If you are running a business, you probably know how important it is to keep your team happier and productive. Whether you are running a business in-office or remotely, workforce management is essential for the growth of your business. 

Effective workforce management offers a number of benefits like:

• Optimizes work scheduling
• Improves staff productivity
• Motivates employees
• Increases retention
• Saves time and money
• Offers data security

Below are some of the proven ideas to manage your workforce effectively:

1. Automate Time Tracking and Attendance

You will be surprised to know that time theft costs companies $11 billion annually. It might not be intentional by your employees, but it leads to decreased productivity. 

You can avoid this by tracking the time and attendance of your team. The recent survey says that daily time tracking can decrease productivity leaks by 80%.

You can improve time utility by using time tracking and attendance software. These software’s are designed to monitor the working hours, overtime, break time, paid time off (PTO), and even the leaves of your employees. 

Also, these can be easily integrated with various human resource and payroll management software. Some of the most popular time tracking tools are Time Doctor, TSheets, On The Clock, and When I Work. 

These solutions are highly effective for any workplace, including remote teams.

2. Automate Task Assignment 

Equal distribution of tasks among the team members is essential for the team’s efficiency. You have to be careful because increasing the workload on individual employees can decrease their productivity by 68%.

Manual distribution of work might be difficult under the scenario when you have to consider the number of projects they are working on, the current work progress, and their time of completion.

This is where employee scheduling software can be of great help. Using these tools, you can assign different tasks to individual team members and also keep track of their activities in detail.

For example, you can easily find which task is assigned to which team member and the estimated time of completion. Some of the best tools for work scheduling are Monday.com, Nifty, MeisterTask, Backlog, Trello, and JIRA. 

3. Choose Easy to Learn Tools and Apps

Presently, 75% of global organizations are estimated to increase the use of productivity tools. While using these tools are necessary, it is also essential that tools should not cause confusion and become time-consuming to learn. 

Using myriads of different apps and solutions can invite complexity in the process and become difficult for your team to learn. Ultimately, your team will spend more time getting used to these apps, rather than focusing on their work.

Therefore, keep the number of tools to the minimum. Choose a tool that matches your organizational needs.

4. Measure Work Productivity

You may want your team to operate efficiently and autonomously as much as possible. But, you will not be able to know how each of your team members performed in the day unless you measure their daily work productivity. 

This is the reason why 71.5% of global organizations have established a way to measure the daily work productivity of their employees. 

Now, it is possible to track your employees’ productivity using productivity tracking software. These are high-tech apps that give you insights into your employees’ performance and time utilization. 

Some of the popular tools are EmailAnalytics, ProofHub, ActivTrak, iDoneThis, etc. 

5. Keep Your Team Connected On The Go 

As per recent research, people spend approximately four hours a day on their smartphones. It doesn’t include just personal use but also official work. 

At times, employees use their personal devices like Tabs and laptops other than mobile phones to get their tasks done outside their workplace. If you are using collaboration tools, make sure your tool supports mobile devices as smoothly as it does with desktops.

This idea will keep you and your entire team connected even if they are on the move. 

6. Use Cloud Storage 

Your team has to access, share, and update project related data constantly. Sometimes, they need access to the data outside their usual workplace and from different devices.  85% of employees lose at least one to two hours of productivity a week searching for information.

Therefore, you must provide a centralized storage system where your team can easily access without fearing data theft. This is where you need a cloud storage solution. 

Already 90% of companies are on the cloud. Certainly, the role of cloud storage is crucial for any organization irrespective of the type and size of a company. 

The biggest benefits of these solutions are that they provide massive storage, high security, and accessibility from any location. 

Some of the highly reliable cloud solutions like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Icedrive.

Cloud storage solution gives your employees the freedom to work from any location they want. While it offers convenience to the employees, it helps you get your task done in stipulated time.

7. Stay Connected Visually

Communication is a vital element to make your team function well. Approximately 80% of the U.S. workforce feels stressed because of ineffective company communication.

This is especially true for teams working remotely. Most of the time, remote team members feel neglected and gradually lose interest and zeal in completing their assigned tasks. This ultimately leads to the loss of time and project delay. 

Working far from the rest of the team members should not be a reason for communication gaps. You can stay connected visually by using different live video chat tools. 

These tools not only allow you to video chat, but also let you record the chat, share files, text chat, send offline messages, and do a lot more. Many of these tools also come free.

You would be best if you have a reliable video calling tool, like Skype, Google Hangout, LINE, Tango, Viber, etc. 

8. Provide Regular Feedback

You can’t improve yourself unless you know where exactly you need to work. Over 70% of employees feel that they would have felt a better sense of loyalty if they had flexible working hours. Moreover, 96% of people believe that job flexibility would have improved the overall quality of life.

As an employer, you probably are aware of the diversity in employees and their unique personal and professional needs. Some of them might be juggling between their personal and professional life, which is hampering their productivity.

Considering their issues, you can provide them options to choose their working hours or place of work, required tools, or equipment that goes well with both of you. You can move your entire work online with project management and other tools discussed above.

By offering flexibility to your team, you are helping them not just with their productivity, but also with better work-life balance, time-saving, and minimizing commute stress.

This is a win-win for both of you as your employees are happier and you get a better business outcome. Therefore, you must take work flexibility into account in your organizational culture.

9. Create a Happier Work Atmosphere

One of the essential elements to manage the workforce is to keep them happy. Research by Oxford University says that workers are 13% more productive when they are happy.

Unfortunately, not all employers look into this factor seriously or translate it in the wrong form. The report says 89% of employers believe that employees quit jobs for more money, but in reality, only 12% do.

Remember, it is not always the salary or perks that give employees work satisfaction. Sometimes, they need a little extra to stay motivated, such as:

• Show gratitude by saying thanks when it was least expected.
• Motivate them with pictures or quotes.
• Show empathy and encourage when they are not productive enough.
• Providing more hold over the project or task assigned.
• Celebrate small wins within office hours and thank them.

There are many other proven ways than these to create a happier atmosphere at work. Apply as many as possible for you. After all, happier employees are the key to a successful business.

10. Set Attainable Goals

Your team might be highly skilled, experienced, and extraordinary, but that doesn’t necessarily make them capable of achieving unrealistic goals.

If you want them to perform within the timeline and as per the requirement, it is essential to give them enough time and a limited load of work. The best way is to fragment a single large goal into smaller ones and assign them one by one.

This way, your employees will feel happier about reaching each milestone and stay confident throughout the project. Also, smaller achievements will positively impact them as they will be motivated to work even harder.

Conclusion

Team management is a crucial aspect of business success. Happy employees are more productive. Follow the above ways to manage your workforce effectively and take your business revenue to the next level.

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Photo by Aatik Tasneem on Unsplash