2020 has completely changed the working culture and dynamics around the world. Under these circumstances, many companies have decentralized their working environment with massive adoption (enthusiastically or grudgingly) of working remotely.

The rise of remote work poses a challenge to business owners. The main one being: how to measure the remote employees’ work efficiency and productivity.
Let’s explore ways and online tools that can help you measure remote work efficiency.
Maintain a result-oriented team

Having a result-oriented team helps bring out employee’s talents that lead to efficiency regardless of their working location. Thus, it means every team or department needs to have result-oriented starters who can set their goals and create a specific timeline to complete their tasks. On the other hand, employers need to measure the productivity of given assignments on results rather than time spent.
Set clear deadlines and goals
In the same manner that you apply your office principles, objectives, timelines, and motivation at the office, find ways to do the same remotely. Communicate clear deadlines and goals using a solid plan to increase your employees’ accountability online tools that document the activity progress.
Working remotely can be hectic, and it needs combining both teams and individual approaches to achieve maximum results.
Combining both ideas helps manage the projects without encroaching on your employee’s space and personal time while keeping them accountable. This means each person on a given team should report daily or as needed with clear feedback and expectation of their project.
Consider Employees Rights -
A remote work culture requires teamwork, enhanced communication, and collaboration. Keep everyone on the same page by having a formal policy outlining employee rights on matters concerning remote working. Areas to look at and include on the policy are:
Remote working schedules:
Outline the person’s particular task and the timing to carry it out. This should consist of days and hours.
Equipment:
Outline the necessary equipment needed, including what the company will provide or whether the employees can use their devices. Also, give clear guidance on the person responsible for the storage, insurance, and maintenance of the offered equipment.
Security:
Create a detailed outline of security requirements for software and hardware, the frequency for updating them, and measures to ensure online safety.

Allowances:
Set the limit of benefits for your employees and what remote working expenses you will cater.
Expectations:
This should include taking breaks, frequency of contact, communication, and outcomes.
Trust your employees

Trust is integral to unlocking great performance, and with remote working, this is even more important. The ingredient to accomplishing this is first establishing trust. Trust works both ways. Start by understanding and building relationships with your remote employees. You can achieve this by individualizing your approach to manage their projects and become productive.
Managers need to understand and trust that their employees will complete their projects professionally while the employees should be transparent and look out for the company’s best interest. Embrace frequent one-on-one discussions, video calls, private chats, and motivation packages to build trust and stronger relationships.
Online tools to measure remote work efficiency
1. RemoteDesk – Monitoring made fun and manageable!

RemoteDesk works in an elegant and automated way by providing users with monitoring solutions while providing transparency and security. It is a trusted, remote workforce management software that can track copy screens and integrates various tools to make remote workforce efficient.
RemoteDesk makes measuring your remote workers’ productivity easy and hassle-free, from identity verification to billable hours to safeguarding sensitive data.

A flexible tool!
Remotedesk works closely with HR, finance, legal, and compliance departments to understand their unique requirements and recreate the same for a remote office experience. This way, RemoteDesk is easily configurable to a particular role, department, or job, making the entire monitoring process flexible.
2. Time Doctor
A time doctor is an online time tracking tool for remote workers. It enables the employer to check on the tasks given to a particular team or individual, attendance, client billable hours, and time spent working on it, the browsed sites, login, and logout timings.
Time Doctor features also include inadequate Usage Monitoring, inactivity Tracker and reports.
3. Tickspot
A Tickspot tool enables the employer to measure the budget of a given project and track its timeline. Each member in a given project monitors their project progress and the remaining budget. This tool also integrates with Basecamp.
4. iDoneThis
Asking your remote employees to track their working time can become hectic. Using iDoneThis, team members can provide daily status updates to let you know how a project progresses.
5. BaseCamp
BaseCamp integrates with different tools to give an effective way of measuring productivity. It shows resource planning and long/short time scheduling of tasks assigned to each team member in real-time. Hence, this tool enables the employers and team members to measure and track actionable and priority items with due dates, to-do-list, and file sharing.
6. Same Page
Same Page acts as a collaboration and communication tool that enables employers and employees to update each other. It comprises chats, meeting rooms, conferencing options, and webinars. It’s easy to conduct frequent meetups with Same Page, share screens, share files, exchange notes, and record sessions.
7. Google Drive
To consistently measure your remote employees’ efficiency, you need a clutter-free and organized tool. With Google suite, it’s easy to create documents, make beautiful presentations, proofread, edit, make, and resolve comments.
Conclusion
Supporting flexible and remote working has proven to provide better returns despite the disruption caused by the pandemic. With the right employee monitoring tools, it’s easy to track workforce productivity, performance, and efficiency. But, let’s fathom the fact that everyone works differently. Therefore, tailor your approach according to your employee’s output and figure out ways to ensure that everyone’s work is valued correctly.