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Productivity Monitoring Software

Wondering how to increase productivity? Insightful can help you do that, and much more!

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 Employee productivity monitoring

Track More Than Productivity

Insightful screen monitoring software gives you a unique perspective of your employees’ productivity, daily activities, and timesheets.

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Manager Login

Let managers review their team’s activities, evaluate performance and organize projects.

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Employee Login

Give employees access to the data you’re collecting, and promote tracking transparency.

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API

Integrate any software with Insightful by using our Rest API.

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Raw Data

Receive data about your employees activities second-by-second.

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Alerts

Trigger alerts based on unwanted activities or unusual events.

How Insightful Helps Increase Productivity

STEP 1

Measure and Analyze

With our productivity labeling, tracking and reports features we’re giving you an analytics platform which shows you the insights into your workers’ daily habits and activities.

STEP 2

Improve

Use the data we give you as a basis to organize additional training for those who need it, or create a rewards program to bump up productivity. Find bottlenecks and contain them.

Use Cases

improve productivity remote team

Remote Teams

Even if your team is distributed all over the world, Insightful can still help you organize workload, prioritize and keep the productivity at a high level.

track productivity office team

Office Teams

With Insightful there’s no need for you to walk up to someone to see what they’re working on or if they have their priorities straight. Just sign into your dashboard and you’ll be able to see everything you need.

Workplace Productivity: The Ultimate Guide

Productivity has been a hot topic for a long time now, and for a good reason! But why does it seem so hard to attain? And what can you do about it? Join us in exploring the obstacles for workplace productivity and find out how to overcome them.

Introduction

Let’s all do a quick math exercise (don’t worry, it’s just basic arithmetic): If your workers come to work at 9 a.m. and leave the office at 5 p.m, how much time do they spend working provided they have a one-hour lunch break? Give it your best shot.

If your answer was 7 hours, you were naively wrong. In fact, even if you cut this in half, you’d still be off.

The correct answer is 2 hours and 53 minutes. Yes, you saw that right - 2 hours and 53 minutes.

This tells you that: A) You can forget about a perfect employee who invests 100% of their office time into actually working, and B) Workplace productivity is a huge issue with a lot of room for improvement.

productivity guide

Now, we have some good and some bad news. The bad news is - there is no definitive checklist of simple things you can do to get your employees’ productivity through the roof. Improving it will take time, a little bit of trial and error, and a lot of customization.

The good news is - before you, you have a comprehensive guide that will tell you everything you need to know about the psychology of productivity, reasons for the lack of, the best ways to do an employee productivity calculation, as well as several methods that you can try and tweak to get your team to be more efficient and productive.

So let’s dive right in.


Defining Productivity

It’s a word that you’ve heard a billion times just this year. In fact, you’ve seen it written five times so far in this text alone. But what does it really mean? How do you know if someone is productive or not?

Is it how fast they do the work? Or how well? Is starting work on time a defining factor? Or is maintaining that concentration what really matters? Maybe avoiding distractions is all that counts, even if they end up staring at a blank paper/screen for hours? Or maybe simply meeting deadlines is good enough for a passing grade?

When you put it this way, you really get to see how difficult it is to define productivity, let alone measure it.

daniel garcia - doist

Daniel García

PR manager - Doist

How would you define productivity in the context of the workplace?

To be truly exceptional at the work you do, and to gain recognition for it. That's "deep work". This concept was coined by Cal Newport, a renowned author and computer science professor:
“Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” I think the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

As it turns out, productivity is a combination of many factors - time management, willpower, motivation, meaningfulness, focus, mental and physical readiness and probably many more. In order to improve operational efficiency and improve productivity, you’ll most likely have to address more than one of these things.

This is precisely why even productivity tracking can be difficult. Even though nowadays you have employee monitoring software, time trackers and other similar employee productivity tracking software, you still need to take a lot of factors into consideration.

Want to jump straight on to measuring productivity in your workplace? Insightful - the best office productivity software - is at your service!

