7 Tips to Use the Best Productivity Tracking Software to Gain Maximum Results
However, as we always tell our clients, you can’t increase your businesses’ productivity curve with the best productivity tracking software. Your best software is useless unless you don’t know how to properly use it to drive the maximum results. That’s why, in this post, we are going to discuss why you need to track your employees' productivity and how to use employee time tracking software properly.
Why Track your Employees Productivity?
Productivity isn’t a fixed variable. It keeps on changing with each passing second. Your employee might be highly productive an hour ago, but now he feels demotivated, stressed, or disturbed, which will automatically reduce his productivity.
In a way, productivity is an emotion that can change anytime. This makes it essential for businesses to use productivity tracker for employees so that they keep their workers always productive. Thus, the key reasons to use employee monitoring software are –
Effective Solution – The most productive employees can get distracted anytime and put a strain on your business. That’s because when your one employee goes unproductive, it wastes the time and money of your business. So, employee tracking software will effectively tell when and why your employees are being unproductive and protect your business from monetary and timely losses.
Complete Insight – When you are using productivity tracking software, you won’t only get insight into the productivity level of your employees. You will also gain access to tons of other information that can help your business, such as attendance, idle time, task completion time, and much more.
No Need to Micromanage – Nobody likes to be micromanaged. But, without monitoring every second of your employee time, you cannot draw the correct productivity conclusions. Here, when you use the best productivity tracking software that works in the background without disturbing your employees, you can monitor them without constant management.
Tips to Use Employee Productivity Tracking Tools
Once you have invested in the productivity tracker for employees, you are halfway to improving the productivity of your team. Next, you just need to know how to use your employee time tracking software to maximize the results.
We have created a couple of powerful tips to use tracking and monitoring software based on our real-time experience. So, follow these tips to dot for better results.
Tip 1. Track Daily But Don’t Micromanage
To stay connected with your employees, you should daily check-in with them. However, you should not cross the blurred line between getting daily updates and micromanaging them. With daily tracking, you can show your employees that you value and care about their performance. Additionally, regular check-ins help in understanding the mental status and motivation level of your team.
For instance, when you have assigned a project to your employee, don’t go and demand progress status daily. Instead, you can ask employees –
- What have they accomplished today?
- Are they facing any problems?
- Do they need your help?
- Will they be able to complete the project on time?
Tip 2. Focus on Quality than Time
One of the biggest blunders that many business owners make while using employee productivity software is they focus on how many hours an employee has worked rather than what he has achieved in that time.
Managers, don’t just check attendance or total work hour record of employees. Instead, focus on what employees have achieved. Now, your employee might have worked eight hours shift but has achieved nothing.
So, you should not judge your employees based on how many hours they have worked. If they have completed their job, time doesn’t matter. Suppose, if your employee has completed her task by 2 pm, there’s no purpose of stopping her till 5 pm. You can give her the rest of the day off because she has achieved her goals – in less time.
Tip 3. Clearly Express your Expectations
One of the prevalent factors behind reduced employee productivity is confusion. Your confused employees can’t focus on their work and unnecessary waste of productive hours. And, you can easily clear the confusion of your employees by clearly defining your expectations.
Let’s look at a case study; XYZ company deals with web and app development projects. Currently, the company is working on two big projects at the same time – Project A and Project B. Now, if you want to complete Project B first because the client is big and can bring more business to your company, if your employees don’t know that, they will complete both projects under the standard timeframe.
So, if you want your employees to focus on Project B first, you have to provide them clear instructions. Through employee monitoring software, you can define the following things to your employees –
- Specific time and measure to achieve goals
- A realistic way to achieve them
- Additional pointers to remember
So, don’t just give a task or goal to your employees. You need to fully define why a certain goal is important, how to achieve it, etc. In short, share your expectations with your team so that they can meet them - it’s a simple thing.
Tip 4. Measure Performance to Improve It
You should measure your employees' performance so that you can help them in improving their productivity. But, always remember tip 2. Don’t measure performance based on time; use quality as the parameter to measure the task.
This way, you can determine which employees are top performers and which requires extra help from your side. However, you can’t make the difference by identifying underperforming employees only.
You have to figure out why some employees are underperforming and how you can help them to get back on track. You can use information retrieved from the employee tracking software to identify the root cause of unproductive employees.
For example, from the application usage data, you can check what applications have been your employees using the most? If you find your employees wasting time on gaming or social media websites during their work hours, you can share a productivity report with them. This way, you can prevent your employees from getting distracted while working.
Tip 5. Upfront Communication System
The right pathway to enhance the productivity of your team via software is preparing a transparent communication channel. With our tracking solution, you can easily coordinate your employee's operations through a centralized communication portal.
When you share honest and real information with your employees, they will feel more connected with your business goals. You should share tracking information and reports with the individual employee so that they can self learn and grow. On the top, when you keep the monitoring process transparent, you can better help your employees in improving their performance.
Tip 6. Always Gather Data via Software But Think From your Heart
You should use productivity tracking software to measure the performance level and cause of declined productivity. But, you should never make decisions based on the robotic data – no, you should make decisions around compassion, emotions, and the entire persona of an employee.
If your employee has been super productive in the last months, but suddenly, one month, his performance decline gradually. Then, you should not make a decision based on the one-month data. You should try to connect with the person on an emotional level first because emotional imbalance can impact productivity dramatically.
In this, if you compassionately deal with your employee, you can remove negativity from your work environment. Furthermore, you can develop a strong relationship with your staff.
Tip 7. Set Long-Term and Short-Term Productivity Goals
Productivity analysis is a constant process. You have to track, monitor, and analyze the performance of your employees every day – only then can you ensure that they have achieved their given goals or not.
You have to set long term and short term performance measure parameters for your team. The tracking software can help you with the daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly performance data of your employees. You can compare real-time employee performance data with the parameters defined by you and achieve high business productivity. Plus, you can keep your teams' morale high by showing how they have achieved small accomplishments.
Track with the Right Mindset
While introducing the employee monitoring software in your organization, you have to use the right approach. Your mindset should be of helping your employees with real-time productivity data instead of micromanaging or punishing them. On the top, when your employees see improvement in their growth due to software, they will encourage its use.
To effectively use the TrackOlap software, you should follow all the tips carefully. Additionally, if you require any specific tips, you can contact our website anytime.