Do you worry that a worker who works remotely isn't doing their job? Eight methods to ascertain

Do you worry that a worker who works remotely isn't doing their job? Eight methods to ascertain

It's not too difficult to detect whether a member of your office team isn't performing up to par. You may make an appointment to check in in person or just stop by their desk. But keeping an eye on distant workers is not that easy.

At Time Doctor, we have spent more than ten years expanding our remote workforce. We now know a few tips for motivating remote workers to remain concentrated while allowing them the room they need to do their tasks. We thus have a plethora of first-hand experience striking a balance between openness and responsibility.

This post will explain how to use our automatic time tracking technology to hold everyone responsible and will explore trustworthy methods to verify if your team is indeed working.

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Eight Methods to Determine Whether a Remote Worker Is Not Working

How Time Doctor can verify if your remote team is indeed productive

The Next Actions to Take to Begin Remote Employee Monitoring

Eight Methods to Determine Whether a Remote Worker Is Not Working

It is normal to question if employees in a remote team are completing their task, particularly in the absence of regularly planned check-ins. However, it's not necessary to quiz your squad all the time. Make use of our advice to spot the telltale indications of disgruntled employees and respond appropriately.

Examine the attendance logs

Examining the attendance records of workers is the simplest method to determine if they are working. Do they show up for each shift that is scheduled? What is the number of unexcused or unapproved absences that they had over the previous quarter?

It's also essential to keep an eye on their login and logout times. Do they come on time, arrive early, and work all the hours that are scheduled? Do they come late and leave early, or vice versa?

Workers that exhibit significant absenteeism and tardiness rates could not put forth as much effort as their teammates. Speak with each underachiever one-on-one to determine the problem and how to solve it before implementing punitive measures.

2. Verify if they are completing the task.

Verifying whether a remote team member has finished their assignments and projects is another simple method to determine if they are running behind schedule. Compare the number of tasks allocated to the number of tasks accomplished in order to do this. To make comparisons as simple as possible, use the project management tools available to your company.

Your staff may not be performing their assigned shifts or making the most use of their time if they have a lot of unfinished business. Face-to-face communication may assist you in identifying the underlying problem, even if you may want to avoid confrontation. An employee's productivity, for instance, may be impacted by problems like a shortage of supplies or equipment.

Your staff is undoubtedly working if they are able to do the duties that have been given to them. But what happens if their work is not as good as you anticipated or delivered on time? Let us investigate this further.

3. Evaluate the caliber of their output

Even when they are working remotely, are your workers producing work that meets your quality standards? Your quality assurance procedures may fluctuate somewhat depending on the sort of work your workers do and the nature of your organization.

Examine the process for recent tasks if your company produces deliverables. Did employees need to complete many rounds of modifications for certain projects? If so, they could be producing work that is below par, in which case a performance evaluation is necessary.

Measure recent consumer satisfaction levels for contact centers that provide customer support. Do certain members of the squad consistently obtain bad marks? Examine these evaluations for trends to identify and fix performance problems.

Ask other team members for their opinions on the quality of work produced by their colleagues in any company that values teamwork. Do colleagues give remote workers less credit? Seek out typical problems so you can assist staff in becoming better.

4. Verify whether any deadlines are being missed.

Even if your staff is working so hard, what happens if they are behind schedule? Your team as a whole may be slowed down by these delays, which might result in more serious issues for stakeholders and consumers.

Use the project management tool provided by your employer to monitor the timeliness of your team's work. Seek for jobs that are finished after the deadline or projects that are running behind schedule. Pay attention to the one who is behind these acts.

Occasional deadline misses may not constitute a red flag. But, act quickly to stop repeat offenders before their tardiness becomes the norm. To find out more about the reason the employee missed the deadline, set up a check-in.

whenYou could sometimes discover that access to team members or the scarcity of resources had a role. In other scenarios, your staff could deal with low morale, spotty Internet connection, or assignment uncertainty.

As an example, contrast their active and idle times

Being punctual for work is one thing, but what happens to you remote workers after they clock in for the day? Do they function as you would expect them to, or are they unavailable for extended periods of time throughout the day?

A normal shift typically lasts eight hours. Employees won't, however, be working full-time. Your team may need time for research, processing, strategizing, or relaxation, depending on their respective duties.

Recognize the average amount of active vs idle time for each function. For instance, compared to middle managers, entry-level engineers could spend more time actively overall. Next, assess each employee's performance in relation to these criteria.

Arrange for a check-in to determine why some workers are much more idle than others. Look behind the typical justifications to uncover the true cause of workers' excessive idle time. After that, you may draft an action plan to address any unresolved problems.

6. Take into account how quickly they respond

When your team operates in several nations or regions, internal communications play a crucial role in communication. However, some team members may not reply right away if they are not working hard all day. This may cause the team as a whole to lag.

If you're not already keeping an eye on staff response times, do so right now. Observe how long it takes staff members to reply to various forms of outreach. For instance, simple inquiries should be answered quickly, while more complicated ones take longer.

