How To Choosing Employee Monitoring Software For Remote Team?

With the pandemic altering our ways of life, all of us had to make significant adjustments. It has affected everything from the way we take more responsibility for our own health to the relationships we build with our loved ones and, of course, the way we approach our work.

Changing the modus operandi had been inevitable for many companies, as well. Many companies have had to make significant changes to allow some of their employees to work from home

And while such measures were absolutely necessary, the challenges faced by leaders are entirely understandable

Aspects of Supervising Remote Employees With the Help of Specialized Software

Let’s take a look at the new reality we’re faced with today and try to understand a bit better what it means to supervise the team that works remotely.

First, we should note that having confidence in your team is essential. You should be able to have trust in your employees to be able to organize themselves and prioritize important tasks even when they don’t have you looming over their shoulders.

However, we realize that the world isn’t perfect, and in no way does your desire to monitor the efficiency of your remote employees make you a control freak.

Thankfully, we’re living in an age of digitalization, where most of the functions have been successfully handed over to the computers and machines in general. This scenario is no exception.

Team leader’s job to develop a strategy that assumes that everyone on their team will do his/her best and use their abilities to the fullest. However, it would be unwise to rely solely on this assumption or on the personal reports that employees send at the end of each workday.

Trust us when we tell you that this is one of those times when it’s best to hand over supervision (at least partially) to an unbiased party. And that’s when employee monitoring software comes into play.

Not only is it incredibly convenient, it’s also pretty much foolproof and extremely reliable. Plus, it’ll make your task of monitoring employees much easier.

Five tips to Consider When Choosing the Employee Monitoring Software

There are numerous articles on the types of software you can choose from, its pros and cons, legal aspects of employee monitoring – the list goes on.

We won’t describe well on all these issues here. Still, to save you some time if you do decide to give such software a try and integrate it into your workflow, we’re going to offer you a few tips to keep in mind when choosing the program that will be helping you with employee monitoring.

1. Be Transparent

To put it simply, transparency is essential to keep your employees’ team spirit and trust intact as well as to keep them engaged and focused.

Being upfront and honest with your workers about the introduction of employee monitoring software is a sign of good faith in the team. And, like we’ve already mentioned in the beginning, having trust in your employees (even remote ones) is vital.

All the secrecy and sneaking around could potentially create a rift between you and your employees and discredit you in their eyes, which will affect their overall productivity and motivation negatively. Plus, remote employees most of the time are required to download the software themselves, so it’s pretty much pointless to be dishonest with them.

2. Figure out the Technical Requirements

We’ll just assume that most of your remote team members use their own PCs and laptops for work.

When considering the implementation of employee monitoring software, it’s important to take into account any possible compatibility issues your specialists may experience with the program you choose.

For example, if some of your remote employees work on Mac devices and others use Windows, it could complicate things a bit, since there’s a possibility that different versions of the same software for different operating systems could offer fewer features depending on the version.

A nice solution to this could be to provide your remote workers with corporate laptops. That would ensure their privacy, which is also a bonus.

3. Choose the Right Software

The market nowadays offers an incredibly wide variety of employee monitoring software, all of which have different useful tools.

We’d say that some of the most necessary features to look for are time tracking, online data collection, report summarization as well as screen video recording and break tracking.

Our candid advice is to go for employee monitoring software such as Kickidler, which has all of the useful tools we’ve mentioned above.

(Screenshot: Kickidler)

Another nice pick is Orangescrum, which can be considered a version that implements a bit softer control yet offers all the project management tools a team may need. It’s absolutely essential to pick the program that will be right for your company.

You could start by figuring out your goals for monitoring your remote team members. Then, simply look at the features each employee monitoring program offers and decide which one best suits your team.

4. Keep Flexibility in Mind.

Although employee monitoring software can offer you better understanding of your employees’ work habits, nevertheless, it’s crucial to remain flexible.

By that we mean that you should keep in mind that everybody has their own unique working style. It may sound shocking at first, but some of the most productive workers need to take a break from time to time to read a news article or visit a particular website.

That’s why your approach to the data collected by the program needs to be flexible. We’d say, the best way to achieve this is to focus on the big picture and the tasks at hand.

Regardless of workers’ personal habits, the way they organize their workday doesn’t really matter much as long as they work efficiently. Don’t try to trick the monitoring program into recording fake billable hours, and don’t miss deadlines

5. Give Feedback.

Maintaining open communication with remote team and offering solid input on their performance is essential to successful teamwork.

It’s a real challenge to manage remote teams effectively. But if you have good project management tool like Orangescrum, then you are definitely well positioned to manage your remote teams effectively. Try its free for 15 days.

Moreover, by monitoring your employees – both those who work in the office and those who work remotely –you’ll get the chance to observe and pinpoint specific aspects of each worker’s approach to work that would otherwise be left unnoticed. This, in turn, will make your overall understanding of each member of your team more nuanced and comprehensive.