Are your remote staff still working?

When your business is expanding to multiple locations, good culture and communication are the foundation for growth. But to keep your business functioning, the wheels need to be turning above ground too. Productivity will always count.

So how to do you keep an eye on performance when you can’t be there in person?

Track staff time accurately

You need the right staff working at the right time to meet ebbs and flows in customer demand. Not to mention maintaining a great customer experience. It’s a tough balance, though. Too many people rostered on, standing idle, and you’re losing money.

When you’re making staffing and rostering decisions, automatic time sheet submission gives you the data you need. When it’s all captured and collated electronically (rather than written out and photocopied), you start to see the patterns.

What’s even more useful? When your time management software lets you zoom in to inspect rostering at a business unit level, and right up to access insights across your workforce.

But any reporting system is only as good as the data you enter. Make it easy to for your employees: entering work times via their phones makes the whole process pain-free for staff, so you’re more likely to get accurate data.

See your workforce in real-time

Real-time performance tracking lets you check whether people are where they’re supposed to be.

Has everyone clocked in? Are there enough people to serve your customers? Easy-to-use tech like touch screens, apps and pin codes all send data to you immediately, so you can easily see what’s happening. You can even step in and lend a helping hand if there’s an unexpected shortage at one of your other locations.

What about businesses whose staff do more desk work? For a start-up, tools like Harvest, RescueTime or even a shared calendar will give you some of that real-time visibility.

As your business grows, though, you’ll need to retain that instant insight, but with greater flexibility to interrogate the data. A staff management tool tailored for growing businesses starts to become worth looking at.

Using technology to track performance isn’t about being Big Brother; scrutinising every action of every individual. It’s just smart management. Seeing performance at unit level provides a broad view of your business area units, including trends across time.

With easyEMPLOYER, for example, our system alerts you if any red flags arise, like people logging too many hours, or not enough.

Let technology bear the load

As a business owner or HR manager, you’re constantly asking the question: are we getting the most from our people? Hiring the right people and setting up clear reporting goes a long way to keeping a productive and engaged workforce.

As your business grows, technology can bring you real-time, actionable insights from all the places you can’t get too in person. Don’t let yourself be stretched too thin, trying to be everywhere at once. Let technology do that for you.