Remote work has massive benefits for employers. Reduced office space requirements, eradicated commute costs, and an improved balance between work and life are just some of the reasons Forrester has forecast that 43% of the U.S.A’s workforce will be working remotely by 2017. All those advantages can turn into severe handicaps if you don’t manage your personnel’s hours well. Software has been on fast-forward for almost a century, and at this juncture, it has the capacity to manage even the most complex of time tracking problems.
Technology has become as much of a work hindrance as it has a boon, with staff giving the impression of productivity as long as they’re looking at a monitor and typing. This is where time tracking software comes to the rescue. It keeps staff accountable by overseeing all that happens on employee desktops and mobiles. The tracking software industry has matured, with modern offerings having solved the teething problems of their predecessors. Programs like Clockspot.com keep productivity where it should be by:
- Letting staff clock in from laptops, tablets, and mobiles in any WiFi zone
- Automatically calculating job costs, time off, and overtime
- Tracking caller ID and GPS
- Generating payroll reports
- Letting staff and employers access timesheets online for easy reviewing and management.
Tracking software will cut down on the number of kitten videos your workforce watches, but it also keeps track of the hours of staff who work on the road. Employees can clock in by phone. With GPS involvement, you can check if that urgent shipment will arrive at its destination in real time.
An array of security features have been developed to make time tracking more accurate. Voice recognition features prevent personnel from clocking in on one another’s behalf. Job codes can be added so that tasks can be monitored across all stages. With that much power, it makes sense to use tracking software that has an integrated payroll system. Payments, overtime, deductions, and drill-down reports can be automatically scheduled to reduce the load on the shoulders of your human resources department.
Counterintuitively, this tracking software can help you to stop micromanaging your staff by letting them choose their breaks and hours according to what works best for their personal productivity levels. It rarely matters what time they take lunch or enter the office in the morning, and tracking software lets them choose their own schedules by keeping a record of the number of hours they work.
Time Tracking and Corporate Culture
Remote work needn’t steal valuable face time with staff. Skype and the like are always on hand for online discussions, but real world meetings can be leveraged to strengthen the bonds between management and workers. Remote work should increase productivity and give employees a happier work environment.
Financial Savings
Employees are notoriously bad at filling out their timesheets. According to Affinity Live, this can cost companies as much as $50,000 a year per person. It simply no longer makes financial sense to leave tracking software out of your corporate toolkit, even if staff are working from your own offices. You needn’t run a large corporation to benefit from this kind of software. Even home-based employers can use it to keep track of house cleaners and gardeners.
Automated tracking enhances management strategy, too. How better to stay on top of what each person in your team is busy with than in the cloud? In an age of Big Data, the information accrued from long term use is precisely what your HR department needs to assess productivity and create positive change.
