Productive employees drive an organization towards success. All employees, however, need not be as productive you want them to be. To keep an eye on work productivity, you can’t really stand behind their desks. There are various new technologies which would do the same, and let you know which of your employees are productive and which are not. You can manage productivity and security, decrease the chances of litigation and so on. There is software to keep an eye on your remote employees too. Take a look at some popular technologies which you can use to track your employees’ work productivity:
Types of employee monitoring technology
There are two types of technology to help monitor your employees – overt and covert.
Overt
These software/applications are known to employees. Employees are aware that they are monitored and the gadgets or applications are not hidden from view.
Covert
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Covert technologies are hidden from workers, and they are not aware that you are monitoring them.
It’s always better to use overt technology, as you can measure productivity easily with overt technologies. You have to check the laws in order to use covert methods, but it may be useful if you suspect employees stealing stock/data or any kind of criminal activity.
Time trackers
Time trackers fall into the category of overt apps. You have to download and install the app on the employees’ computer, but your employee has to launch the application to start tracking the time. These applications come in handy especially if you want to monitor your remote team. These apps are easy to understand and affordable too. Once it is installed, the app logs timesheets uploads screenshots every five minutes of the employees’ computer to the central server. You can check the log every week and check what work has been done, which allows you to pay for only the work that has been done. If your worker/s has spent time checking social media, you’ll get to know that too.
Project management monitoring tools
A project requires dedicated time and project management tools help you to assign work to your employees with deadlines. Your employees would have to update the progress of their work regularly, letting you know whether the work and time deadlines set for the project is being met or not. You would know whether actual work has been done on the project or not. You can take the required action if you see that deadlines are not being met.
GPS time tracking
Remote workers’ productivity is hard to track, as they work from home or are in the field. If you had a better idea of how your employees spend their time, you can get rid of any inefficiency. You could also improve your services to your clients. You can use a GPS app which your employees can download on their company-issued smartphone, or you can install GPS trackers on their vehicles.
Intelligent software
These applications digitally monitor your employee’s work behavior, and look for patterns of inefficiency, productivity, and theft. The main function of these apps is to analyze the productivity of your workforce at the individual, group, and department level. They help to find out which of your employees are the most productive, which applications are used the most, and whether social media was used for personal or company related uses. Intelligent software can also track the productivity of remote workers.
Spyware
Spyware is installed on the employees’ computers without them knowing about it. They operate silently in the background, recording every activity, and the information is uploaded to a central server or is stored locally to be accessed by you. Email monitoring, keystroke logger, timeline and event reports, application use, website browsing, file access, real-time monitoring, retrieved and deleted data, inactivity monitoring, social media monitoring and attendance tracking features can help you gauge the level of productivity of your employees.
Smartphone monitoring tools
Smartphones have many uses apart from just being used to make calls. Many companies which issue smartphones to their employees use overt methods to track their location, so that the closest employee can be sent to clients or to help out co-workers may be in trouble in the field. Some companies use covert apps to determine that the employee/s is not revealing trade secrets to rivals.
Tracking employee productivity can expose loopholes in your organization, which can help to weed out inefficiencies and inefficient workers leading to better productivity.