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So, the quest of boosting workplace productivity in your company won’t be an easy one. But if you’re equipped with the knowledge and understanding of what drives and halts productivity, your path to get a bit closer to that 100% will be much more than just firing shots in the dark and hoping for a hit.

What’s All the Fuss About Productivity Anyway?

Yes, all that work and effort, for what? So that you can look at the shiny big numbers and feel like a proud mama bear? As satisfying as this feeling might be, there’s so much more to it than that.

First of all, you’ll save a lot of time. An employee who actively works 70% of their office time gets to do much more than the one who only works barely over 40% (like our average worker does). Simple as that. It’s pretty much a landslide from here - you finish projects faster, you have time for other tasks and more projects. Or you could just spend the extra time on trying to optimize other aspects of your business. As a business owner or an executive, we bet you have at least a couple of ‘non-urgent’ tasks waiting for an open time slot that never seems to come.

Secondly, when you save time, you also get to save money. Or, more precisely, make more of it. Finishing projects and tasks faster will give you an opportunity to take on more workload without having to hire additional staff.

Finally, perceived productivity and efficiency also play a role in employees’ job satisfaction levels. If they have a feeling of having completed something meaningful and finished all the important tasks for the day, they’ll go home happy and satisfied. This satisfaction will in turn fuel their productivity for the next day. And this self-sustaining virtuous circle goes round and round; all you have to do is provide this initial push.

So, what’s stopping employees from getting there? Now, it’s time to take a closer look at some of the biggest obstacles to workplace productivity.

Roadblocks to Ultimate Productivity

Why can’t employees just come to the office and get to work? Is this so hard? Well, yes, it usually is. For many reasons.

amber pham - lifedev

Amber Pham

Information Security Manager - LifeDev

What's the number one factor causing low productivity and why?

Procrastination caused by a lack of motivation and accountability wastes your company’s time. Make it clear why you team’s work is important. How does it contribute to the company’s mission?
Keep employees accountable by setting deadlines for projects and tasks. Then act as if the work will be done by that date without constantly checking on progress. When your employees see that you trust them, they rise to the challenge.

In this section, we’ll go over seven most common issues that might be stalling workplace productivity. As already stated, understanding them can give you ideas of how you can combat inefficiency and unsatisfactory levels of productivity.

1. Low Motivation

Motivation is a huge factor in almost everything we do. How fast and how well employees do their job will hinge on whether or not they want to do it fast and well.

In order to understand the inner workings of this system a bit better, here’s a quick psychology 101 lesson: There are two broad types of motivation - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation is an incentive to do something that comes from your environment. For instance, your kid wants to eat their veggies because then they are allowed to eat their ice cream later too. Or because if they refuse, no TV for tonight.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from within. In other words, it’s not a means to an end, but an end itself. That’s why it’s considered stronger and more effective. For example, your kids eat their veggies because they know they’re healthy or because they really genuinely like broccoli.

Now, what does this have to do with workplace productivity? Well, a lot. We’ll talk more on extrinsic motivation in a bit, but intrinsic motivation is extremely important. If your employees don’t care about their job and don’t see the point of it, it’s hard to dedicate every minute of their work day to it.

Without this inner fire and drive, they’ll quickly burn out and then everything will seem like a more appealing use of their time than the actual work.

christopher d connors

Christopher D. Connors

Executive Coach and Training Consultant

How does motivation affect productivity?

Productivity truly, in its simplest form, should be defined as:

Creativity meets Routine meets Consistency. 

Without any of these key components, there is no productivity. Creativity is what fuels our desire and gives us the motivation to want to get the basics down, so we can be productive. Creativity gives us the opportunity to think of new methods, opportunities, relationships and situations to put ourselves in. This creativity and curiosity inspires productivity. It gets our brains moving and this synergy, before long, helps us to stop feeling sorry about our situation. I’ve learned through research and working with top executives that productivity is about breaking the pace of what’s not working, then focusing your performance on what will work. It’s about getting unstuck, moving on from an impasse, and getting consistent about what will work for you. 

