How to Improve Employee Productivity With Monitoring Software

Every manager is faced with the unending challenge of improving and increasing employee productivity. Achieving this goal is no small feat, but modern technology has made it far easier. How can today’s managers monitor, measure, and improve employee productivity?

What is Employee Productivity Tracking Software?

Employee monitoring software is used to track employees’ digital activity on company-owned devices. It can be installed on devices used by all employees regardless of whether they work in the office or remotely.

The software will provide managers with a wealth of data that they can use to measure and improve each employee’s productivity.

What Activities Does Work Productivity Software Track?

Productivity monitoring software will give you the opportunity to see exactly what your employees are doing during the hours they’re at work. This type of employee monitoring software can gather data on various digital activities, including:

• Emails: Who are your employees emailing? What are they talking about? What files are attached to these emails?
• Websites: What websites are your employees visiting? How much time are they spending on each site?
• Social media: Are your employees using social media during work hours? How much time are they wasting on these sites?
• Instant messages: Are your employees using instant messaging services to talk about work-related or personal topics?
• Program usage: What programs and applications are your employees using at work? How much time are they spending on each program or application?

The data collected by productivity tracking software will help you answer all of these questions about your employees digital activities.

How to Evaluate Employee Productivity 

Collecting data on what your employees are doing on their computers is just the first step to improving your team’s productivity. Now that you have this information, it’s time to analyze it to learn more about how your team works.

There are several ways to analyze the data provided by employee monitoring software in order to measure your team’s productivity. You may think that the best way to start is looking at the number of hours logged by each employee. This will help you determine which employees are working the longest hours, which should mean that they are getting the most done.

However, comparing the number of hours each employee has worked is not the best way to evaluate their productivity. Instead, it’s best to look at other metrics, including their active vs. idle time and unproductive vs. productive time. Looking at both of these metrics will help you determine who is actually getting work done at their computers during the workday.

For example, employee A may have been logged in for 10 hours, whereas employee B may have only been logged in for 8 hours. At first glance, it may seem like employee A is more productive since she worked longer hours.

But other metrics, such as their unproductive vs. productive time, may tell a different story. This may reveal that employee A only spent 4 of her 10 working hours on productive, work-related tasks. On the other hand, employee B spent all 8 of her working hours on these tasks. Therefore, employee B was far more productive than employee A.

Knowing which metrics to look at will make it easier for you to evaluate each employee’s productivity and see who are the strongest and weakest performers on your team.

How to Improve Employee Productivity

Now that you know how to monitor and evaluate your team’s productivity, the next step is using this information to improve employee productivity. Here’s how:

• Recognize the top performers. Use the data to identify the top performers on your team so you can ensure they are recognized for their hard work. Recognizing hard work with praise and rewards will keep these top performers motivated so they continue to work productively.
• Help the weakest performers improve. Analyze the data to figure out why your weakest performers are not as productive as other members of the team. It could be because they are struggling with certain programs, applications, or work-related tasks. If this is the case, you may want to consider signing them up for additional training so they can improve these skills and increase their productivity.
• Make business processes more efficient. The data may reveal that all of your employees are spending a lot of time on certain business-related tasks. If so, think of ways you can change the way this task is performed to make it more efficient and less time-consuming. This will free up time in your employees’ work days so they can get more done.
• Identify time-wasting clients. The data could also indicate that your employees are not as productive as they could be because of certain clients that take up a lot of their time. Your business may not even be profiting off of a client that is taking up too much of your team’s time. If you find a time-wasting client, you may want to revisit this business relationship to improve your team’s productivity.
• Block distracting websites. Look at the data to determine if your employees are wasting a lot of time on certain websites. If so, restricting your employees’ access to these websites will help them stay on track and get more done during work hours.
• Manage task distribution. Evaluating the data can help managers identify each employee’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, you may realize that one employee on your team completes a specific task much faster than everyone else. To improve your team’s productivity, you may want to give all of these tasks to this employee in the future. This will free up more time in everyone else’s schedule, thus increasing the team’s productivity.

Sometimes, simply telling your employees that you are using monitoring software is enough to increase their productivity. If they know that you are watching their digital activities, they are more likely to stay on track and get more done during work hours.

Increase your team’s productivity with InterGuard employee monitoring software, which can be used to track your employees’ digital activity even if they work from home. Start your free trial today so you can test out this innovative software and see how it will help you meet your business goals!