Why measure time?
Tracking and time management are a must, especially when working with people on an urgent project. Additionally, we and our team may work on multiple projects with overlapping project cycles, and our off-site staff work remotely on a different schedule than we do due to time zone differences. For this reason, having the ability to switch between tasks, multitask, track time and keep distractions at bay to achieve different results and meet their respective deadlines is important to ensure the success of a business.
With numerous social networking sites, online video sharing communities, games, ad hoc requests from teammates, and responses to email communications, it’s all too easy for virtual workers to get distracted. Since you can’t physically monitor whether or not your team is performing the tasks assigned to it at any given time, you simply measure their productivity using completed tasks as a performance metric. But wouldn’t you be more productive if you could ensure that your staff’s time and workload is properly organized, recorded and accounted for?
My business is small and I only have a few employees, aren’t email and VoIP timestamps enough to check if they are working or not?
Emails can now be accessed through a mobile device, VoIP apps like Skype are the same. In fact, you can even bring your laptop, hop over to the nearest pub, and answer your boss’s emails as if you were working. Email timestamps and video conferences from time to time are not proof of productivity and time well spent. If your company has an internal time tracking system for your internal staff, check to see if you can use the same system to track the time of your remote staff. If you are using contractors or services from a third-party company, be sure to ask if they have a means of tracking your work time. Time tracking is beneficial to everyone: employers, employees, clients, and contractors alike.
The benefits of time tracking include:
• The ability to view project alignments from a higher level view and break tasks into smaller, more manageable increments
• You can understand which business practices and internal processes lead to wasted time and use the information for business development.
• You can record how much time is spent on each task or project so you can set a more reasonable time estimate for your team when a similar project comes up.
• The ability to manage your time more effectively.
• The ability to keep all data on workload, progress, deadlines, as well as staff and customer information in one central location that you can easily access for more accurate customer billing.
• Your offshore workers can use time tracking as evidence of how their time was spent
• You can share your time tracking with individuals, freelancers, and staff members who work on the same project as you.
• In general, you and your staff will be more productive.
How can I control and manage my team’s time?
Large companies, especially BPOs, are already using different systems to control time and productivity in the office. This allows them to appropriately allocate manpower, equipment, and other resources as needed to achieve the target result. SMEs, however, are relatively new to this, as time tracking and management systems are quite expensive and a bit “overkill” for tracking the productivity of a small team. Fortunately, there is now a more cost-effective solution for small and medium-sized businesses to accurately track and manage the time and tasks of their remote staff. There are desktop, mobile apps, and web-based time tracking software to choose from, and the cost varies depending on the number of users, projects, features, or subscription plans. Good options include Time Doctor, an effective time tracking and management tool that costs at least $9.99 per user per month. What’s great about this tool is the fact that you can not only track the time your staff spend on each task assigned to them, but also track the websites and apps used while your staff are working. . This way you can see if social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter or gaming apps are distracting your workers from real work. If you’re hiring contract workers through freelance sites and virtual worker portals, there’s a good chance they already have a good time-tracking system in place. oDesk, for example, uses TeamRoom, which tracks and logs a worker’s time, taking screenshots and photos of the worker every 10 minutes to help make sure the right person is working on the right task at the right time.
I have remote staff/virtual freelancers working for me on different projects. Are there other ways to maximize productivity?
Of course! And if you can use practical business solutions while increasing the productivity of your employees, you will benefit more. I met Mike O’Hagan, a successful serial entrepreneur and owner of 6 businesses operating in 4 countries. He provides tips on practical entrepreneurship through his free webinar series, entrepreneurial learning tours, and free eBook “The $100-A-Week Efficient Worker: An Effective Guide to Increasing His ROI When He Works.” relocate”. I downloaded the ebook and found some tips and ideas that I couldn’t find in other outsourcing ebooks.