To become more productive, determine the root cause of what’s keeping you stuck, while developing a rhythm for repetition and consistency of planning and doing. Deep thinking fuels planning. While plans are meant to be modified, it doesn’t diminish the importance of starting somewhere.
Planning prevents poor performance, and more importantly protects us from just “jumping in” to situations that we’re ill-equipped to handle. Productivity is always driven by planning.

 The motivation to be productive can come from goals you set, but it’s inspired by the creativity to want to accomplish and do something that will truly leave you fulfilled. Once the fire has been lit, you can truly do anything you set your mind to.

2. Lack of Expected Reward

Otherwise known as low extrinsic motivation.

OK, unfortunately, it’s clear that getting your employees to love their jobs if they don’t already is next to impossible. You can get them to care for the outcomes by sharing your successes but that’s about as far as you’re going to get.

However, you can get them to care about what happens to them if they do their job well. In other words, they need some sort of ‘no TV’ policy or, preferably, ‘ice cream’. Productivity has a chance to go up if employees are working towards some goal that they care about, whether this is a promotion, a pay rise, better clients or something else.

Not having the ultimate goal or reward for a job well done can make employees feel like they’re stuck in a rut. In this state of mind, they sure aren’t going to try and do their best.

employee time tracking

3. Procrastination

Oh yes, the art of putting things off until the deadline and starting your work day with a (second already) cup of coffee and a long scroll through the morning news. We’re all guilty of it at least occasionally.

But why do we do it? If we know that we’re at work and that it’s better for us to start early so that we can finish everything on time, why do we still have the need to watch that YouTube video or check our Facebook feed?

It’s actually the way procrastinators are psychologically wired and it basically has to do with fearing negative consequences. You can try to combat procrastination by meditating, or, more likely in the corporate setting, using a clock app to keep track of time and make employees focused.

Borderline is, though, that putting tasks off is natural and you have to account for it in your expectations for employee productivity goals.

4. Distractions

They are more numerous than ever. And they’re all around - colleagues, a view out the window, a cool gadget on the desk, food in the fridge, phones and, of course, the almighty internet. No wonder such a vast variety of stimuli take a toll on employees’ productivity.

In case you were wondering, the same study that found that employees work for 2 hours and 53 minutes also researched what they were doing the remainder of the time. The top three culprits were social media (admitted by 47% of employees), news websites (45%) and non-work-related chat with colleagues (38%).

If you want to know the specifics of your situation, you can just look at the use of unproductive apps and websites within your productivity tracking app, but chances are you’ll end up with similar results. After all, who wants to write their umpteenth invoice for today when they can watch ‘why the last season of Game of Thrones was SO bad’ videos instead?

employee monitoring

5. Multitasking

Wait, what? Isn’t this a list of roadblocks to productivity? And multitasking is efficiency epitomized, isn’t it?

doist pr manager

Daniel García

PR manager - Doist

What are the pros and cons of multitasking in terms of productivity?

I only see cons. The mental toll caused by multitasking has been proven to far outweigh peoples’ ability to simultaneously juggle tasks. Significantly reduces productivity, increases susceptibility to distractions, and creates a mental traffic jam. In fact, studies show that only 2% of people are truly effective multitaskers.

Well, as shocking and counterintuitive as it may seem, some studies have shown that multitasking is actually a huge time waster. It all boils down to the time it takes employees to switch from one task to another. This process includes ‘goal shifting’, when they decide they’re done with one task and going on to the next, as well as ‘rule activation’, during which they turn off the set of rules they need for task one and activate those they need for task two. And this is much more than a sharp one-second transition.

So, it turns out that frequently changing tasks is preventing your employees from using the time in between productively. Sometimes this is inevitable, but understanding how it can affect their overall performance can help inform your decisions on how you should organize their workload. Simply bulking similar tasks together might be in itself beneficial to your employees’ efficiency.

6. Long and Complex Tasks

Just as multitasking can negatively affect productivity, so can the other extreme - giving an employee one gigantic task that’s going to take them four months to finish. If they know something is going to take that long, they might be very reluctant to start because they don’t see the end of it. Alternatively, they might think that they have all the time in the world so they’ll put it off until it’s crunch time.