Keep an eye on how long it takes staff members to reply on various platforms. Do they reply to messages on Teams or Slack right away, but it takes them hours or even days to reply to emails? Update your remote work regulations in accordance with your desires for workers to react more quickly or to adopt new behaviors.

Keep track of the time of day for every message you follow. Next, see if response time is impacted by the time of day. For instance, you could discover that specific staff members answer more slowly at certain hours of the day. This information reveals when workers are not present.

7. Keep an eye on their meeting participation

Meetings may let you better assess how hard people work in real time, while internal communications can help you evaluate async answers. Establish a system to gauge how engaged staff members are in meetings.

Do staff members, for instance, activate the camera and pose questions at key junctures in team meetings? Or do they ignore going to the meeting and leave the video on?

Do they respond to inquiries as succinctly and clearly as feasible while in person? Or do they provide insightful comments that further the discussion? Do they pose inquiries that demonstrate a proactive attitude toward their work?

Conduct an engagement survey as a follow-up if employee engagement indicators are comparatively low. These tools let you find out more about the motivations behind workers' actions and gauge how they feel about their employment. After that, you may start incorporating new hires into your corporate culture.

8. Request input from clients and coworkers

The most accurate way to learn about an employee's performance is usually via direct data collection from them. Don't, however, disregard criticism from clients or coworkers. You may also learn how hard your remote workers work from their feedback.

Teams should think about employing anonymous employee surveys to survey their colleagues. By using these polls, team members may be encouraged to communicate openly and honestly without needless confrontation.

Think about getting feedback from your teams' direct customer interactions by asking them about their interactions with your staff. Encourage them to assess factors like the quality and promptness of their work as well as the promptness and thoroughness of their answers.

How Time Doctor can verify if your remote team is indeed productive

Do you need tools to hold your remote team members accountable? You can monitor which employees are working and who isn't remotely using Time Doctor. Time Doctor collects data in real-time and offers insights that will help you boost output and motivate your team to do their best work over time.

attendance log

When workersTime Doctor keeps track of your login and logout times automatically at the start and conclusion of the workday. You may quickly determine how many hours each employee works a day using this data.

Time Doctor may compare the real time with the planned time if you enter a team schedule into the platform. In order to help you promptly identify and address absenteeism problems, the platform furthermore reports on whether workers are missing or late for work.

automated timekeeping

Just keeping an eye on start and finish timings is not enough. Time Doctor creates comprehensive reports on projects and tasks while keeping track of how your team spends time throughout the workday. Do some workers take longer than required to do particular tasks? Workflow check-in is a solution for these issues.

You may track idle time by using the platform's activity level measurement feature, which tracks mouse and keyboard movements. Please take note that Time Doctor does not record individual keystrokes or actions, nor is it a keystroke logger. Does the amount of time that some workers spend on idle continue to rise? To find out whether the activities they were given ensure these patterns, you may utilize Time Doctor.

In addition, Time Doctor may monitor staff members who are not online throughout the workday and capture sporadic screenshots. Do some workers often spend more time offline than they need to be online all the time? A face-to-face discussion might indicate that they are handling distractions at home or that their Internet connection is the problem.

Productivity Perspectives

Do you want to know what websites and applications your team utilizes for work? Time Doctor keeps track of the websites and applications that staff members use while at work automatically. It helps you get additional insight into the workflow of your remote workforce by coordinating these websites and applications with tasks and projects.

You have the ability to mark websites and applications as productive or ineffective as an administrator. The first category includes websites that your staff needs to access in order to do their tasks, while social networking websites often belong in the second category.

Time Doctor generates reports that show the production levels of your team based on your customized parameters. To learn more about who is really doing the task, you may examine this data by team or employee. What potential financial effect may this feature have? "Time Doctor helped increase productivity per employee by 15%," as our client BokDoc relates.

instantaneous insights

Would you want to discover what projects your team is working on when? Time Doctor increases accountability and transparency by giving you real-time insight into the activities and projects that your team is managing.

Employee work monitoring is possible without micromanaging every job when you are aware of what your staff members are doing throughout the workday. You may also use this information to help you establish reasonable expectations for response times across time zones.

Considering work-life harmony

The platform will highlight workers who fulfill these criteria automatically once you set your own warning indicators for overwork. When you identify workers who are overworking or staying up late, you may assist them in modifying their work schedules or taking time off to prevent further issues.

Customer of Time Doctor Geoff Ainsworth said, "Work-life balance is a great feature I couldn't live without and it's a real ally in retaining talent."

The Next Actions to Take to Begin Remote Employee Monitoring

It adds a great deal of needless complication to manually or with numerous tools monitor distant workers. Use Time Doctor to streamline your tech stack. You can keep an eye on everything from work-life balance and productivity to activity and attendance all from one platform. Are you prepared to discover how your team may gain from using Time Doctor's remote employee software? Set up a demo to find out more.