Unless you’ve been hiding under the rock for the past year and a half, you’ll know that remote work has become increasingly common in various industries.
This is partly due to digital transformation and the creation of technology that allows employees to work wherever there’s a computer, but it’s also no doubt attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic too.
When the pandemic first swept the globe in early 2020, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding work in various industries, especially those that encouraged in-person interactions and operated with shared work spaces.
It soon became clear that this problem would be solved with new work models, namely the hybrid work model and the remote work model.
Whereas the former consisted of a balance of working in the office for a few days and at home for the rest of the week, the remote work model would have workers working from home full time.
One of the biggest problems with this move towards remote and hybrid work is that it left managers scrambling to figure out ways to manage their teams from afar.
That’s where employee tracking software and worker productivity tools came in.
Benefits of Productivity Software
Maintaining productivity at work is a complex issue.
What works for some employees might not work for others, which means you’ll often have situations in which part of your workforce regularly experiences slumps in productivity throughout the work day.
You can in part mitigate this dip in productivity with certain technological tools and software though.
With technology, you can incentivize hard work, bring about a greater sense of accountability, and keep everyone on the same page so it’s easy for employees to clock in and get on with the tasks that matter most.
Productivity software requires a financial investment, but the potential ROI is significant if you can get your employees on board with a new way of working.
So what exactly can you do with worker productivity tools?
Automate Tasks and Projects
Automation is key if you want to speed up your processes and boost the effectiveness of your workflows.
The tedium of manual entry is well-known, so why not remove the need for it and boost worker satisfaction with the use of productivity software?
After all, the amount of hours it takes to manually enter data into the system can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars lost by the end of the year.
Remove Errors
The other significant problem with manual data entry is that humans are prone to error, which can be extremely costly for your business.
All it takes is an extra ‘0’ where there shouldn’t be one, or a decimal point in the wrong position, and you have a bottleneck that can hold you back, or worse, a mistake that can cost you your reputation with certain clients.
With productivity tools, you can rest assured that every digit, letter, and symbol that gets entered into the system is correct so you won’t have to worry about mistakes costing you later down the line.
Manage from Afar
With the rise of remote work, there is an increasing need for tools to help managers and those in senior positions to manage their employees from afar.
The timesheet for clocking in and clocking out no longer makes sense when you can’t just pass it around the office or leave it for your workers to fill in on the way in and out of the office.
As such, you’ll want to look into employee tracking software which will allow you to digitally manage your employees and monitor how much time they are spending on various work-related tasks.
You will also get the benefit of extra accountability, since you will be able to digitally look over the shoulders of your employees and check in on their online activities using the software dashboard.
Communicate with Clarity
In most industries, communication is key.
If a worker doesn’t have a quick way of updating his team and fellow collaborators during an important project, then this can lead to hold-ups and client dissatisfaction.
However, when you use productivity tools, you can get your message across in various ways thus avoiding this potential bottleneck.
For example, some tools will allow you to add labels to tasks which others will receive notifications for, while others will let you directly message other team members or initiate online calls in the moment.
This streamlined communication is a lot more effective than relying on email or instant messaging, since the workers can see which project the message is in relation to straight away, which minimizes the chance for confusion.
This creates an environment which is ripe for cooperation and collaboration, and instills a sense of unity between team members.
Manage Procrastination
As much as we might hate to admit it, we all have urges to procrastinate every now and then.
Our ability to focus is affected by many factors, and if we lose it even for just a moment, it can be hard to wrestle it back.
As such, an innocent tab switch to a social media site for a quick scroll can often result in 10-15 minutes down the drain. This adds up over the course of the work week, but it can be managed through productivity tools.
When you use an employee monitoring tool, you can set up automatic screenshots that catch employees out if they are engaging in non-work related tasks. Even just the threat of screenshots is another to dissuade most to procrastinate on the job.
You’ll also have access to a detailed breakdown of time spent for each employee, so you can see information on when they are most and least productive, and address the situation accordingly.
Final Thoughts
If you aren’t using worker productivity tools in your company, you could be missing out.
With the right software, you can encourage clear communication between employees, promote a higher output from your workers, and suffer less with bottlenecks.
Angela Spearman is a journalist at EzineMark who enjoys writing about the latest trending technology and business news.