A similar problem occurs when their projects are too complex. When it takes 28 different steps and actions to complete one task, employees just don’t know where to begin. And if, on top of that, they don’t know how to do a certain part of the task, the situation only gets worse to the point of them not being able to do anything and productivity goes out the window.

Either way, there’s this feeling of being lost and overwhelmed that can make people have very strong negative feelings about the task at hand. And we’ve mentioned what happens when you don’t like what you’re doing.

7. Bad Time Management

Lastly, a very common hindrance to productivity is just bad time management. Not planning everything properly and failing to estimate how much time a project will take can quickly lead to impossible deadlines, stretched expectations and a general feeling of disarray.

This is in no way an environment that productivity can flourish in. Individual time management is something that is trained either by using an app to keep track of work hours or by creating to-do lists. And working on this should definitely be encouraged.

However, the problem gets more complicated when other team members enter the equation. There are several issues that make team time management difficult to get right, including communication, task delegation and estimating time, some or all of which can cause productivity to go down as well.

How Can You Improve Workplace Productivity?

That’s right, you don’t have to do all the work yourself and then just serve your employees instant solutions (which might not even work for them personally). You can encourage them to come up with their own ideas on how to increase productivity.

A simple brainstorming session within a team can do the trick. Or you might choose to encourage them to write their ideas in a journal along with the results.

Project and time management software can give them some starting ideas. And actually, many workstation monitoring tools allow you to give each employee access to their own productivity reports. Doing this can prove very useful as a resource for ideas on how they can improve their own performance.

And now, finally, we’re going to see what you can do to improve the overall productivity in your offices. Bear in mind that you probably don’t have to do all of these things. Instead, focus on the ones that you feel your employees are struggling with. Ultimately, how you approach this will depend on your team and your business.

Fortunately, it’s not all footwork. Nowadays, there are a bunch of tools that can assist you in tracking productivity of employees. We’ll mention computer productivity tools a lot, and that’s because this type of employee monitoring can indeed help with productivity. But you’re free to use other methods that are at your disposal and we’ll talk about them as well.

So, let’s take a look at ten things you can do to increase employees’ productivity.

1. Address Distractions

The first step in solving the problem of your employees wandering off into the blissful world of Instagram every half an hour is to find out what you’re up against. Knowing whether your employees are typically distracted by the instant message they just got, the latest photo of their favorite influencer or Hannah treating everyone to cookies again is going to inform your future course of action.

Using a PC tracker can help you with this. It lets you sort computer activities into ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ and then you can look at which unproductive apps and websites are most frequently used among your employees or whether they’re away from their computers a bit too long (which will show as inactivity within your employee productivity tracking application).
And then, handle distractions accordingly. Limit the allowed use of social media or block some websites that you deem inappropriate.

However, notice that the heading for this section reads ‘Address Distractions’, not ‘Eliminate Distractions’. And well, that’s because you can’t eliminate them. Block websites all you want, but the thought of them still exists in your employees’ minds. As several studies have shown, our willpower is a limited resource, so making employees spend it all on resisting temptations all day long will only affect their performance negatively. Instead, you should be aiming for the optimal minimum.

2. Break Up Projects Into Smaller Tasks

We’ve seen what happens when you get your employees to work on really long and really complicated tasks. Breaking these complex projects into smaller manageable chunks can help your employees get to work more readily and stay on track.

Try to get into the mind of one of your workers. On one side, you’ve got a task called ‘Make and deploy a website for client X’, and here on the other side you have a task called ‘Write HTML for client X’s home page’. Which one would you rather work on?

The second kind of task is clear, concise and feasible. They know exactly what they need to do, which tools they need for it and approximately how long it’ll take. They will therefore be more motivated to start, but they’re also less likely to get distracted before they finish.

Our focused attention span is typically 90 to 120 minutes at a time, so working on larger tasks will suffer many interruptions. Having smaller focused tasks will give employees a sense of accomplishment and closure. This is a great feeling that will motivate them to be productive and finish those small tasks in one go.

So, how do you do this? One way is to use time tracking productivity app to see how long each employee can stay focused. Employee productivity monitoring can also help you figure out how to break up projects (for example, based on which apps are used).
You can also get your employees to do this themselves or try to come up with a plan together. You may wish to write it up as a to-do list that they can check off.

insightful time tracker

3. Set Appropriate Deadlines

Deadlines have everything to do with productivity. They are like funnels for all the workload that needs to be done. And a lot can go wrong in setting deadlines.

Make them too short and unrealistic expectations will kill employees’ morale. Make them too long and workers won’t feel any pressure to even start. Allow for deadline extensions and they lose all meaning. Don’t ever budge and employees are going to be stressed out. None of this feeds productivity.

It’s clear that you need to be well-informed in setting deadlines. For example, you can use project time tracking tools. Look at the past data for similar projects - How long did it take? What was the best and the worst case scenario? This information alone can provide a solid basis for pretty precise estimates.

Once you’ve set the deadlines in accordance with realistic expectations, try to stick to them as closely as possible. But also allow for unforeseen circumstances - not everything is in dates and numbers.

Outcomes? These doable but not too lenient deadlines are going to keep your employees focused and productive without stressing them out in return.

4. Embrace the Observer Effect

In research and psychology, the observer effect, a.k.a. the Hawthorne effect, refers to the phenomenon of people changing their behavior when being watched. Expected, right? But what does it have to do with productivity?

Well, it has to do with implementing employee performance monitoring software. The observer effect is a part of the answer to the question: Why should I tell employees that I’ll be tracking their activity? First and foremost, because it’s the right thing to do. But also, because they’ll modify their behavior in order to present the best version of themselves. And productivity is a big part of it.

Just the fact that employee productivity monitoring software is in place will be enough to cause a sudden noticeable increase in employees’ productivity, whether because they see it as a motivator or as a deterrent.

However, beware that this effect is temporary. After a while, their productivity will start declining again if you don’t do anything else about it. But by then, luckily, you’ve already got an employee productivity tracker which can help you with other things too, as we’ve seen in previous sections.

5. Have Regular Breaks

If taking breaks seems counterintuitive, here are some numbers to help convince you: according to a 2018 survey by Tork, about 90% of employees claim to be refreshed and ready to work after their lunch break and 81% of them feel the desire to be active members of the company if the practice of having a lunch break is regularly observed.

And now for the sad part - 38% of employees feel like they’re not encouraged to take lunch breaks by their employer.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - you can forget about a perfect employee who invests 100% of their office time into actually working. It’s not natural and it’s not possible (unless they don’t have to stay in the office for more than three hours).

But the difference between 40% productive time and 60% productive time can be made just by carefully planning and encouraging regular breaks. This starts with a one-hour lunch break. Away from the desk. But it doesn’t stop there.

For instance, take a careful look at your employee productivity monitoring software data. Look for dips in productivity. Your team starts opening unproductive websites around 11 a.m.? Give them a 15 minute break. Then again at 2 p.m.? Give them a break again.

Make this a regular thing and you’ll witness your employees become refreshed, motivated to work and much more productive.

employee tracking software

6. Customize the Office Environment

Regardless of how many distractions you think you can eliminate, being surrounded by empty desks and white walls can actually be very inhibitive to productivity.

People are different. Some like order and very few things on their desks; others thrive in a creative mess. For some employees, having family photos close to them gives them motivation, while some feel better if they have a plant next to their computer. While a certain level of presentability should be demanded, give your employees the freedom to organize and customize their working environment according to what’s best for their performance and focus.

Even music can help with workplace productivity, especially melodious instrumental sounds. Listening to music for just 15-30 minutes can help employees regain their focus. So it’s definitely something to consider.

7. Consider Employees’ Wellbeing

Zombies are notoriously unproductive. They’re slow, their actions are very linear and they don’t exercise any mental effort. So, deprive your employees of sleep, cut their lunch breaks, chain them to their desks for 10 hours a day, and zombies are what you’re going to get.

Aside from the fact that this kind of behavior is, almost certainly, at least in part illegal, it’s also not going to give you the desired results.

