Working remotely and away from the office may be quite challenging for several reasons, including the lack of formal structures, a conducive work environment, personal supervision, elevated team purpose, and effortless face-to-face interactions.
Employees may struggle with timekeeping and management. Admittedly, not everyone will struggle. While it's important to identify who needs help the most, remember that some workers may appear fine but may actually find it hard to cope.
So, which strategies can you implement to make remote timekeeping more practical? Well, the following tips can help:
Before charting a path towards better remote team timekeeping habits, you should help employees identify the current challenges. Factors inhibiting their efficiency and time management may include:
It’s the tendency to postpone tasks with the intention to complete them in the near future.
Remote staff may have days where they have a lot of motivation to get things done, and at times they may not feel like doing anything.
It means that employees are having to dig into their personal time to complete work projects. It can result in burnout.
Remote workers may struggle with finding a private space to work with little disturbance.
Disruptions always find a way when working at home, whether it's a lack of concentration because there is no supervision or getting up to attend to something in the household every 20 minutes.
You should have open consultations with your remote staff to identify what’s contributing to their inefficiency.
After assessing the challenges plaguing your remote team, it’s time to look into the solutions. Providing a time management course can be a good starting point. You can find time management courses online through platforms such as Udemy.
Your company can develop a personalised time management course, which may be more impactful and relevant. In the course, you can share timekeeping techniques such as:
You can use an online training software such as WorkPilot to build online corporate courses.
You can promote better timekeeping by having employees schedule tasks ahead of time by using a calendar and blocking off chunks of time for certain tasks. There's no need to use a complicated productivity tool. They can use Google Calendar or similar calendars to organise their day.
It’s important for your remote staff to have an idea of how they use their time. They can use time tracking tools to track their workday’s activities. You can even consider platforms that offer screenshots monitoring. The added oversight may motivate employees to avoid distractions.
In the office, teams hold stand-up meetings standing up for approximately 15 minutes. Participants answer three questions:
The meetings can reinforce accountability, and ensure that tasks are not taking too long to get completed. Learn tips to run great remote standups.
With no commute times or office closure hours, employees may find that they are working for more hours than they did at the office. It's important to enforce the workday limit.
Once the remote staff recognise that they have a limited window to complete tasks, they will be more motivated and productive.
You should continuously re-examine your workflows and improve them to make sure that you are completing the task using the easiest and fastest methods. Start by conducting a workflow analysis to identify inefficiencies and improvement opportunities . You can then build processes with WorkPilot and use its productivity suite to manage tasks.
Implementing these tips along with continuous performance management will improve your remote team’s timekeeping abilities.
