Under-management is a serious issue that negatively impacts organizations. With the numerous tasks that managers and supervisors have to accomplish daily, it becomes difficult to monitor employees effectively.
Even though you feel that your employees are meeting the set targets, monitoring their performance is still very important. Employee performance tracking allows you to determine your employee’s performance in terms of productivity, efficiency, and customer service.
In this article, we discuss seven easy tricks you can adopt to monitor employees;
Set goals and expectations from the start
During the hiring process, it’s crucial that your employees understand exactly what is expected of them within each project and their general role. Supervisors and managers must be clear about their goals from the start and provide their employees with the necessary resources and tools to achieve those goals.
Setting clear goals and expectations from the start maximizes productivity, eliminates confusion, and enhances the success of the organization. Employees tend to lack passion, effort, and energy if they are not sure what is expected of them.
Check-in frequently with employees
Create time to regularly check in with your employees. This allows you to monitor their work closely and hold them accountable for their actions. It also enhances your employee-manager relationship thus improving your employee’s engagement levels.
During these one-on-one meetings, enquire about their progress and the challenges they are facing. This makes them feel valued and appreciated which gives them the morale to keep up the good work.
Ideally, create time every week to check in with them, or at least twice every month. However, if finding the time to meet one-on-one is difficult, have your employees send weekly recaps of their completed projects and tasks so that everyone is on the same page.
Implement user activity monitoring tools
Employee monitoring software helps track and record user activities on a system. It is designed to improve efficiency by keeping track of productivity metrics and ensuring that employees are complying with organizational rules and regulations.
Besides, user activity monitoring helps managers avoid micromanaging and allows employees to evaluate their work output and personal productivity. It also eliminates bias and the need to perform uninformative criteria questions.
Finally, employee monitoring trackers provide clear details of what is happening in your company and how employees are performing their jobs. With these tools, you can easily monitor and review your employees to identify areas that require improvement.
Performance appraisals
Performance appraisals are simply reviews that firms carry out semi-annually, annually, or quarterly to evaluate an employee’s job performance and achievement. They are beneficial in that they assess employees’ overall contribution to the organization, track progress against goals, improve performance, increase profitability, and identify employees that need further training.
These appraisals allow you to monitor employees’ workload and develop a plan for employee growth and development through increased responsibilities or further training. They also help identify areas that need improvement by providing employees with constructive feedback.
Focus on quality over quantity
Employee performance does not revolve around the number of hours worked but more about the completed tasks with positive results. Micromanaging every aspect of your employee’s work can be demotivating and lead to unproductivity. Instead, encourage a get-the-work-done attitude.
Emphasize quality over quantity by measuring employee performance in ways that encourage effective and smarter working. For instance, you can set up performance indicators and goals to track the progress of a project as opposed to the time clocked in. The idea is to keep employees motivated and encourage collaboration, flexibility, and mobility.
Block inappropriate and harmful websites
Employers have a right to block websites they consider inappropriate and unimportant to business operations. For instance, they can choose to block websites that interfere with employee’s productivity such as stock trading and social networking sites to ensure that employees remain focused on organizational goals
Other websites in this list include pornographic and hateful sites to make sure employees are not committing corporate espionage or harassing coworkers.
However, to allow some room for socialization, you can set time limits on certain websites such as Facebook and social media sites.
Require self-reporting
If you manage a small team or trust your employees, you can institute a policy that encourages self-reporting. For instance, you can instruct your employees to send a brief daily report explaining their current projects, the challenges they may be facing, how busy they feel, and if they can take on more work.
Self-reporting provides room for subjective analysis, independence, and objectivity. Employees can determine whether they are overworked, underworked, or have a balanced workload.
How are you monitoring your employees?
Your employees are your organization’s most valuable assets. They are the main contributors to its success and growth. Closely tracking their performance provides a clear picture of where the business is headed, prevents cybersecurity, and increases business productivity.
How are you monitoring yours? Let us know in the comments section below.