It often feels like there are not enough hours in the day to finish your workload in the current times. As a business owner or a CEO, you probably have to lead a remote workforce to achieve your organization’s objectives.
That means you must be constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of your team members working from remote locations. The rapid change to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to be a challenge in the beginning.
However, organizations were quickly able to cope with the need of the hour, thanks to modern technology. While it is true that technology may not have the answers to all of your business problems, you can certainly use the right tools to get the best out of your employees.
We will talk about four tools that are extremely beneficial to manage efficiency and productivity from any remote workforce.
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Real-Time Communication Tools
Real-time communication seemed to be the biggest challenge when it came to remote working. The members no longer had access to the opportunity for immediate meetings and assistance from each other. Thankfully, several real-time communication tools came to the rescue to ensure that employees can communicate with each other for better productivity.
However, instead of relying on generic communication tools like mobile phone calls or WhatsApp chats, it is best to invest in communication solutions specifically meant for business purposes. Video calling tools or VoIP phone systems for remote working allow you and your employees to benefit from unified communications integrated with other remote capabilities.
For example, your workforce will be able to share their laptop screens or important documents with their colleagues to collaborate for better productivity. These tools will also allow more mobility for your workforce while improving their work-life balance.
Project Management and Task Delegation Tools
It is easy for you or your remote workforce to miss out on a crucial business task. However, investing in project management and task delegation software will minimize the chances of such errors occurring in your organization. These tools allow you to delegate necessary project information to your workforce from one commonplace, which makes it difficult for them to miss out on the tasks.
That way, both you and your employees can improve productivity for the company. Ideal project management and cost allocation tools allow you to assign projects, exchange relevant documentation, and integrate cloud storage. They also enable you or the project leader to monitor the team’s productivity and workflow.
Some project management tools offer a variety of task views that allow your workforce to understand the information in different ways. You will be able to create tasks on these tools so that your employees can see them in the form of a list, project workflow, or integrated into a calendar. That means you will have more control over how you delegate the tasks and present them to your team members.
Time Tracking Tool
One of the biggest challenges when managing remote employees is to track their efficiency. An efficient workforce is directly proportional to the productivity of your company. Time tracking tools will enable you and your team members to understand the amount of work completed for the organization.
These tools also streamline several HR processes for your business. Time tracking tools allow you to understand and fix any productivity issues that your employees might be facing. You can also monitor if your workforce is feeling overburdened or requires any assistance to manage their time effectively.
Ideally, you should be able to track the number of working hours for each of your employees with access to timesheets and reports. Some of the time tracking tools have more HR features that enable you to track how your team members are performing in real-time with automatic payroll generation.
A few time tracking solutions also have inbuilt project management features that allow you to manage freelance and contract workers apart from your local workforce.
Task Automation Tools
You or your employees may have encountered the problem of work continuously piling up in the current times. You have to attend meetings, complete tasks, and manage responsibilities to maximize productivity.
However, you must understand that several of these tasks do not need human intervention every day and can be automated. You can use a routine task automation tool that offers workflow automation features so that you and your employees can put some of your everyday tasks on autopilot mode.
These tools will allow you and your team members to organize time and workflow in a better way, which will positively affect productivity.
Remote working is still a new concept for many companies. So you are not the only entrepreneur struggling with the productivity and efficiency of a remote workforce.
Several technological solutions will enable you to handle various tasks and stay on top of your everyday business activities. You can follow this list of essential tools that will allow you to maximize your workforce productivity while ensuring timely and efficient task completion.