An enterprise's ability (or lack thereof) to properly manage its resources can make or break a business. Many businesses remain fixated on investment and growth, and while this can certainly boost a company’s competitive advantage, it's not the only way. 

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It’s a common lament of many business leaders that if it weren’t for lack of resources, they would have greater strategic ability to grow their competitive advantage; this is limited thinking. As history has shown us, no organization is immune to hardship; even business monoliths with seemingly unlimited resources can strategically drive their business into the ground. 

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Over time, the corporate mindset has shifted its focus from growth, often at all costs, to sustainability. Growth is sometimes required to sustain a business model, but the growth itself also needs to be sustainable. If companies are not adequately planning, scheduling, and allocating their people, money, and technology, then growth is not sustainable. 

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Curious about how you can better manage and leverage your business’s resources? Luckily, there are many tools that can help. This article will narrow in on one in particular, a tool designed to help employers better manage remote and hybrid teams. We’ll explore how remote work tracking can help with workforce management, time management, and management of your tech resources. 

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What Is Remote Employee Monitoring?

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Remote work has steadily been on the rise for the last decade. Since 2009, the number of people who work from home has risen by 159%!

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Thanks to the technological advances we have enjoyed since the turn of the millennium, remote work has become a real and, for many, preferred work option. Since the arrival of COVID, we’ve seen the interest and demand for remote and hybrid work increase substantially. During the peak of COVID,  close to 70% of full-time workers worked from home.

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It isn’t a fluke either; by 2028, 73% of all departments are expected to have remote workers. While COVID saw companies turn to remote work out of necessity, the trend is here to stay. As a result, remote employee monitoring software has gained traction. 

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Remote employee time tracking enables managers to manage their remote teams more easily, and allows employees more workplace autonomy - thanks to the ability to track and manage their own productivity and performance.

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What can remote pc monitoring software do?

• Time & Attendance Tracking
• Productivity Monitoring
• Workflow Management 
• Alerting and Reporting
• Activity Logging
• Data Visualization 

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Different products will have different features, but core features like time tracking, app usage, and productivity monitoring are staples. Deciding what is the best remote monitoring software for your organization depends on your industry and specific needs. However, most remote business monitoring solutions will gather valuable data insights that you can leverage to improve resource management. 

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How Do Monitoring Tools Help Resource Management?

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The need to better allocate, leverage, and manage your company’s resources should be factored into your organization’s KPIs. Some possible KPQs to consider are:

• How capable are we of quickly absorbing new technology? 
• How effective are we at training and retraining employees?
• Are we reengineering workflows as needed?
• How effective are we at strengthening our internal and external relationships?
• How aligned is our managerial approach with a sustainable mindset? 

Each of these questions focuses on a different area of resource management: workforce management, tIme management, and infrastructure management. 

 Now let’s break these down and see how exactly remote employee monitoring software can help. 

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Time Management

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Time is a valuable resource, and as they say - “time is money”.  Just how much money does wasted time cost employers? For an employee with an annual salary of $50,000, 3 hours of wasted time a week costs employers over $3,000 a year. When you multiply that number by the total number of employees, and consider that employees with higher salaries cost employers even more, the cost of wasted time can be staggering. Not to mention, 3 hours a week of wasted time is quite conservative estimate.

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Proper time management enables enterprises to avoid the cost of wasted time by enabling them to work smarter and harder. By consciously planning and executing activities, organizations can streamline their business and operational processes.  

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How can remote work tracking help with time management? Remote employee monitoring software is designed to provide detailed insight into how your employees use their time, and makes employees accountable for their time. 

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Activity logs and automated time tracking shows when your employees are at their most productive and when they are not. Armed with these data insights, managers can see into employee workloads and adjust workflows and scheduling accordingly. 

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With  remote employee monitoring software, employers are then able to maximize the productivity of their workforce while ensuring that employee time is being managed and used in the most effective and efficient way possible.

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In addition, data gathered from remote business monitoring is available to employees as well, which they can use to monitor and optimize the way they use their own time. In this sense, time optimization occurs from both the top down and the bottom up. 

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Infrastructure Management 

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Time isn’t the only resources that can cost your business money. The collective cost of unused software can quickly add up. In fact, the total yearly cost in the U.S. attributed to underutilized software is nearly 30 billion dollars! 

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IT infrastructure such as hardware, software, policies, processes, and data are equally as important to track and manage. 

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It may seem less obvious how a tool for remote work tracking can help with IT infrastructure management, but you’d be surprised. Thanks to features that track app and website usage, IT managers can gain insight into which applications and software employees are using, and which they are avoiding. With this information, managers can tell whether or not employees are absorbing new IT resources quickly, if not, then it may signal that employees need more training. 

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With remote employee monitoring software employers can see if employees are opting to use other similar programs than the programs officially provided by the employer. This can offer insight into what type of interface and features employees prefer, which can help IT professionals improve their process and procedure for acquiring and integrating new technology in the future. 

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Activity logs illuminate how employees are spending unproductive time so that employers can adjust policies in order to avoid distractions such as “time-wasting” apps and sites. Not only that, but data insights into employee app and website usage can also help prevent the use of shadow IT and help information security professionals create policies which will better protect the security of IT resources. 

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Workforce Management

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Properly managing your workforce goes hand in hand with the way you manage your company’s time and technical resources. The objectives of workforce management are to optimize productivity and reduce risk. In what other ways can remote work tracking help you allocate and leverage your resources?

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First of all, its important to mention that though remote employee monitoring software is tailored to manage remote workers, it is often leveraged for hybrid-work environments and can be implemented throughout the company, even for in-office employees. This means that the data insights gathered apply to your entire workforce to give a birds-eye view of how your people, time, and technology are being used. 

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Just how else can remote employee monitoring software improve your ability to better manage your people?

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• By enabling managers to make better management decisions. 
• By improving the work-life balance of your workforce.
• By providing insight that enables managers to implement continuous engagement.
• By providing information that allows leaders to identify best practices.
• By supporting HR for a better employee experience.
• By improving the overall productivity of your workforce. 
• By offering insight into employee wellness and preventing burnout. 

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All of the above can help your company pivot to a more sustainable mindset, and enable your organization to attract and retain happy and productive employees - your business’s  most valuable resource. 

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