It’s not easy for employees to work under the conditions set by the pandemic. But, it’s not easy for companies, too, when their employees can’t work on their premises.
Pre-pandemic, communication was easy. Do you have an announcement to make? Easy. Just call for a meeting or go to a team member’s desk or office. If management needs to get involved, it’s also easy to include them in any event at the building.
But, it’s the pandemic already, and things are very different now. However, managers and supervisors still need to ensure that they meet their tasks and goals, even if everyone is still limited by the situation.
It’s not just about the facilities, such as the problem with computers and internet connections. Mental health also matters, as it’s known that mental health can suffer when people work from home without interaction with other people. It may look easy from the outside, but it’s another story inside.
If you’re having trouble managing your team and don’t know how to monitor their productivity, we have prepared a guide for measuring the productivity of remote employees. Using this guide, you can make sure that they’re doing well and help them if they have any issues that prevent them from being as productive as they can be.
Create clear policies that everyone can understand
When the policies at work aren’t clear, there’s bound to be some confusion. For example, when your team is unsure about goals and deliverables, they won’t be able to do everything they need to do. You will also spend time and resources on unnecessary things.
In a corporate setting, clarity is an essential thing that isn’t always prioritized enough by many companies. By making sure that you give clear policies for everyone, you can prevent guesswork and frustration with your clients and employees. You can also ensure that your company will only use time and resources for important things.
Also, make sure that you instill clarity in the entire company, so things will always be clear, communication won’t be an issue, and so you’re clear about your company’s short and long-term goals.
Create customized KPIs
Each employee or team in a company has a different job with different deliverables, which means you can’t use a single statistic to measure everyone’s performance.
If you’re a manager or supervisor, it’s vital to create specific key performance indicators (KPIs) for every employee. By doing so, you can have a clearer idea of how employees perform depending on their position, tasks/assignments, and deliverables.
By having KPIs, your employees will know what they need to do, which is the opposite of what will happen without KPIs, where employees decide what to do on their own. Furthermore, it also means that you can ensure that the tasks they need to do are in accordance with the company’s strategy and goals.
Set milestones
It’s not just about giving the right tasks to employees. You also need to make sure that they know and respect their deadline. It also ensures that they’ll know which tasks to prioritize.
However, you can’t measure performance just depending on whether employees meet deadlines or not. You also have to track progress as it happens by tracking your progress daily or weekly, so you can see how employees are performing at a deeper level.
Furthermore, tracking progress will also allow you to see if you’re really making progress and if you can meet the deadline. By knowing these things, you can make adjustments if necessary.
You can also know how your team performs when doing specific tasks and deliverables, which can help you and the other managers plan future projects because you know which tasks take more time and how many people you need for a project.
Keep track of your employees’ working hours
It’s hard to keep personal life and work matters apart when working from home. Since you’re not there to keep an eye on your team, it’s vital to adjust by tracking how employees spend their time during work.
Just because employees work extra hours doesn’t mean they’re productive. To see if they’re really making progress, you can look at the timesheet and their work to see if they’re really working hard and being productive in the time they put in.
Establish a reporting system
If you have an established reporting system, everyone will be on the same page about projects. With an efficient reporting system, you can know any issues and implement the necessary action.
If you don’t have one yet, you can use a daily, weekly, or monthly reporting scheme. If you want to monitor everything, you can use daily reporting. But, if you need a more big picture type of reporting system, you can use a weekly or monthly reporting system. Other than that, you also have to keep the work your team does in mind.
Of course, this type of system can be stressful for your employees, so make sure to establish it slowly to afford them time to adjust.
Use a project management software
Using project management software doesn’t just make managing a team or project easier for you. It also makes things easier for your team members, as it streamlines everything in one platform.
You can use a project management feature in many ways. For example, with WorkSavi, you can see what everyone is working on and how you’re managing your resources, among other features.
With a project management software like WorkSavi for entire teams or the entire company, you won’t just monitor productivity. You can improve it, too.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism