Work from Home Productivity of Remote Employees
The covid-19 pandemic has posed a challenge for companies on how they can ensure the productivity and efficiency of their employees who have to work remotely. As an HR manager or project manager, you have to monitor your employees’ productivity at home and make sure that the level of productivity that they performed at the office can be maintained or even exceeded when they have to work from their homes. Two solutions that can help in tracking your workers’ productivity are carrying out several working from home best practices and using tools for monitoring the progress of their tasks.
Working from Home Best Practices and Tools
It’s important to emphasize to your employees that the practices and tools you want them to adapt can help in optimizing their productivity at home. Those practices can also create satisfaction on the part of company management from knowing there are tools you are using to track your employees’ efficiency in working remotely.
Here are some of the working from home best practices for your remote employees:
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Dedicated work space –
Tell them to designate a specific place in their home as their work area that is preferably away from the TV, bed and the kitchen because it can distract them to watch TV, take a quick nap on the bed or take breaks every now and then during work hours. Also encourage them to put their cell phone in a spot away from their home workstation so they won’t be tempted to use their phones to play mobile games or check their social media sites. Point out to them that getting rid of distractions at home will allow them to focus on their work and avoid non-work activities.
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Regular working hours –
Establishing consistent work hours for your remote workforce can help them to maintain a healthy work-life balance which is good for their physical and mental health. Several work from home productivity studies show that an effective work-life balance encourages employees to work harder and make them more likely to stay longer in the company. However, you should also allow them to have some degree of flexibility, such as when they are forced to start much early or late from their schedule so they can compensate for any work hours that they had to shorten or extend.
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Task planner –
You can require your employees to prepare a to-do list or planner of the tasks they have to do and finish for each day. The planner allows you and the employee to keep track of the progress of the task and if they are meeting the target goals for that task.
One of the best working from home solutions or tools you can use for tracking your employee’s progress of specific tasks is requiring them to submit regular daily, weekly and monthly reports. You can use these regular reports to monitor the progress of their tasks, to see if they are meeting or falling behind the targets, and identify the roadblocks that are causing any delays or problems. Another effective tool is constant communication with your employee via chats or online calls. You can use these regular talks to find out if they are encountering any issues or problems with their tasks and help them to come up with solutions to solve them.
LegalMatch’s Work from Home Productivity
LegalMatch Philippines (LMPH) is a pioneer in software applications for the US legal industry that develops technologies and software solutions for lawyers and their clients. With the majority of our employees working from home for more than a year due to the covid-19 pandemic, we actively promote the productivity of our remote employees by giving them all the support they need so they can work from home effectively. LMPH continues to expand its operations in the midst of the pandemic by continually recruiting skilled talent like senior Java developers.