Tip number 1: Respect their time off work. Let them be with their families. Let them walk their dog without having to bring their phone with them. A day off is called ‘a day off’ for a reason - it’s not ‘a day spent at home but kind of working a little bit too’. They don’t have to be available and you need to respect that. And most importantly, let them sleep.

Tip number 2: Encourage healthy lifestyle and habits. This includes exercise and eating healthy. Make sure to give them time for this, but you can also go one step further and pay for their gym memberships or stock your office with fresh fruit.

Tip number 3: Be generous with holidays. One or two more days off might make a whole lot of difference.

Happy and healthy workers are productive workers. It’s the ones that are tired all the time who burn out the fastest.

8. Provide Support and Training

Great onboarding process is important, but you can’t predict everything. One of the many possible reasons for low productivity is the lack of skill to perform more efficiently.

Maybe the reason why this one particular employee is much slower than all the other ones is because they don’t know how to use a platform that they work in, or because they’re not aware of all the shortcuts that could help them finish a task more quickly.

This is another situation where employee productivity tracking software comes in handy. It lets you see exactly how much time is wasted on which apps and tasks. And then you can use these reports to pinpoint which employees need support.

There are so many resources out there beside getting senior colleagues’ knowledge, including video tutorials, courses, conferences, e-books, forums. Many of these resources are even free. All you have to do is initiate the training process.

And even though a little bit of time will have to be allocated to this at the beginning, the employees are going to be more productive in the long run and more motivated as well.

9. Evaluate and Reward

We’ve stressed the importance that motivation has when it comes to increasing productivity. Getting there involves two steps.

Step 1: Provide workers with regular evaluations so they can get an idea of their general progress. You can use reports from productivity monitoring software if you really want to make it objective and detailed. But you could also include other sources, like client reports, Team Lead’s feedback, your own observations, and so on. This will tell them whether they’re going the right way and how they can improve.

Step 2: Reward the high-achieving employees. Set goals and reward the ones who accomplish them. A goal might be to sign on x number of new clients, but it might as well be to improve their productivity by n percent.

Keeping track of their progress, having regular evaluations and knowing that hard work is going to be appreciated will boost employees’ motivation and in turn improve their productivity as well.

10. Let Employees Come Up With Strategies

That’s right, you don’t have to do all the work yourself and then just serve your employees instant solutions (which might not even work for them personally). You can encourage them to come up with their own ideas on how to increase productivity.

A simple brainstorming session within a team can do the trick. Or you might choose to encourage them to write their ideas in a journal along with the results.

Team productivity app can give them some starting ideas. And actually, many workstation monitoring tools allow you to give each employee access to their own productivity reports. Doing this can prove very useful as a resource for ideas on how they can improve their own performance.

What About Your Productivity?

So far, we’ve talked about ways in which you can improve your employees’ efficiency and performance. But what about you? Isn’t you productivity just as relevant?

Of course it is! But making sure your business runs smoothly might not leave you much time to think about how you might be able to optimize your own performance. Although you can and should try out all the different techniques we’ve recommended for employees, there are two basic things that make your job different from those that work for you - making a lot of important decisions and managing other people.

So let’s see how these two can affect productivity and what to do about them.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions


Well, this is basically what your job is all about, isn’t it? But making so many decisions can actually have a huge impact on your overall productivity.

There’s this thing called decision fatigue. Basically, you make one important decision in the morning and you’re great. You make another one, good. Another one and you’re getting a bit tired. By the time 3 p.m. rolls around, you’re good for nothing and you’ll say yes (or no) to everything just because your brain is tired. According to these findings, your productivity level is just one straight downhill line.

What should you do with this information? For starters, try to organize your day so that all the big important decisions are scheduled for the morning. Of course, you can’t always plan like this, but doing it whenever you can will help you distribute your workload according to your natural productivity levels and make better decisions.

Managing Others


Hey, we get it, your company is your accomplishment and everything should be as close to perfect as possible. But leading a team of employees can very easily turn into micromanaging if you’re not careful and if you don’t delegate properly.

