Entrepreneurship isn’t easy. If you have a new business, the days when you can sit back in your cosy leather chair and relax while your managers and employees are doing their jobs and the money keeps flowing in are probably not in sight just yet.
As you surely know, building a corporate empire, or just any remotely sustainable business, will take hard work and a lot of time. But there are solutions that can greatly help you optimize this process and make it easier and more smooth.
One of the best options you’ll come across is using computer monitoring software to help you with overcoming some of the challenges you’ll inevitably face as a business owner. One of these challenges is time management.
Time is a precious thing and there’s never enough of it. You have a plan and you know what to do to reach success. Yet, here you are, waiting on that crucial invoice that should have been created yesterday. If only your day could last 35 hours…
Unfortunately, it can’t, but here are some things you can save time on by monitoring employees’ computers:
Knowing Your Employees’ Capabilities…
When you first start a business, chances are you don’t know your employees quite that well yet. Sure, you’ve seen their resumes and qualifications, but do you know whether they’re more productive in the morning or after lunch? How fast do they type? How often do they need breaks? Do they know the ins and outs of the program they work on or are they just barely getting by?
These are all the questions that employee monitoring system can help you answer in a very objective, clear and detailed way.
Most PC monitoring platforms can detect which apps each employee is using, as well as which websites they’re spending their time on, and for how long. There might be some additional features, like marking apps as productive or unproductive, taking screenshots and so on.
This should give you a very clear idea of what your employees are doing efficiently and where they are struggling. Or what time of day they are most likely to be distracted and unproductive.
Unless you were planning to get this data by sneaking around their desks and taking notes, this will probably not save any time in a direct way. However, it will give you a solid ground for making other decisions.
… and Delegate Accordingly!
One of the ways to use the data you get by monitoring employees, and likely the most effective one, is to apply the knowledge you now have to task delegation.
For example, you see that one of your employees takes an hour and a half of the task that another employee finishes in under 45 minutes. This tells you two things. First, that, for the time being, you should assign similar urgent tasks to the second employee. And second, that it would be a good idea to provide some form of support or further training to the first employee to make them faster in the future.
Similarly, if you see that one employee works faster on one platform and another one on another platform, it’s a waste of time to make them both work in both apps.
Another piece of informative data you can use is when your employees’ focus is sharpest during the day. PC usage monitoring software will tell you what time each employee is most productive so that you can allocate the most demanding tasks to that time slot instead of letting your workers struggle when their focus is off.
Automating Tasks
Any kind of program that tracks computer activity will almost definitely help you with automating at least one menial task.
Some of the areas in which employee PC monitoring can help you include: counting billable hours, taking attendance, tracking overtime, automated project time tracking and more. These might not be exceptionally time-consuming activities, especially if you don’t have a lot of employees, but saving a couple of minutes here and there every day quickly adds up to hours on a weekly basis.
These are the hours you can use for something meaningful that will help your company grow and prosper.
Increasing Productivity
Office monitoring software can help your employees get more productive by offering very insightful data on productivity and efficiency.
Some systems, including for example Workpuls, can give you reports on productivity trends and daily timelines, as well as team biorhythm. These reports can be powerful intrinsic motivators but they can also give you some ideas for how you can help your employees be more efficient.
For example, having regular short breaks, strangely enough, helps with productivity by making employees more focused and clear-headed. Using insights from employee tracking software can help you decide when and how often you should let the employees enjoy these short breaks.
This increase in productivity will very quickly and naturally result in greater efficiency and better time management.
Conclusion
Monitoring employees in the workplace can be a tricky thing to sell to them, but it will help you a lot in the management process. Your business needs to grow and this process could use every help it can get. Employee monitoring software can save you a lot of valuable time that you’ll be able to put to good use – leading your employees and your company to success.