7 Time Management Tips to Streamline your Virtual Team

One of the biggest challenges of managing a virtual team is ensuring that they are utilizing their time properly. During the lockdown, TrackOlap has witnessed many companies complaining about the problem of time mismanagement. Companies have seen a downfall in their employees' productivity due to the lack of time management.

Since now, remote working is new normal working; thus, it is very important for businesses to learn how to manage virtual teams with time. They need to find a method to overcome virtual barriers and keep their teams moving along with the clock.

We know it’s easier to say but very hard to achieve. Thus, in this post, we are going to discuss some of the innovative and effective time management tips for remote workers so that virtual time management can become easy.

Time Management Challenges of Managing Virtual Teams

Even before the pandemic, 50% of employees work part-time or full time remotely. But, today, almost anyone who is eligible to work remotely is doing it. Thus, it is the number one challenge for companies to manage their virtual teams and keep them aligned with the clock. Time management has always been a big issue for businesses, but virtual restrictions made it more challenging as -

Distinguishing “Work” and “Leisure” hours is becoming problematic.
Assigning and monitoring work virtually isn’t a piece of cake.
Real-time communication is very hard.
Providing feedback on time management without direct supervision is a challenge.

Managing virtual teams is crucial because businesses can achieve an optimum level of productivity with effective time management. When you have the right approach for virtual time management, you can keep your team on time constantly. Just find the right way.

Right Approaches For Virtual Time Management

If you are struggling to manage your virtual team with each passing second and you are facing a decline in your team’s productivity level, you need to pick the right approach to fix this problem soon. Without proper time management, you can’t channelize the energy of your team and meet important deadlines.

Thus, to effectively streamline your virtual team, you have to follow these time management tips for remote workers -

Find a Peak of Productivity

Many companies have been planning to make remote working a permanent thing like Microsoft, Google, etc. Do you know why? Because they have witnessed a rise in their employees' productivity level with it.

Yep, when people can work whenever they feel the most energetic and creative, it will automatically boost their productivity level. It is a universal phenomenon that every individual feels more productive at different time slots. Like, some people get clear thoughts in the nighttime like Oscar winner singer AR Rahman, and some prefer to work in the early morning, such as Mahatma Gandhi.

Similarly, each member of your team feels more productive at different time slots. And you have to recognize when your employees feel more productive so that you can use their productivity in your favor.

Through graphic productivity and performance reports, you can easily analyze which member of your team shows more productivity at what time. This knowledge can help you in giving work to an employee when he or she feels highly productive. It is a perfect way to overcome all the major challenges of managing virtual teams.

Set a Break Time

All work and no play make a Jell - a dull boy. Yep, if you are fully focused on the time management of your virtual team so that they give you 100% productivity. Then, you have to focus on the mental health of your team also.

In the office, you have fixed break hours for your employees, such as when they can go to the cafeteria or chitchat with their colleagues. Now, in a virtual setup, your team might not have direct contact with their colleagues, but a few minutes of break to unwind their mind is highly important for their productivity.

Thus, you should give frequent breaks to your virtual employees so that they can refresh their minds. You can send “Break Reminders” to your virtual employees with one tap and give them the opportunity to unwind. From lunch break to tea break, you should send fixed break time reminders to your virtual workers so that they can stay on a strict schedule.

Find Out Distractions and Remove Them

If you are finding a virtual worker missing out on deadlines or running behind work schedule, it is a warning sign that the person is distracted and mismanaging his time. And, you need to immediately find out what has been distracting your employee and instantly fix it.

Using the random screenshots feature of our remote monitoring software, you can determine what your employees are doing on their screens. If you find in screenshots that your employee is wasting time on social media websites, you have found what has been distracting him?

Now, to fix the problem, you can block or fix the time to use a certain website for your employee. This is the simplest and easiest way to keep distractions away from your remote teams so that they can stay aligned to their schedule.

Maintain Attendance Log Sheet

When you want to attain a 100% attendance rate in your virtual company, you have to maintain a proper attendance record of your employees. It doesn’t matter whether your virtual team is working in different time zones; you should make it compulsory for your employees to record their attendance every time they start or stop work.

With our monitoring software, your virtual team members can record their attendance with one tap and send notifications to your computer. With the proper attendance data, you can determine which employee has worked for how many hours in a day. The exact work hour data help in determining overtime and undertime working hours.

You can draw a graphic attendance report and share it with your employees so that they can analyze their working hours and make efforts to push their performance. Furthermore, automatic attendance can save your employees time to a great extent.

Set a Task Time

When you assign a task to your virtual employees, you should design a project completion timeline along. So, your employees know how much time they have to complete a certain task. But, fixing a project timeline is a precise task because if you set too short a timeline, it will overwhelm your employees and influence their productivity. Similarly, if you set too long timelines, it will delay your work progress.

Thus, after considering all the factors like rework time, latency factors, and other project-related elements, you should provide a timeline for your employees. With an employee efficiency dashboard, you can easily assign a project and timeline to complete a certain job to individual employees. And, whenever you see that your employees are running behind schedule, you can send a quick reminder with one click to get them back on track.

Latency has been becoming a huge problem in the remote work environment lately. Thus, when you set a project timeline for your employees, you can make sure that your virtual team always stays on the fixed timeline.

Rotate Time Management Methodology

Business is full of uncertainties and risks. Similarly, the productivity curve never remains straight. That means if one productivity tactic has worked for you, it won’t always show the same results. If you keep on implementing the same time management system to increase your virtual team's productivity, after some time, your tactic might fail.

Thus, you have to constantly try new methods to improve your team’s virtual time management system. Sometimes, you can use productivity analysis to stimulate the productivity of your employees during peak hours, or you can give frequent breaks to your team. You need to constantly play with time to always keep your employees fully productive.

When you have an effective time tracking and monitoring software in your hands, running different time management experiments on your virtual team won’t be that hard.

Set Meetings and Events Reminder

You must have often consult virtual meetings with clients and socializing events for your employees to stay connected. However, you need to make sure that meetings and events won’t clash with the working hours of your team. For this, you should prepare an event calendar where you can mark all the important meetings, webinars, or any other event that you have organized for your team.

Your employees will automatically receive reminder notifications before the event so that they can complete their work on time and attend the event without any delay. When you set a calendar in advance, you don’t have to worry about constantly reminding your employees.

Bottom Line

Time management is the key to improve the productivity and efficiency of your virtual team. Whether you want to streamline your operations or achieve your business goals, you have to invest in improving virtual time management. Once you have learned how to manage a virtual team with the clock, you can easily bring excellence to your virtual business.

TrackOlap has the perfect solution to improve the time management of your virtual team. To know more, contact us anytime!