Overseeing processes that others do is a huge part of your job. Even if you have various Heads of Department and Team Leads, somebody still needs to manage them. But you also have your own agenda. So, how do you fit everything in without sacrificing your sleep or your free time?

The best answer is - let others do a bit of the work. Trust your upper management as well as team representatives that they know what they’re doing. Focus on the bigger picture.

Also, let employee productivity software help you with collecting data and getting to know your workforce. These reports are concise and easy to understand. Let them guide you in optimizing micro-processes.

Delegating will leave you more time to focus on the stuff that only you can do.

What About Remote Productivity?

If you’re looking to track employee productivity, you shouldn’t be focusing on your office employees exclusively. People who are working remotely face a completely different set of challenges, and you should be able to recognize them, address them, and help your remote employees find resolutions.

What Causes Low Productivity in a Remote Environment?


We talked about productivity roadblocks like low motivation, lack of reward, and others in one of the previous sections, but this time we want to focus on the things that make remote workers unproductive.

Distractions


Most people who are working from home don’t live by themselves. They have families, roommates, partners, or pets -- and all of them can cause distractions. It’s a similar situation to chatty coworkers in the office: someone’s always talking, or making noise, or requires their attention. 

One way this can be resolved is by having a completely separate space for working, like a home office, or a room that’s not used throughout the day. But, you should be aware that not everyone has this luxury, so, as alternate solutions, you can get your employees noise-cancelling headphones, or a membership at the local coworking space.

Employees should also set clear expectations with their housemates, letting them know when they’re working and when they shouldn’t be disturbed. This won’t eliminate distractions completely, but it will surely help minimize them.

Lack of Equipment


Improper equipment like unsuitable computers, headphones, or even a desk and a chair can be the cause of low productivity. Therefore, you should make sure that your remote workers have everything they need to be on top of their game every day.

When thinking about which equipment they need, don’t forget to think about internet speed as well.

Adjusting to a New Way of Working


If your employees just started working remotely recently, you can expect some bumps in the road as they adjust. For starters, they may  have a hard time feeling the sense of community they did once they were working in the office. Beyond that, there’s also the blending of work and home life and change of routine that can take some adaptation. 

Through the adjustment period, your productivity monitor software might show lower numbers than usual. Make sure you have an open conversation with the employees in question. Try to find out what are the exact causes for their low productivity, and what you can do to help them overcome this.

What Can You Do to Help?


It’s not enough to just track productivity at work, and then act once the productivity goes down. There are plenty of things you should do to set your employees up for success every day.

Allow for Some Flexibility


Remote work and flexibility go hand in hand. Employees accustomed to working without an office are typically more independent. They have a strong sense of how and when  they work is best for their productivity levels, as well as their other daily obligations.

Most people already know when they’re most productive, but you can help them figure this out definitively by tracking employee productivity. Track productivity data for a few weeks, then help your employees make sense of it and to create a schedule that works best for them.

Not all job positions allow for flexibility, usually people who are in direct contact with customers (Sales and Support teams) have fixed working hours. For  everyone else, work flexibly is achievable, allowing them to spread their working hours throughout the day.

Resist Micromanaging


Yes, you should be in touch with each of your remote employees or team members on a regular basis. But that doesn’t mean that you should ping them every hour to check what they’re doing. That’s micromanagement, and independent remote employees won’t appreciate it.

Instead, you can use a software to track employee productivity. Use it to see which projects and tasks your employees are currently working on, without having to message them and interrupt  their workflow.

In most cases, employees will keep you updated and  notify you when a task is complete. So, constantly messaging them for an update will do little more than slowing down the process.

Respect Their Downtime


The fact that someone works from home doesn’t mean that they are by default  available outside of working hours. Unless you’re working on a tight deadline project, and there’s a mutual agreement for overtime, you shouldn’t be calling your employees at random times.

How does this affect productivity? Well, it causes frustration, which always leads to low motivation and even lower productivity.

The next time you want to call someone when they’re obviously offline, first check the software you’re using for monitoring remote workers’ productivity. These tools usually serve as attendance trackers as well, so you can easily check your dashboard to see if someone is actively working or not.

