Time Management for Remote Workers? - All You Need to Know in 2024
Amid this pandemic, time management for remote workers has become formidable and more challenging for managers at all levels. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, In the U.S., only 20% of workers were working remotely, but after the situation got worse, about 71% of workers started working remotely. Managing this wholesome amount of remote workers made a hard nut to crack for companies.
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Do you know that companies that permit remote work have a 25% lower employee turnover rate than those that do not?
That means you are doing great by facilitating your employee to work remotely. But in 2022, almost 78% of businesses are saying good words for outsourcing. If you want to compete with your competitor, you must work hard to manage your remote workers' time efficiently.
“Lost time is never found again.”
- Benjamin Franklin
Challenges regarding Remote Employee Time Management
Employees feel more comfortable while working from home. Remote working gives flexibility to the workers to spend more time with family accomplish their designated work in their own way, which motivates them to work effectively and efficiently.
Productivity level rises surprisingly when a worker starts to work remotely. But sometimes situations arise as such:
Distraction
“Distraction” is the most important barrier for remote employee time management. 53.1 per cent of remote workers said working remotely has made it harder to separate work and personal life. Browsing social media, watching TV, playing video games, childcare, cooking, laundry, and many other household work creates a distraction in working time.
Employees mix up work time with leisure time
As the remote employee stays outside your office, you can not physically monitor your employee. While working at home, employees work for the company and can complete their household work side by side. For this reason, an employee could not finish their work in time. This mixing up creates problems in the time management process and productivity.
In-person contact and communication
Direct contact and feedback boost employee engagement, but it is infrequent for remote employees. It may be seen that your remote employee's time zone and your local time zone doesn't match. In such cases, immediate actions are delayed for dissimilarities in the time zone.
Solving pop up problem
While working every employee has to face some difficulties which need to be solved by managers or co-workers. It is very well possible for the in-house office to peep through the cubicles, but this is not possible for offshoring the office activities.
Mental health and physical health of employees
Working from home allows people to be more flexible while also requiring less physical activity. Some workers gained weight while working remotely. Employees feel alone, which leads to mental distress. Remote employees can not find any in-person contact with colleagues or family members if they stay alone in their apartment. This causes a significant drawback in the employee's mental health, thus the company's overall productivity.
Fruitful 8 Strategies in Managing Time for Remote Employees
In order to manage a remote workforce effectively, managers may find that they need to relax some of their control while still exploring different methods to keep their workers responsible. Managing employees in a shared workspace are much more accessible than managing remote employees. Here I will describe eight strategies to manage your remote employees' time and productivity.
Search for Time-Wasting Loopholes
A manager may not find the problem regarding time waste at the first go. Continuous searching makes an arduous task more manageable. Consulting with employees & experts in respective sectors may be a way to find loopholes for wasting time. You can track time, analyze the activity and productivity level, and lastly set an improvement goal for finding time-wasting ways and space.
Removing Bottlenecks
All business strives to become as effective as possible. Achievements come after removing roadblocks and bottlenecks in business. Identifying inefficiencies is more difficult when business information is not interconnected and structured. All managers should integrate with remote employees and remove roadblocks and bottlenecks ASAP.
Set Productivity Standards
Measuring the productivity level of remote employees is a different ball game compared to the in-house employees. In my opinion, being a manager, it is not wise to measure the outsourced employee performance by tracking hours. Instead, track their amount of work done in a definite time. You can set goals and deadlines for a remote employee to get the best result. Different metrics can be set like average lead conversion, solving customer issues, turnover rate etc.
Remote tracking
You never know the sites your remote employees are visiting during the working hour. The remote employee monitoring software will help you to determine whether your remote workers are making the best use of their time or not. Remote workers will be considerably more careful if they know their time and URLs are being tracked. Screenshots of your employee monitor at any time interval will surely give you extra control over them.
Telecommunication
Employees working from home must connect clients, customers, managers and colleagues throughout the day. Telecommunication is a must tool for all remote workers. It will be impossible to optimize your discussions other than a suitable remote telecommunications tool. Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Hangouts are mentionable telecommunication tools available in the market.
Time Management Tools
Previously, corporate managers measured productivity using employee "in-house time" and observable activity levels. For remote workers, the opportunity to observe productivity is possible for the blessings of technology. Different time management apps like Apploye, Toggl, Rescue TIme, Dropbox, Evernote can be implemented for managing working time for outsourced employees.
Set Priorities
Establishing objectives and developing priorities is an essential factor of every practical approach. By setting targets, you are expressing what you intend to achieve. Sometimes you cannot guide your remote employee on which task has more priority, and thus you don't get your most important work done in time. You can use a calendar or planner to set your tasks, appointments, upcoming events and due dates. Prioritizing tasks help your employee to remain on track and on budget.
Drawing Feedback
Getting meaningful feedback from a manager not only enhances the employees' productivity but also boosts their morale. Ascertain that you are providing feedback in a fair manner for each position, regardless of geographic location.
While giving feedback, try to find out the root cause and provide the necessary solution to solve the problem. If there's one thing to keep in mind, creating clear procedures for delivering and receiving feedback is essential to encouraging a development mindset among your employees, departments, and the company as a whole.
Set Recreation Reminders
There is a complete linkage between job satisfaction and recreational activities. You can arrange recreational activities in any offshore work environment. But it is pretty difficult to maintain any recreational activities for employees working from home. You can arrange any competition like case-solving & gaming. Moreover, you can discuss trending topics as such newly released movies, series, tournaments, and off-work topics to eradicate monotony. This will indeed create a great office culture.
Providing Mental Health Care
Mental health issues are widespread in any workplace, and remote workplaces got more mental health-related problems. Employees staying in-house are frequently supported by managers and co-workers, which is not applicable for remote employees. Providing your staff with online psychiatric services allows them to express their thoughts and get a mental tonic to combat depression. You may obtain information about your employee's mental health from psychiatrists.
Conclusion
Managing the time of workers is an individual responsibility for every manager. If it comes down to remote employees, then it becomes more challenging. If you have remote workers in your company, you must ensure their proper time management for the accomplishment of your company. It will be wise for all managers to count every time of employees and monitor their emotional wellbeing. I wish you, your employees, and your organization a prosperous graph in the years to come— Hasta la vista.