Remote working has become extremely common in almost every business niche due to the aftermath of the recent pandemic, which has forced employees to stay away from the office and work in their homes. While you want to have every faith that your employees are being productive, how do you know whether they are actually working? The good news is that with the right tools and tactics, it’s easy to find out when your employees are working and how long they’re spending on each task. In this blog post, we’re going to offer some key tips on how to monitor your employees’ working hours:

• Time-tracking and expenses software

One of the best ways to keep an eye on your employees’ activity would be the use of time-tracking and expenses software. There are several different types on the market, however, the best ones are those that incorporate timesheets that are filled in by employees, so you’re aware of their working hours, monitoring project time, as well as work cycles, which tally the number of hours worked by an employee each day. As a result, you can observe an employee’s activity and productivity throughout the working day.

• Track email activity

According to a study, approximately 50% of the average working day is spent sending emails. However, just because they may have their email inbox open in their browser doesn’t mean they are being productive. With this in mind, you should be using email analytics platforms, which act as a tracker and alerts of your employees’ activity in regard to when emails are sent and to which contacts, as well as standard email reply times.

• Self-reporting

If you have a great deal of faith in your employees and have a very small workforce, it may be an idea to encourage employees to carry out self-reporting. This may involve sending a short email to the manager at end of the day listing the tasks they have completed, and those which are due to be focused on during the next shift. This is a beneficial strategy as it acts as a personal assessment to determine productivity and whether any additional support is needed.

• Set deadlines

One of the crucial elements for monitoring your employees’ productivity is setting deadlines on tasks. Consider the research and planning needed for the completion of each task and come up with a reasonable cutoff time as to when the finished task should be sent over. Do be aware that some employees don’t work well with deadlines and overworking your staff can occur, therefore, settle on an achievable goal. While deadlines can’t exactly track your employees’ every move, they can give some indication as to how productive they have been against the quality of work produced.

Conveying your expectations to your team is crucial to ensure that they are guiding their efforts in the right direction. As a result, your team will know what is required of them as opposed to wasting time guessing or contacting their colleagues.