6 Practical Ways to Encourage Remote Employee Time Tracking

The year 2020 witnessed a dramatic shift with over 80% of employees working from home, and making businesses worldwide to implement some sort of remote work policy. With the ease of plugging in and ability to connect from anywhere, remote employees are said to be more productive, healthier and take fewer days off sick – a positive sign that helps a business’s bottom-line.

As with anything, remote working also has its challenges that managers and employees have to deal with - inorder to ensure employee morale and company culture. When we say remote working challenges, it could be any of these or everything of these:

• Lack of collaboration or team communication
• Distraction at home
• Lack of productivity due to procrastination
• Unsure of what to do next
• Lack of motivation

To identify the cause for concern and overcome these challenges, employers are turning towards employee monitoring and time tracking software. Apart from that, creating a culture of time tracking in the workplace helps employees foster a sense of ownership and find means to overcome productivity challenges. In this article, we’ll look at 6 practical ways to encourage remote employee time tracking (without losing their trust in the workplace).

1. Encourage employees to share timesheets:

Encouraging employees to share their timesheets on a daily basis motivates them to track time.

Encourage your employees to update and share timesheets for each day, and let your employees know the benefits of doing so. Start by summarizing the importance of accurate timesheet reporting and how you’ll use the data to tackle issues related to delegation and project management.

Let your employees understand that timesheets help managers gain absolute clarity on employee bandwidth and workload. It’ll help managers to effectively delegate tasks based on individual employee skill and capability while preventing them from getting overloaded at work.

2. Have regular check-ins on who is doing what:

Do regular check-ins on your remote employees and ask for updates as to what they are working on, how long it will take for them to complete them and if they need your support in completing them. Come up with engaging questions and give room to talk about their achievements or the difficulties they face. This will help you know their workflow/workpattern and resolve issues they face from time to time. When you make regular check-ins and status reporting a habit, your employees will understand the need for time tracking.

Read:How to Make The Most Out of Employee Check-Ins?

3. Create a culture of employee accountability in the workplace:

Employee accountability in the workplace is all about taking ownership and being responsible for their performance and decisions they take. It means when a task is assigned to an employee, they should continue through the end and get it done without passing the buck to someone else. That said, if you notice your employees’ consistently miss deadlines or stay unsure of how they spend their time in a day - it is likely that your team lacks accountability. This is very true in case you’re dealing with remote employees, as they have no overseer to keep them on track.

On the other hand, creating a culture of accountability motivates your employees to demonstrate ownership and feel responsible towards their actions in the workplace. Eventually, they’ll start focusing on the task at hand (as they are responsible to complete the tasks assigned to them), feel motivated to track their time and keep fellow workers or managers fully informed about what is being done during work hours.

4. Encourage shared goals within employees:

Can you imagine a team of developers working on the same project from different locations and with unclear goals or poor communication?

Managers often conduct one on one sessions or team meetings (virtual meetings) to discuss common goals or tasks in their agenda. Often it’s not enough, when your teams are working from a different location. Whether it’s your in-house or remote employees, team collaboration and shared goals are crucial for project success - especially if you are working on high-profile projects.

Having shared goals among employees improves their teamwork and collaboration skills. They will soon learn to cover each other’s back and give status updates on tasks in progress, pending tasks and so on. They will automatically start tracking their time on a daily basis to deliver accurate time sheet reporting - because they have their role to play as part of the shared goal.

5. Set realistic deadline for each task:

Setting a deadline is a great way to motivate your remote employees to track their time. People who work under deadlines feel the pressure of accountability and tend to do a planned work. When it comes to remote teams – setting realistic deadlines motivates them to honor their commitment and prepare in advance for upcoming tasks and projects. It gives your employees (both in-house and remote) the extra push they need to complete tasks within the set time frame. As a result, they will start working on time tracking exercise and learn to schedule their time and prioritize tasks more efficiently - ending up being way more productive.

6. Use technology to automate remote employee time tracking:

Recently employee time tracking is making waves in many businesses due to its wide range of benefits that it offers for both employers and employees alike. A solution that relatively few businesses required has now become ubiquitous, making its way on work devices of most businesses.

Take advantage of this and use time tracking software to automate attendance and to track your employee activity. There are numerous software out there, for you to try – and all you have to do is, work on the employee monitoring or time tracking features that your business will need and pick one that best suits your needs. Once implemented, you don’t have to worry about knowing what your employees are up to, as the time tracking software will take care of it for you.

Try Handdy for remote employee time tracking:

In the below info graphic, you can see some of the features which makes Handdy the best employee monitoring and time tracking software that helps increase the efficiency of employees, teams and companies as a whole – at an affordable cost.

Tried and tested by several companies, Handdy time tracking software automatically tracks your employee (in-house and remote) login and logout time and helps you monitor their daily activities during work hours.

Schedule a free demo and see how you can manage your remote teams from one place and without breaking their trust in your company.