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The best way to work with your team is to ensure there is a culture of trust, transparency, and communication. As with all teams, you want to be able to monitor workload, quality, and productivity. Now that many of our work lives have changed dramatically in the last year, we are facing new challenges and experiences. One of those is learning how to track your remote workforce. It can be difficult to do this in a way that promotes positivity and trust among your team. Here are 7 ways you can keep track of your remote workforce.

Deadlines

When setting your team tasks, set them with a deadline. This gives them the motivation to complete the task on time and can deal with any moments of procrastination they might be feeling coming on. Setting a task without a deadline can give them the room to take their time even if they can get the task done fairly quickly. By setting an expectation from the start, they are more likely to complete the task within the set time frame.

Set Rules And Precedents

Putting together a set of rules and working with your team to do this, can be helpful. Coming up with ways for them to organize their time and increase productivity can help you ensure they are meeting deadlines and have the right mindset and space to work properly.

One strategy to employ is to ensure that everyone is online at the same time during a certain period of work. This could be to attend meetings, check-ins, or to collaborate effectively with their team. If your team’s productivity begins to decline, you can then think about bringing in stricter measures. If their productivity is not affected or is even increasing, it’s probably a sign that having their own autonomy is helpful for them.

Time Tracking

One way to ensure tasks, projects, and workload is completed on time is to use a time tracker. You don’t necessarily need to monitor every aspect of their working day. Monitoring your workforce productivity using a time tracker to track their progress on a project or their working hours can help you get a clearer sense of how well they are working. If they appear to need further support or help, you can offer this before it gets too late.

Honesty

Everyone has a different home life, in comparison to the office, some might have children, live with extended family members, or have duties they need to attend to. By encouraging them to be open and honest about their situation, you can come up with working procedures and schedules that work for both of you. A collaborative effort is beneficial for both you and your team.

Daily Report

At the end of each working day, you can have your team offer a summary of their day. They can highlight their wins, losses, and progress. This is an easy way for you to track their work and gives them an opportunity to reflect and see how they can do better.

Accountability

Set clear expectations with your employees. They will be more likely to deliver high-quality work on time if they know what is expected of them. If you have been clear with them and they continually fail to meet the set expectations, you can hold them accountable. Holding them accountable will mean different things for each workplace, but it is important in order for your employees to stay on track.

Transparency

When your workforce is remote it can be hard to figure out the line between what is considered intrusive and what is simply management. A workforce that feels heard, understood, and appreciated is more likely to produce great work compared to a workforce that feels they are being spied on. That’s why fostering a culture of transparency is key.

Ensure your team is involved in and well aware of any changes. They can be involved in planning, awareness, and even coming up with new ways to keep themselves accountable. It should be clear to your workforce that your aim is to ensure that all the work gets done on time, and to a high standard. The more involved and the more transparent they are, the more motivated they will be.

Use these 7 ways of tracking your remote workforce to cultivate a culture of honesty and transparency. A workforce that collaborates and understands the expectations laid out for them, is a much more productive workforce. Encouraging individuality within the context of a team and achieving common and individual goals will ensure a workforce that’s productive and healthy. 

Is your business now at the stage where you need to start hiring employees? If so, here are five crucial things you need to know.

1. You Need an EIN

First off, if you are hiring employees for the very first time, you need to obtain an Employer Identification Number. The nine-digit number is unique to your business. You can obtain it from the IRS. Basically, your EIN is used for reporting information about your employees to state agencies and reporting taxes to the IRS.

2. Providing Your Employees with Their W-2 Forms

The W2 Form is used to report wages, compensation, and taxes annually for each of your employees to the federal government. Copy A of the form needs to be sent to the Social Security Administration. And employers must send employees their W2 forms before January 31, for wages and taxes paid the previous year. The W2 Form is pretty simple to complete and there is HR software that can help you with the process. You will enter information that is already available in your payroll records and need some additional information like your State ID Number and EIN. Check out this insightful guide on how to complete a W2 to make sure you get it right. You will also need to complete Form W4, which is used for federal income tax withholding.

3. How Much to Pay?

Before you start hiring employees, you need to know how much you can afford to pay them. If you are working in an industry with clearly defined pay scales, then you should stick to those rates. Otherwise, the amount you pay needs to be calculated in relation to your other business finances. You also need to decide what benefits and insurance packages you want to provide. Hiring employees can be a lot more costly than you think, so make sure you work out the costs and create a budget before you start advertising for roles.

4. Defining the Position and Writing a Job Description

Once all of the background nuts and bolts of hiring someone are out of the way, you can focus on finding the right employees. Quite simply, to find the right workers, you need to clearly define what you are looking for.

Begin by clearly defining the available position and break it down into the tasks and duties the role involves. Next, make a list of the skills the ideal employee should have for your available position, and consider whether the applicant should have experience and/or qualifications. You also need to consider other attributes. For instance, if the role involves customer service, you will need to ensure the candidate is friendly, outgoing, and can handle angry customers in a calm manner. When you know precisely what you want out of your employee, you will be much better placed to find the right person. You will also better know what questions to focus on during the interview process. But before you get to that, you need to write a job description. Use all of the above information about the role to create a job description and do not forget to include a little about your company so you can ensure the right candidates apply.

5. Background Checks Are Crucial

You could find an applicant who seems to be the ideal person for your role after reviewing his or her resume and meeting the candidate in person at the interview. But unless you perform a background check, you cannot be sure that the person is right for the job. An effective background check is one of the most important steps when considering who to hire. You should check work references, educational credentials, and criminal history (learn more here). If you do not, you could regret it.