Time Tracking For Your Remote Workforce

Operating with a remote workforce offers businesses numerous benefits. Remote workforces are on the rise, and more companies should prepare to bring in at least some remote or hybrid workers at some point in time. 

Remote workforces might seem like an enigma to some. After all, how can these businesses gain a profit from a remote workforce if they can’t oversee their employees? 

Brought on by the rise of the gig economy and the use cases of advanced technologies and software, businesses with remote workers will find that they can keep track of their remote workforce using time tracking software. 

Here’s everything you need to know about remote workforce management with time tracking:

How Does Time Tracking Your Remote Workforce Work?

As the name suggests, time tracking can track time per employee per project. Time tracking apps often calculate the number of hours, minutes, and seconds that a person is working on a given task, project, or job. Time tracking software is often downloaded onto a computer or workstation or an extension in an internet access application that allows employees to track their hours quickly. 

Much time tracking software exists as a timesheet; companies that use timesheet software for human resources (HR) and accounting will find that this software operates very similarly. However, instead of reporting your employees’ hours through the billing software, employees will actively record their hours and their work projects. 

There are several different time tracking software and systems out there; choosing the one that works for your business and your remote workers may take trial and error. However, it also requires that you look closely at what you need to monitor as a company and choose software with features that support that. 

Managers can monitor company productivity and employee performance. With SoftActivity remote employee monitoring, managers can deploy this software from a single console and monitor employee time from the consolidated time tracking app. Employees can also download the software onto their computer or company computer and then start and stop their timer. 

Features to Look for in Your Remote Time Tracking Software

There are many different remote time tracking software that employers can choose from. Additionally, you can use the software more or less, depending on your needs. 

Most time tracking software will have the following features:

• An active timer
• Manual timer adds
• Project and task tracking
• Team and individual worker tracking

Additional employee monitoring features also include:

• Applications and website monitoring
• Idle time tracking
• Keystroke logging
• Communications monitoring
• Data visibility for insider threat protection
• User behavior analytics
• Mobile time tracking
• A time tracking app and online dashboard

The features your company uses will depend on your use cases. For example, you may want to see if your employees are still working when remote working. If this is the case, you may wish to have activity sensors, like stopped time tracking for inactivity (idle time), webcam monitoring, screen capturing, and keystroke logging. 

If you have a large workforce, then managers may want a console that can monitor many employee computers at a given time. So if you want more oversight and you have a lot of employees, you’ll need a more comprehensive monitoring system that is more robust than simply a dedicated workplace timer. 

Implementing Time Tracking for Your Remote Workforce

Once your employee managers have settled on a time tracking system, you’ll need to deploy a remote tracking system. Each case will be unique, but managers will have to ensure that the time tracking software will be implemented, and it must be made a requirement. 

Your managers must also be able to read the software clearly, so having clear dashboards or time audits in your software will help your managers understand their remote workers’ hours. 

Time tracking must become a requirement with remote work; otherwise, it won’t be followed. You provide your company with a set baseline for tracking project progression, time management, and attendance by requiring time tracking. With each of your remote employees using this time tracking software, you can glean overall workplace insight, areas for improvement, and significant roadblocks.

You can use the metrics collected from the time tracking software for evaluating remote employee performance. Metrics that time tracking software provides include: 

• Timesheet for remote employee time
• Attendance
• Team and individual dashboards
• Billable vs. non-billable employee hours
• Retroactively added time vs. actively tracked
• Total employee time
• Time breakdowns by project/client/team member
• Wasted time and wasted time reports
• Remote employee time categorized by periodic dates
• Tags
• Project management and project estimates
• Durations
• And more

With additional employee monitoring features, businesses can also gain insight into employee performance and insider threats, adding security monitoring and tracking to your remote workforce. 

If you go with slightly more advanced monitoring software for time tracking, you can also:

• Track common behaviors
• Be alerted to aberrant behavior
• Boost data visibility for companies with sensitive data
• Understand how long your employees were on a given website or application
• Read communication messages to see employee productivity and security insight
• Customize your dashboard for proper metrics
• Improve security for on-premise or cloud organizations
• Connect with SIEM systems
• Contribute to security with DLP and blocking rules
• Report anomalies in network behavior
• And more

Benefits of Remote Employee Monitoring Software

Managers will have better coverage over employee behaviors and time tracking with employee monitoring software. Remote monitoring only monitors during work hours, and it gives employers the benefit of knowing when their remote workers are working. While it may feel intrusive, remote monitoring is wholly justified for companies that need it. 

Remote time tracking:

• Increases company productivity
• Boost employee engagement and engagement statistics
• Provides employers with insight into company performance and employee engagement
• Improves ROI
• Provides remote workforces with baseline metrics for improving performance
• Support software integration for streamlined operation management

The bottom line is that remote time tracking significantly benefits employers while not being too much of a hindrance for your remote workers. 

SoftActivity is one of the best time tracking software tools available and will provide your company with the right balance of remote oversight, remote worker accountability, productivity tracking, and security monitoring. You also pay for a one-time license, so you won’t have a recurring subscription fee to worry about. With this licensing, you can connect your Windows workstations and terminals to a central monitoring console to stay on top of your remote workforce. 

Try SoftActivity for remote employee time tracking today!

By SoftActivity Team.