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As a business owner, I could find the heat; we are sitting on due to COVID-19. Agira’s business model fits to help all the small and medium enterprises right away. I have been talking to our existing clients, sales prospects, old business friends, and product owners across the globe for the last four weeks. I could feel the mixed emotions caters throughout the world.
Businesses and startups across the world are scattered or looking for an opportunity to move forward. If you are thinking to yourself about how the current situation is fortunate for your business, it is indeed challenging and depends upon your company foundation & longterm objectives. As you all know, most of the SMEs and enterprises have moved to full remote functioning because of the coronavirus outbreak.
If you are an entrepreneur, it’s obvious to have dozens of queries gushing on managing remote teams as well as the safety of the team members. But sorting out the right factors at the right time, you can manage to shine well in the post-COVID-19. I’ll be discussing on “Productivity” in this blog. And the steps you can take to keep track and measure the productivity of remote working teams to keep the clients excited.
Why is Productivity Important?
Productivity is vital in the progress and sustainability of any business. Moreover, Young entrepreneurs and business leaders are well aware of the benefits. One in five firms does not measure productivity at all; this is not a good sign. It is essential to define a strategic plan to achieve business objectives and planned milestones. But the ultimate challenge lies in implementing a “productive” business landscape in a pandemic situation.
Productivity has widely experiences growth, profitability, continuous improvement in the projects, and staying on demand with the best quality. It can also provide benefits for team members like improved satisfaction, improved focus on work and extended potential to increase productivity. Empathizing the existing clients and remote teams can help you make your startup more sustainable and efficient.
There are numerous ways to measure the productivity of remote teams. You’ll require quantifiable metrics to measure productivity only by results. By understanding the business objectives, you can define the metrics and have a frequent revision to ensure that your team is on the right track to achieve the goals in a timely fashion.
So, here are the ten ways to measure and ensure the productivity of your remote teams.
1. Set tasks with deadlines 📅
Every job position has its particular responsibilities, no matter if its workplace or remote. Establish metrics to associates that align with business goals to evaluate the performance regularly. Managing expectations and placing realistic deadlines can help you predict how the results can effectively contribute to the business goals by accomplishing specific tasks.
You need to assign the tasks according to the priority in advance. In this way, you can ensure that associates have a clear idea about what they have to achieve in a day or week for desirable results. You can list the tasks with deadlines, who are working on it, progress, and more other details. It can help the remote team members to act proactively towards achieving the established goals.
2. View Team Activity regularly 📝
To monitor the remote team and keep them on the same page. Managers should keep track of the activities of the team members and how their performance is contributing to the business objectives. Making it visible across the team can open some space to self-improvement and transparency. It also helps the team member to stay on the same page.
Ask them for daily updates and find what has been accomplished and what is not. By regularly evaluating and reviewing the process, you can optimize the workflow for improved productivity.
As remote team members tend to work on flexible hours, the only thing that matters is getting the task done on time on a satisfactory level, with the best quality. By tracking the performance over presence can reduce tension among the teams, and organizations can leverage the advantages of getting the best out of each associate.
3. Collaborate Online 💻
Advancements in development technologies have got us some fantastic tools for online communication. The virtual meetings have become more lively professional space and provide a better remote working experience. Communication between the remote teams at regular intervals can make the associates feel more engaged and stick to the goals.
The usage of the tools is enhancing professional collaboration and develop a personal bond between team members. Sharing calendars and regular communication are one key indicator to boost productivity. There are tools for project management, time management, host meetings, and applications that suffice many organizational functions dedicatedly for remote team members.
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7 Tools Our Remote Teams Use to Stay Connected and Productive
4. Track the KPI’s 📈
The Key Performance Indicators are not the same as measuring working hours. What are the factors that impact growth? You need to identify the crucial elements associated with the overall goals. It should be measurable and competitive.
Monitoring the right/wrong things can also affect the associate’s performance. By keeping track and monitoring the KPIs of the respective teams can help quickly identify the challenges and resolve the challenges within the consolidated workflow.
5. Place value on Quality of work ©️
Completing the given task within the deadline is another critical indicator for measuring the performance. If you observe deeply, the quality of the work has more value than quantity. Quality is much more essential to reach a level of satisfaction out of work. It adds more profit and a factor that attract new and existing customers.
On the other hand, you can identify suitable training for the team members to create a positive impact. Providing attention to quality reduces stress, and helping the remote teams quickly rectify their performance.
6. Analyze data to identify What is and isn’t working 📊
Businesses are using data and analytics to identify strengths and weaknesses across teams. Reading the data can help you find how your efforts are working. You can get more insights on the hindrances on your way towards achieving the goals. You can also see which teams are outperforming and identify successful associates. It helps you find new techniques and approaches that suit the business objectives. You can also identify tasks that require immediate attention, understand the needs of your clients, and help them find a solution to their challenges.
7. Have an eye for Results and Numbers 👀
In reality, outcome after attempts and increase in revenue is the ultimate goal. And this is why management is always looking for ways to reduce costs and increase productivity across departments. The growth of income means progress towards business goals. If you are experiencing long term stability, you need to look for more new opportunities to generate revenue for your business. All you have to do is make sure the numbers grow and exceptional attention to high-level business functions. The rest will automatically fall in place.
8. Trust your Associates 🤝
Having trust in your team members and their capabilities helps you as well as other associates to work with an open-mind and reduce stress. Beyond assumptions, everyone is quite honest, truthful, and behaves accountable. Trust between the associates and remote team members is getting the work done in a meaningful way with higher morale and a significantly more supportive culture.
9. Recognize Goal achievements 🏆
Act of rewarding team members keeps them engaged with the success of the business. Recognizing good performers creates a healthy and friendly competition. It will motivate the team members to achieve the goals collectively. Everyone loves to be appreciated and acknowledged for their achievements. Recognizing the efforts of the associates can encourage other team members to do the same or even more. Even simple peer recognitions can facilitate good work culture.
10. Connect with culture 🏢
Company culture is simply the personality of your brand. It is how you act within the organization, and how your clients, services, and products are treated. The work culture should empathize with the feelings and needs of the team members and clients. By keeping a distance from a toxic culture, you seize the potential to grow. The relationship between the management, teams, and customers should reflect the mission and vision of the company.
Final Thoughts
The vast majority of businesses are well known about the advantages of remote work. Work from home enables them to have better work-life balances for remote teams and manageable to boost the revenue of the company. Even though it is a bit more challenging, especially when the presence is a job requirement, but its also challenging to shift to a remote work environment all of sudden. I also got some practical tips that can help you adjust yourself to the work from home setup.
With the well-defined mission and guiding principles, productivity is one of the ways to take to business forward. It is crucial to measure productivity if you want to identify the challenging areas and has space for improvements. Keep in mind that achieving a measurement doesn’t necessarily equate to productivity. Keep your goals higher to reach different milestones.
In tough times like this one, you should focus on engagement and remember the changes in the situation. For seamless engagement, there are a plethora of tools available to ease the process and increase productivity. Take a look at the list of tools for project management, host virtual meetings, time management that can help you and your remote working team engage and be well informed about the performance of the ongoing projects.
By ensuring productivity across all departments in the company and usage of resources to the best potential can drive positive consequences for both companies and it’s associates. Managing deadlines and control over tasks prioritized will lead to being more organized and accountable.
The key performance factors you measure directly impacts the growth of the business. So by following the ways mentioned above, you can drive more meaningful experience as a remotely functioning company, and remote teams will also feel good about the achievements.
I would love to receive your comments about any of the ways you track/improve the productivity of your associates.
Happy Reading!
