them a reason to chase and decrease their chances of getting sidetracked by irrelevant tasks.
Every employee has their own way of doing work. Some tackle the hardest tasks first and then move on to the easier ones. Others operate in the opposite way. If they’re completing tasks on time then leave them to their preferred pattern.
An amazingly large chunk of employees and knowledge workers make use of digital devices to get the work done. Many people around the world spend the 8 work hours constantly using their laptops or PCs and getting the work done.
No wonder, the power of the digital tools and the internet is immense, but it is also an abyss in which people fall often and lose a lot of their time. No matter how diligent you are, you are prone to falling a prey to the tremendously enticing internet and its many forms.
This problem plagues all the businesses around the world but the managers have found the solution in shape of Employee Monitoring Software.
Stealthy Employee Surveillance
Closely monitoring the employee draws many varied opinions and is often seen as controversial. Despite the negative connotations, the industry is on the rise. The worth of Employee Monitoring Industry is $220 million and in the near future it is expected to rise to $550 million, according to 451 Research, a New York Information Technology Research Firm.
The managers feel that monitoring is imperative because they want to save time and money and want the business to progress quickly. The employee tracking software have progressed a great deal as previously they performed URL tracking and keystroke logging to estimate employee activity. Today, they perform stealthy monitoring for the employee activities and keep track of all the activities of the employees.
Is Employee Monitoring Rational
The big question is ‘Is it rational to keep a hawk-eye on your employees’? And if you ask the business managers, they will shed light on not only the rationality but also the cruciality of it.
According to managers, watching over the employees is important because,
It delivers deep insights into the productivity of human resources at hand.If the employees are wasting a lot more time than you can possibly afford, then a good quality software that monitors the employees can guide you towards making decisions for the sake of the sustainability of the business.
Monitoring your employees is not only a way to ensure productivity of your employees, it can save your company from potential corporate data theft. Effective monitoring can make sure that your employees do not fall prey to hazy web applications that steal data and abuse it.
Monitoring the employees would make sure that the employees are complying with the laws and regulations while conducting official activities. Failure to comply with the standard and acceptable practises can land a corporation in messy legal and financial situation. For instance, Irish based book-marker Paddy Power was fined for £310,000 due to non-compliance in carrying out standard KYC checks into clients.
The reasons stated above imply that monitoring practices are, indeed, very important and crucial for the business to sustain and progress.
But is the practise of monitoring your employees ethical?
Is the use of Employee Monitoring Software Ethical
Many employees frown upon the use of Time Tracking and Monitoring tools.
They feel violated. They feel that the scrutiny is slavish. Some employees even complain that been constantly scrutinised makes them nervous and hampers the productivity — instead of improving it.
The balance of monitoring the employees leans in the favour of employers.
There are no laws in the US that prevent employers from monitoring their employees during the work hours. And the monitoring could be audio or visual in nature. So in the legalese terms, it is not a felony to watch over the employees.
To make this legal procedure ethical as well, companies can and should follow some guidelines to make the whole process bearable and seamless.
If your company monitors the employees, make sure that this is clearly mentioned in the company policies and is common knowledge among the employees. Monitoring employees without informing them might be legal but it is definitely not ethical. The full disclosure about stealthy monitoring will make the process a lot more ethical and acceptable.
Set boundaries for the monitoring practices. The surveillance should only happen during the work hours, not during the break hours and certainly never after the work hours. Moreover, only personnel concerned with Human Resources affairs should have access to the monitoring tools.
There is a thin line between monitoring and interfering in the work activities. Employee surveillance should not give the employers and managers the license to question each and every move as it is hurdle in smooth work flow. Too much vigilance can deter the productivity as employees inevitably get confined to follow the set patterns and do not tread the unexplored terrains.
Employees and employers need to develop a bond of trust. Only then, the employees would understand that the monitoring is carried out to boost the productivity and take care of compliance issues instead of targeting the employees negatively. By doing this, it will be easier for the employees to accept the monitoring practices.
Conclusion
The realm of monitoring and surveillance of employees is grey area. But it’s legal nature and utility to save businesses from disastrous situations makes it a reality of the Corporate World.
