Remote Worker Time Tracking Protects Both Employers and Employees

Monitoring workers who work remotely has become more popular in recent years, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, the progression of technology has made remote working more feasible than ever for more types of workers. It should be no surprise that employees are eager to embrace remote working. This type of arrangement has many benefits for employees, from increasing job satisfaction to cutting down on workplace distractions to eliminating the hassles and costs associated with commuting. 

And remote working can be a plus for employers too. There may be fewer overhead costs associated with hiring remote employees. Remote employees may be happier with their working arrangements, leading to less turnover. And satisfied remote workers may produce better work overall. There are definitely good reasons for both workers and employers to choose remote working arrangements. 

However, there are also downsides to remote working for both employers and employees, and it’s worth looking for ways to mitigate those drawbacks for the benefit of everyone involved. Remote worker time tracking software is an important tool that protects both employees and employers. Take a look at some of the things that you should know about how remote worker time tracking makes remote working more feasible and beneficial for everyone. 

Calculating Hours Worked and Billable Hours

Remote working arrangements often result in happier, more satisfied employees.

Remote workers may not need to punch a time clock in the office, but they do still need to get paid, and many of them are hourly workers, not salaried workers. So how can you accurately calculate the time that your remote workers need to be paid for? 

Time tracking software tools are the simplest way to ensure accurate timekeeping and to make sure that you’re not overpaying or underpaying hourly employees. It’s in everybody’s best interest to make sure that employees are paid fairly and accurately for their time.

If you have remote workers who are working on projects that need to be billed to specific clients, remote timekeeping is also helpful because it allows you to accurately calculate billable hours. Clients may prefer to be able to see detailed invoices that break down their costs, and time tracking software gives you the ability to provide those kinds of detailed breakdowns so that clients can see exactly what work has been done on their project accounts. 

Sealing Up Time Leaks

Prevent and solve time leaks that unnecessarily use up valuable working time.

Time tracking tools don’t just monitor when a worker begins working and when they stop. They can also monitor things like the apps that your workers use and websites that they visit. Some workers may initially see this as an overreach, but these tools are about more than just making sure that your workers aren’t spending too much time on Facebook during working hours. 

Glitching apps, malfunctioning software, and problems in certain websites that your employees use for work cost your workers time, which is bad for both you and for them. You want your employees to spend time on their jobs, not on finding workarounds for improperly functioning software and internet tools. 

Time tracking and monitoring software can alert you to the existence of a problem – by letting you know when your employee is spending excessive time on tasks that shouldn’t take so long – and it may also be able to help you see exactly what the problem is so that you can fix it. Your employee will be able to spend more time actually working and less time looking for workarounds, and you’ll have a more productive and less frustrated worker. 

Inspiring Increased Productivity

You don’t have to believe that your remote workers are performing poorly to want to make sure that they’re performing at peak productivity. There’s always room for improvement, right? 

It’s a well-known truism that when employees know that they’re being monitored, their productivity increases. It’s a psychological effect that comes with the knowledge that one’s actions are being watched or monitored. It doesn’t mean that your workers were slacking before – certainly, it doesn’t mean that they were intentionally less productive – but the knowledge that someone is watching automatically inspires workers to behave more diligently. 

This means that with time tracking software, their productivity may increase and they may become more focused, and hence less likely to make mistakes. This scenario is good for you and good for them. Most employees want to do good work, so why not provide them with a tool that helps push them to do their very best?

Delivering Better Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are important for workers. It’s difficult to grow and learn and improve yourself without some source of objective and constructive criticism, and workers who are invested in their careers definitely want the kind of performance reviews that help them grow so that they can move up in their chosen field. 

But it can be more difficult for supervisors and managers to give valuable critical feedback to an employee who spends all or most of their time working remotely. When an employee is working from home or on the road, there’s no manager there to observe their process. You get to see their finished work products, and you can draw some conclusions from that, but you can learn more by seeing your employee’s process. 

Time tracking tools that include monitoring can give you a better picture of that process. 

Some common monitoring tools that can help employers deliver better performance reviews include screenshot monitoring, which gives you periodic images showing what your employees are working on, keylogging tools, which capture keystrokes and can alert you to potentially risky keywords, and cell phone monitoring, which can be useful if your employees have a company phone. 

These tools have a number of different potential uses, some of which may not be of interest to the average remote employee. But their ability to provide employers and supervisors with objective material for employee feedback is definitely a benefit for both remote workers and their employers. 

Time tracking and monitoring tools have the potential to benefit many types of organizations in many different ways, especially organizations that employ remote workers. To find out more about how time tracking software can benefit your organization, start a Free Trial today.