Telecommuting has long been a working system that has found a place in certain fields of the business world. However, it came into our lives faster and more effectively than ever before in the last two years. Measuring productivity and efficiency, on the other hand, has been one of the biggest challenges faced by companies in this process. Just as the living creatures that first came to land from water, the business world is trying to move forward on land with its fins. In this article, we will talk about what companies can do to measure productivity and performance during remote work as well as the methods of measurement they can use.
Create a Remote Work Culture for Your Company and Employees
Since remote work has taken a significant place in our lives never before recently, many companies do not have a passing acquaintance with it. Striving to get organized and establish a layout by trying and making mistakes resemble reinventing the wheel. Before anything else, you must decide on a system and a layout and adapt the functioning of the company accordingly. It is much easier to remotely control a layout where everyone’s tasks, job descriptions, responsibilities, and manners of work are defined.
Hire the Right People
The remote working system may not be equally convenient for every employee. It would be beneficial for you to adapt the ideal profile that will contribute to your company accordingly. Employees who have high self-discipline, are reliable, honest, and comfortable working from home, will contribute to the running of the business without much intervention from you. You may think that you can ensure efficiency with top-down control in the old work module but working with people whom you can trust and who will be fond of the job you will offer, will yield the most convenient results in the remote working module. Hire the right employees and make them feel valued.
So how can you make sure you are hiring the right person? With Testinvite, you can prepare recruitment tests and choose the right candidate for you in all fields of operation. You can detect the most suitable candidates for you by preparing tests such as General Ability, Remote Exams with Webcam Video and Screen Recording, Language Assessment, Personality Inventory, and Programming.
Create a Remote Work Policy and Prepare a Documentation for the Flow
An ambiguous working system will both negatively affect employee performance and make it very difficult to measure productivity. You need to commit the expectations to paper, such as when and how long employees will work and what kind of working environment you should have and you should set forth the remote working policy of the company. In this way, who bears which responsibilities can be observed more clearly and uncertainty can be reduced. Furthermore, it can be beneficial if you commit everything to paper, ranging from the workflow to how the process will work. Employees may not be able to go back and contact you or their superiors whenever they get stuck. Accurate and comprehensive documentation will reduce the uncertainties and speed up the resolution of the problems.
Invest in the Right Software and Equipment
It is a must to utilize various support software that will assist you in business life, from measurement to the workflow, from the data pool to the communication channels. Use good complementary software tools that will allow you to communicate effectively and easily, to track down the workflow and the progress. Besides this, make sure your employees have the equipment they need to work remotely. Do not limit equipment perception to just a laptop and a mouse. A good number of equipment, including their seats and headphones, are crucial for the employees to perform their job properly and effectively.
Performance Evaluation in the Remote Work Module
To evaluate the performance of the employees, you first need key performance indicators (KPIs). Only with these indicators, you can ensure consistent and accurate performance tracking since productivity is not merely about the time spent on the table. A result-oriented approach will allow you to have a much more effective performance tracking mechanism. Each business field has its own criteria so you need different indicators to be able to measure. KPIs should be determined according to the nature of the work. Unrealistic goals and unmeasurable criteria should be avoided.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Different Business Fields
For Customer Support Representatives:
- Customer satisfaction scores
- Number of repetitive calls and solutions made in the first call
- Average call length
- Number of solved demands
- Rates of picked up calls
For Developers:
- The amount of code written
- Code Churn rate
- Project Completion Length
- Average error correction rate
- Compliance with the given deadline rate
For Marketing Team Members:
- Possible cost per sale or conversion
- Number of potential customers acquired
- Loyal customer acquisition rate
- Customer lifetime value
For Field Services:
- Number of tasks completed
- Time management
- Customer satisfaction ratings
- Problem resolution rate on the first try
- Recorded working hours
For Sales Representatives
- Number of outgoing calls or contacts
- Conversion rate
- Average customer value
- Customer retention value
- Number of completed sales
- Portfolio value
Performance Tracking Methods
Even if you know what to look for to measure performance, you still need numerous software to track many variables. We mentioned earlier that you need to invest in such software. Let’s deliberate how such tools can be used.
You can find many successful applications working on this topic. Tasks are assigned to people or teams after clearly defining the job description of your employees. You can split the tasks as much as you want and define in how much time the steps need to be submitted. In this way, the workflow can be followed very easily. There are many features that make it easier for you to keep track of the things such as adding meetings to the calendar, setting the weekly or monthly agenda.
Certain job tracking applications, on the other hand, work directly in connection with the computer and evaluate information such as screen time of employees. Some companies use several communication channels to carry out this tracking. Holding meetings frequently, requesting employees to stay online in communication channels, or going online directly with the camera open, are among the common methods.
Many CEOs of companies think that such a monitoring system makes employees feel under the supervision and increases stress levels. For this reason, result-oriented tracking methods are recommended more, instead of direct, one-to-one methods. In an environment where the workflow and task distribution are done properly, direct supervision is not necessary.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, the most important thing is to hire the right employee. An employee with remote work experience and high self-discipline saves you from many troubles. Hiring the right employee depends on applying the right recruitment methods. If you want to evaluate your candidates in accordance with objective criteria and place the right person in the right position, you can create the recruitment mechanism you need with Testinvite. You can choose the right candidate with tests such as general ability, language assessment, personality inventory, programming, or special tests as you wish.
We covered the important elements of performance evaluation, measurement criteria and methods applied. We explained that choosing the right candidate gives the right result. Lastly, it should be noted that you need to keep track of your evaluation and tracking criteria. How accurate results do your evaluation criteria give? Which measurement criteria seem more important in which areas? What impact do the methods have on employees? By answering such questions regularly, you can continuously increase your telecommuting efficiency.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Different Business Fields (Infographic)
