Why measure time?

Time tracking and management are a must, especially when working with people on a time-sensitive project. Also, we and our team may work on multiple projects with overlapping project cycles, and our relocated staff work remotely at different hours than we do due to time zone differences. For this reason, having the ability to switch between tasks, multitask, track time, and keep distractions at bay to achieve different results and meet your respective deadlines is important to ensuring the success of a business.

With numerous social networking sites, online video sharing communities, games, ad hoc requests from teammates, and responses to email communications, it’s all too easy for virtual workers to get distracted. Since you can’t physically control whether or not your team is performing the tasks assigned to it at any given time, you simply measure their productivity using completed tasks as a performance metric. But wouldn’t you be more productive if you could ensure that your staff time and workload are properly organized, recorded and accounted for?

My company is small and I only have a few employees, are email and VoIP timestamps not enough to verify whether they are working or not?

Emails can now be accessed via a mobile device, VoIP applications like Skype are the same. In fact, you can even bring your laptop, hop to the nearest pub, and answer your boss’s emails like you’re working. Email timestamps and video conferencing from time to time are not proof of productivity and time well spent. If your company has an internal time tracking system for your internal staff, see if you can use the same system to track the time of your remote staff. If you are using contractors or third-party company services, be sure to ask if they have a means of tracking your work time. Time tracking is beneficial to everyone: employers, employees, clients, and contractors alike.

The benefits of time tracking include:

• The ability to see project alignments from a top-level view and break tasks into small, more manageable increments

• You can understand what business practices and internal processes lead to wasted time and use the information for business development.

• You can log how much time is spent on each task or project so you can set a more reasonable time estimate for your team when a similar project comes up.

• The ability to manage your time more effectively.

• The ability to keep all data about workload, progress, deadlines, as well as staff and customer information in one central location that you can easily access for more accurate customer billing.

• Your offshore workers can use time tracking as evidence of how their time was spent

• You can share your time tracking with individuals, freelancers, and staff members who are working on the same project as you.

• Overall, you and your staff will be more productive.

How can I track and manage my team’s time?

Large companies, especially BPOs, are already using different systems to track time and productivity in the office. This allows them to properly allocate manpower, equipment, and other resources as needed to achieve the target result. SMEs, however, are relatively new to this, as time tracking and management systems are quite expensive and a bit “overkill” for tracking the productivity of a small team. Fortunately, there is now a more cost-effective solution for small and medium-sized businesses to accurately track and manage the time and tasks of their remote staff. There are desktop programs, mobile apps, and web-based time tracking software to choose from, and the cost varies depending on the number of users, projects, features, or subscription plans. Among the good options is Time Doctor, an effective time tracking and management tool that costs at least $9.99 per user per month. The good thing about this tool is the fact that you can not only keep track of the time your staff spend on each task assigned to you, but also keep track of the websites and apps used while your staff are working. . This way, you can see if social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter or gaming apps are distracting your workers from the actual work. If you’re hiring contract workers through freelance sites and virtual worker portals, there’s a good chance they already have a good time tracking system in place. oDesk, for example, uses TeamRoom, which tracks and logs a worker’s time, taking screenshots and photos of the worker every 10 minutes to help ensure the right person is working on the right task at the right time.

I have remote staff/virtual freelancers working for me on different projects. Are there other ways to maximize productivity?

Of course! And if you can use practical business solutions while increasing the productivity of your employees, you’ll benefit more. I met Mike O’Hagan, a successful serial entrepreneur and owner of 6 businesses operating in 4 countries. He provides practical entrepreneurship advice through his series of free webinars, entrepreneurial learning tours, and the free eBook “The $100-A-Week Efficient Worker: An Effective Guide to Increasing His ROI When He Gets Started.” delocalize”. I downloaded the ebook and found some tips and ideas that I couldn’t find in other outsourcing ebooks.