2020 has been very different so far with no predictability whatsoever even now. One of the many changes has been working from home, becoming a new norm. As COVID-19 swept the globe, everybody around the world was advised to work from home and to prioritize safety over anything. However, even before the Covid-19 outbreak, a significant number of people agree that they have been working from home all of their life.
According to a recent survey, more than half of the Australian population that was surveyed either work from home or is willing to go as far as taking a pay cut to work from home. Considering these high numbers, it is understandable that businesses would see profitability in providing such flexibility to their employees’ working location. Then the point is how easy or difficult would it become to manage them.
Importance of Managing Your Remote Employees
So why should an employer feel the need to measure the productivity of an employee in the first place? The answer to this question is as simple as to maintain the discipline and professionalism of their organization. The freedom the employees are exercising is due to the fact that they are working from their comfort zone, which makes it possible for many women to follow organic beauty routine.
They are not getting to choose their shift time or the quantity of work they do. But, working from home can be challenging or too comforting for people, both cases in which it would affect the quality of their work. That is why, as an employer, it is important to efficiently manage your remote employees.
3 Main Metrics to Measure Remote Employee’s Productivity
The following are the three main metrics you can use to efficiently manage your remote employee’s productivity and performance.
1. Sales Performance Metrics Like Sales Per Agent And Successful Lead Conversion Rate
If you have a sales team working remotely, then metrics like sales per agent and a significant successful lead conversion rate is an easy way to measure their performance. Every sales agent of the team can keep a record of all the sales they made through mutual sharing platforms like Google Sheets, where both the employee and the employer can see the progress.
It will not only help in measuring productivity, but it will also increase consistency and promote healthy competition among teammates. As each would want to increase their sales and get on top of the chart, it will enhance the overall team productivity.
2. Marketing Performance Metrics Like New Marketing Leads And Marketing Campaign Results
Similarly, a marketing team would also require some performance measurement metrics. However, a marketing department is more of a group and based on teamwork as compared to any other department of the business. That is the main reason why there are only 4-5 main marketing employees that design and work on new campaigns and marketing strategies.
Therefore, with metrics, whole team performance can be measured both individually and as a group like marketing campaign results. Also, most of the times the team lead is responsible for major decision making, so measuring new marketing leads can also work.
3. Customer Support Performance Metrics Like Customer Service Satisfaction And Response Time
Comparatively, it is way easier to keep track of the performance of customer care representatives. Because if they do that bad of a job, customers nowadays are so far advanced, they will leave no stone unturned to make sure your organization knows about it. Customer feedback plays a very important role in helping to measure the performance of the customer support agent.
The number of customers they deal with throughout the day or as per their shift can also help determine their productivity. Also, there is efficient software available to keep track of response time which can be used to measure if they are on time and professional with their communication.
Top 3 Efficient Tools to Measure Remote Employee’s Productivity
The following are my top three picks for being the most efficient and best tools to measure remote employee productivity.
1. Google Suite
The Google Suite is your ultimate best friend when it comes to remote employee management and productivity measurement. It offers email, document collaboration, mutual file storage, shared calendar and much more. It also has Google Spreadsheets and forms. The whole package is derived from helping better team collaboration and efficient management in a remote working situation. I would use it to do my essay and share it with my writing team. The best part of each aspect is familiarity. Each of your employees is already well aware of the basics. Therefore, you don’t have to waste time training them to use any of its features.
2. Roadmap App
The Roadmap App is a project management application. It is known for its performance in tracking time for remote employees. It is an essential tool that fits into any business ecosystem seamlessly. It has all the readabilities like PDF, PowerPoint and simple text document to build, edit, share and maintain with your team. Its functionality is minimalistic, so everything is straight to the point with any points stated in circles. It really is to its core a project management app designed for remote employees.
3. Timely
Timely allows you to measure your team’s time per project. The interface is so easy and simple to understand that if an employee forgets to stop the timer after a project ends, it will notify you via email that the clock is still running and allow you to edit it as you like it. The best part is that it gives complete time management control to the team lead, making productivity increasingly efficient without any time being wasted.
Bottom Line
All in all, managing remote employees can be challenging, to say the least. However, the trick is in mastering the metrics and measuring tools to your benefits. Hopefully, the ones I have mentioned help you measure remote employee productivity and you reap results in no time!
Author Bio
Melissa Calvert is currently working as a Tech-Business Analyst and Content Curator at Dissertation Assistance. She has been managing the remotely working team of the IT department of an online business for over a year now. Having gained significant expertise in the field, she shares it with people on her blog.