There are different reasons for why employees go remote or businesses hire remote employees.
Occasionally startups cannot afford to rent an office, so they form a solely virtual team. Or as Dan Burrus once said: “I’ve had employees who needed to be in an office with other people. They can’t work alone, they gotta be with other people. I’ve had other people that I hired over the years, that can work with others, but also like to stay by themselves and like to connect with people remotely”.
No matter what the reason is, connection is crucial.
How to stay connected with your remote team using time tracker software?
With a time tracker software like Yaware.TimeTracker you get a visual understanding of employees’ working day.
Unlike all the communication apps, time tracking software enables you to check the work of each employee in real time.
With communication apps, you get occasional updates and the opportunity to discuss stuff. But time tracking gives you more insights on employees’ work and creates the feeling that the team is right next door.
Another thing that you can do is evaluate the productivity of your virtual team or remote employees.
Yaware.TimeTracker automatically divides all websites and software that employees use during the day into productive, unproductive and neutral categories. Each category is marked with a color. Productive – green, unproductive – red and neutral – gray. So, when looking at the reports you can easily assess how productively each employee uses his/her time and so, increase the productivity.
Bonus apps that help to stay connected…
Except for time tracker software, here are some additional tools that help you and your remote staff stay on the same page.
Slack or Google Hangouts (messaging)
Both tools are free and offer great communication opportunities. E.g., using Google Hangouts you can make conference calls with up to 10 members.
Using Slack you can create different channels for specific discussions, so important things will not get lost or mixed up.
Google Drive (file and document sharing)
Google Drive is the second best thing that Google invented (after Google itself, of course).
Just by owning a Google account you can access this file and document sharing service, which offers 15 GB of free storage (for comparison by signing up to Dropbox you get only 2 GB of free storage).
It is perfect for team collaboration. All the docs and files are in the cloud, so they can be easily and quickly shared. Users can leave comments within the docs and suggest changes.
So, don’t ever email a document or file again. Just share it on Google Drive.
Conclusion
With time tracker software and these additional tools, you can easily eliminate all the difficulties related to communication of remote teams. So get started right away!