How to Track Remote Employee Productivity?


Generally, for tracking remote workers’ productivity, you have several options. One is just to simply track their projects and tasks, see if they are completing their job efficiently and meeting deadlines. But, if you’re looking for a more granular view of daily productivity -- how it changes over time and what affects it -- you should opt for one of the productivity monitoring tools available to you.

Productivity platforms are invaluable  as small business productivity apps, but can also be extremely useful in larger teams. The data they collect will help you see everything you wanted to know about your team’s productivity. Also, you’ll have a great basis to strike a conversation about different productivity levels, and what you can do to help improve them.

Productivity monitoring tools  have many uses, from tracking daily productivity and attendance, to being a reliable partner in delivering data-driven employee evaluations.

Employee productivity tools aren’t only created for office employees, you can -- and should -- use them with your remote team as well.

employee time tracking software

Workforce Productivity Software and Performance:
The Power Couple

As we have seen on many occasions, computer activity tracker and productivity go hand in hand. So, deservedly, we’ll dedicate this closing section to one final recap of how productivity tracker app can improve productivity.

Now, keep in mind that the best team productivity tools can prove to be beneficial to much more than productivity, so this list of benefits is by no means exhaustive and it only refers to productivity matters.

Having said that, here they are, the ways in which you can use workplace productivity tools to boost your employees’ and your own productivity:


  • Pinning down distractions: Monitor computer user activity to see which ‘unproductive’ apps and websites are most common among your employees. Talk to your employees or set basic rules on how much time is allowed daily for these distractions so that you can get their productivity back on track.
  • Chopping up tasks: Productivity time tracker app can tell you how employees are going about doing certain tasks. This allows you to divide their workload into manageable chunks so that they can get to work more readily.
  • Setting deadlines: Use the app to productivity per hour worked when your employees working on a project and use these insights to inform your future estimates for how long similar projects should take. Setting appropriate deadlines and sticking to them will keep the workers focused.
  • Keeping employees on their toes: According to the observer effect, your employees will be more productive immediately after best productivity management software is implemented, either because they’re motivated to present themselves in the best light or because they want to avoid the consequences of slacking off.
  • Deciding when it’s time to take a break: Looking at team productivity timelines in your employee productivity tracker excel template will give you an idea of when your employees need a breather. It’s recommended to give them at least two more short breaks apart from the lunch break in order to get a chance to refresh their concentration.
  • Sharpening up skills: If a particular employee’s productivity is low, it might be because they’re struggling with a program or task. Productivity apps for computer will tell you who needs additional training and support and with what.
  • Giving feedback: The objective reports from productivity tracking software can serve as the basis for fair employee evaluations. Use these insights to provide feedback on how they can improve their performance, but also don’t forget to reward hard work and good results.
  • Providing a chance for introspection: Giving employees access to their own data from group productivity apps is an excellent opportunity to include them in the process of figuring out ways to improve productivity. Their ideas are invaluable and will be tailored just for them.
  • Freeing up your own time: Having ready-made reports about your employees’ tasks and productivity saves a lot of your valuable time that you can spend on other things, like improving the performance of the whole company.

Conclusion

As our journey through discovering what hinders and helps teamwork and productivity in the workplace comes to an end, there are three things we’d like you to take away from all this:

1. Don’t expect that employees are going to be productive 100% of their working hours. Human mind just doesn’t work like that. We get distracted, we need time to get started and we need breaks. Accept this and work around it.

2. There’s no magic recipe for boosting productivity super quickly that works for everyone. Getting your team to be more efficient and focused is probably going to be a long process with some failures along the way. So learn from your mistakes and constantly adapt.

3. Embrace the technology and let it help you. Make use of the best productivity software. It will make your efforts to improve productivity much more directed and your life much easier.

Productivity is something that’s worth investing time and effort into. Increasing it will make your business more efficient, free up time for more clients and your employees are going to feel more accomplished and motivated to succeed. Now, isn’t that a beautiful picture?

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