The world has experienced major tectonic shifts since the Covid-19 outbreak. Our lives have changed forever, making people deal with the “new normal” while constantly feeling afraid, isolated, and helpless. However, remote work or work from home has become one of the rare benefits that the pandemic has brought, and people grew to love. Home has soon become a stress-free working environment that allows people to manage their time and projects in the way that best suits them.
While some workers enjoyed work from home benefits, becoming more productive, others started struggling with productivity killers, like distractions and poor time management, that lurked from every corner of their cozy home offices.
This urged employers to look for efficient ways to make sure their employees stay highly productive while working out of the office. Workforce analytics and time tracking software, like Workpuls , may be the perfect solution for turning productivity busters into boosters, helping you to maintain productivity high and your employees motivated.
Let’s see how this software fits into three key productivity boosting tips.
1. Tackle the Potential Distractors
Let’s face it, distractions are all around you when working from home. According to a survey, the Internet is the main distractor in the workplace with 47% of people admitting they check their social media feed during work hours. News websites landed second on this “top distractions” list with 45% of people visiting these while working.Workpuls offers you insight into the use of “unproductive” vs. “productive” sites, enabling you to talk with your employees about the excessive use of social media and its negative effects on their productivity.
This said, make sure that you don’t use data collected via workforce analytics software to eliminate the “unproductive” sites entirely, because this approach may backfire and bring productivity down. Namely, your employees may feel controlled, seeing this measure as a kind of punishment. This may result in a total lack of motivation and revolt, leaving you high and dry with plunging productivity and severe trust issues.
When working from home, employees may face numerous other distractions besides the Internet. For example, people may wander into the kitchen, looking for snacks way too often, or think they can squeeze in some simple chores within their work hours. Workpuls employee monitoring software shows you how employees use their time by comparing hours they spend productively with “idle time,”i.e., time spent away from the computer. In this way, you can see when they are the most productive, and delegate tasks accordingly.
2. Break Projects into Smaller Tasks and Set Deadlines
Complex and massive tasks are one of the major things that may kill employees’ motivation and bring productivity down. Large, complex tasks that have no clear objectives may make employees feel lost and overwhelmed. This feeling may deepen if you leave them without clear directions or change requirements five times a day. It’s a perfect way to get a stressed worker who feels pressured to meet unclear or unreachable expectations. You have to admit this isn’t the best scenario for keeping productivity high.
This said, most people give their best when they know exactly what the expectations are and can clearly see the steps toward the result.
So, try dividing huge projects into smaller tasks with clear objectives and visible results and watch productivity boom.
Working from home brings employees the flexibility to organize work at their own pace. Even though this is a work from home advantage, it may easily turn into a trap. So many times it turned out that the freedom to organize their own time resulted in poor time management that piled up both unfinished work and stress.
This is why you need to set deadlines that employees can lean on when planning their work. However, these deadlines need to be well-balanced to get the most out of employees. Make sure they aren’t too short and impossible to meet, because employees may feel pressured and overwhelmed. At the same time, avoid being too lenient with deadlines. People who think they have more than enough time to finish projects tend to procrastinate, bringing them to a breaking point.
You can use Workpuls time tracking software to see what time it takes employees to finish specific tasks. This way, you’ll manage time and delegate projects better by setting reasonable deadlines.
3. Offer Much-Needed Support and Reward
Employee monitoring software is often wrongly labeled as a “controlling” device that employees can’t benefit from. Quite the contrary, if you use Workpuls workforce analytics software transparently you may help underachievers reach set goals or reward hard workers.
By having an insight into computer activities, you may notice that some employees struggle to reach goals because they don’t use specific tools or platforms optimally. By giving them training and support, you’ll boost employees' self-confidence and motivate them to do their best.
At the same time, you may use data collected to recognize someone’s hard work and reward their effort. By providing employees with this real-time evaluation, you may emphasize their good sides and show them how to tackle specific issues.
