As the evidence mounts to suggest we’re edging towards an economic recession, it’s the perfect moment to think about how you and your remote team spend your time.

‍

The keys to thriving through a recession will center around operational efficiency and making the most of the resources at your disposal. As such, carrying out an audit of how your remote teams are using their time can help you focus on building greater productivity that’s sustainable over time.

‍

In this guide, we’ll share many of the ways time mapping software can improve productivity for remote teams so that you can stabilize in the face of upcoming economic uncertainty.

‍

1. Pinpointing Productivity Boosters

‍

With time management and productivity tips and a robust time management solution, you can effectively find out where and when you’re most productive.

‍

Let’s say one of the team members in your remote team, Sarah, spreads her work week out between home, coworking spaces, and coffee shops. 

‍

After implementing real time data monitoring, you notice that there’s an uptick in productivity for Sarah on Thursdays. After asking, you find out that Thursdays are the days she works from a coworking space. 

‍

With this information from software tracking, you can support greater individual productivity by encouraging Sarah to spend more of her time at the coworking space - and offer financial compensation to cover her costs. 

‍

Likewise, when tracking time you might find that several members of your team have highly productive mornings. With that being the case, you could shift your emphasis to maximize productivity in the mornings. For example, you could assign high-priority tasks at the end of the day, so team members can work on them the following morning when in theory, they’ll be at their most productive.

‍

With this simple evaluation of the time data, you can leverage times of day and locations to boost productivity levels by reallocating team members’ time or priorities.

‍

2. Restoring Work-Life Balance

‍

In some cases, when you first start using work internet monitoring software, you might find that some remote team members are clocking more time than scheduled.

‍

Not every employee wants to work as little as possible, some are guilty of overworking. Those employees can be forgiven for not knowing when to stop for the day, since we live in an always-on world now where you can hear from colleagues or managers at any hour of the day.

‍

The biggest risk with overworking is running yourself into the ground, which can ultimately end in burnout - a phenomenon that’s detrimental to one’s mental health and very hard to bounce back from.

‍

By using internet monitoring tools, you can identify if some employees are working longer hours than they should, and you can help them restore a more healthy work-life balance. Making sure a shift ends when it should can be a healthy boundary to enforce, as it allows everyone on the team to decompress after work and turn their minds off for the day.

‍

3. Create Accountability  

‍

Sometimes all it takes to inspire greater productivity is a sense of accountability for one’s work rate.

‍

When you use time management software like Insightful, you have several options for creating greater individual and collective accountability:

‍

• Sharing the time data: When you share the time data you collect with your team members, this transparency can have a motivational effect. Seeing their own numbers, team members are more likely to take responsibility for their actions and output, and feel a sense of duty to their work and coworkers. 

‍

• Implementing regular screenshots: With Insightful, employee monitoring and productivity go hand in hand. Set up screenshots that trigger at custom intervals, so you can make sure team members are staying focused on the task at hand. Just the knowledge that screenshots are in play can create more urgency among team members to complete their work on time.

‍

4. Analyzing your Apps

‍

The apps you use can have a significant impact on your team’s ability to be as productive as possible.

‍

Say you have an app you rely on for communication, yet it causes more confusion than it clarifies. Messages constantly get lost, the interface is clunky, and it’s a time sink.

‍

Unless team members speak up about it, you’re unlikely to know that this is a potential productivity and resource drainer.

‍

With time management software Insightful, you can monitor employee web browsing, analyze individual app usage, and track how much time each team member spends using each. With this information, you can compile a comprehensive report of which apps help save time, and which don’t.

‍

You can also make judgment calls on apps if you find that they’re not used as often as you thought they would be. Culling redundant and time-wasting apps can not only save you a subscription fee but allow you to find a more productivity-supporting alternative for your team.

‍

5. Assess the Impact of Multitasking on Productivity

‍

Another way Insightful app usage tracking can help support greater remote team productivity is by giving you a window into the impact multitasking has.

‍

It could be that you’re blessed with a team of multitaskers and that context shifting doesn’t faze anyone in your ranks. In reality, though, this is unlikely to be the case.

‍

More likely, there are several members on your team juggling various tasks in different apps, which could be disrupting their workflows and ability to be productive throughout the day.

‍

When you carry out an audit of app usage with Insightful, you can see when there’s an overlap between various apps for individual team members, and see if this has a knock-on impact on their output. 

‍

If you notice a dip in productivity following task and context switching, you may have to find a way to cut down on multitasking so you can free up your team’s cognitive energy to spend on high-priority tasks.

‍

6. Identify Opportunities for Greater Efficiency

‍

As you brace your business for economic turbulence, there’s no better time to iron out efficiency kinks and remove bottlenecks within your team to streamline productivity.

‍

When you turn to time management software, you’ll soon identify opportunities to work towards greater efficiency.

‍

With the time data in front of you, it’s easy to see how much time each task is taking every team member. That information alone can help you support those team members that are inadvertently slowing things down by acting as bottlenecks.

‍

It can also tell you where you need to focus your energy to streamline processes and create more efficient workflows.

‍

‍Efficiency and productivity aren’t exactly the same, but they’re closely intertwined. Greater efficiency begets greater productivity, so if you’re willing to locate opportunities for getting things done with less input, then you can find ways to boost overall productivity levels.