When there are so many things that can go wrong in business - not even accounting for times of economic uncertainty or pandemics - it makes sense to focus on long-term sustainability and stability.

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To grow a stable foundation centered around sustainable productivity, it’s important to put the right systems into place to support your workforce.

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Remote employee monitoring software or time and attendance tracking software can help you create a robust work culture that stands the test of time, and in this guide, we’ll show you how.

Build a Sustainable Work Culture 

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If you want to build a business centered around sustainable productivity, you have to start with the work culture.

To attract top talent and retain your existing employees, you need to make every effort to prove that you value their wellbeing above anything else. That’s the cornerstone of a successful sustainable work culture.

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Sustainable productivity, after all, is the pursuit of results but not at the expense of the employees themselves. By accommodating the employees in your organization and taking a critical approach to how you distribute, manage, and review work, you can build a work culture that top talent wants to be a part of.

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One of the best ways to lay the foundations for a sustainable work culture is to implement monitoring software for remote employees. There’s a way to go about it too if you want to create complete buy-in from your workforce.

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To dispel employee concerns about privacy, you have to be upfront about your plans and transparent. Let employees know why you’re introducing the software, and how it can help both you and them achieve more.

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A sustainable work culture is built on trust, so full transparency is an excellent way to get off on the right foot with your employees.

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Communicate the Benefits

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When monitoring computers and activity, transparency is the first step, and communication is the next.

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Announcing that you’ll introduce monitoring software for work from home is a great step in the right direction, but unless you clearly communicate the benefits of using it, you’ll likely run into skepticism.

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So what are the benefits of tracking work from home productivity with software?

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• Productivity insights - One of the primary benefits of user activity tracking software is that you can glean valuable insights into productivity performance measures. By automatically collecting time data, performance appraisals, and workload distribution becomes much more straightforward.
  
  
• Performance trends - With a real-time dashboard and productivity reports, you can start to notice long-term trends. For example, you can use the software to spot signs of employee burnout or identify what times of day certain teams and employees appear to be at their most productive.
  
  
• Professional development opportunities - When you step back and start keeping track of employees working from home, you can more easily identify who may need training or upskilling, and who should be in line for a promotion according to individual performance.

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When communicating the benefits, be sure to emphasize the fact that the software isn’t to enable further employee micromanagement, but to answer the question of how to monitor employees working from home. It can lead to broad insights that can help everyone achieve more.

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Rather than distilling it down to a way of simply tracking productivity, explain how the software can help you distribute workloads more evenly, understand when some employees are struggling, and identify opportunities to capitalize on highly-productive times of day.

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You can even use the software to transition to a flexible work environment. Provided you trust your employees to deliver results, you can manage their performance remotely and ensure productivity levels remain high.

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It can also be a good idea to sit down with your managers and invite questions from them and their individual team members. Make sure that everyone understands exactly how you’ll use the software, and you can create trust from the outset.

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Share Data to Boost Accountability

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When you decide to lean in on transparency, you give yourself an excellent opportunity to grow your business.

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How?

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By empowering employees to act with greater accountability, and take initiative to improve their own performance.

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When you communicate the benefits of employee monitoring software, you can let your employees know that they’ll also have access to the performance data you collect. When you openly share the data, employees can take their performance into their own hands and evaluate their own output.

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Even just the knowledge of how much time they’re spending on tasks of varying levels of importance can help employees better prioritize and maximize their potential. This, combined with the incentive of performance-related bonuses or career development, can create a powerful cocktail for an energized, engaged, and motivated workforce.

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If you want to create a sustainable work environment, you need an engaged workforce, and one that continues to be over time. With this level of data transparency, you can help employees reach their potential and nobody will be left wondering why they aren’t advancing up the career ladder.

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You can also disclose to your employees that any issue you, or they, have regarding their performance can result in an open discussion with their manager. That way, they can feel as if they have the support they need when they’re struggling, and they’re able to directly communicate what they need help with.

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After all, data provides a clear picture of performance, but it doesn’t factor in the human element.

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It could be that a lull in performance could be down to the fact that the employee felt ill but showed up to work regardless. Or it could be that they were working remotely from a coffee shop and the Wi-Fi was temperamental.

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By identifying and discussing performance trends, you can understand the human behind the employee and work with them to resolve their issues. That’s what it means to maintain a sustainable work environment: compassion and support combined with robust performance tracking. 

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Data-Driven Strategy

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Finally, you can use the data you gather through employee monitoring software to inform your business strategy moving forwards.

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Data drives results, so if you can create a reliable system for collecting and evaluating your workforce data, you can set yourself up well for future challenges. Not only can employee monitoring help you understand your employees better, but it can give you a framework for making decisions.

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For example:

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• Deciding project timelines - When you have data about workforce and team productivity, it’s much easier to make estimates regarding project timeframes, so you can give clients an accurate timeframe.
  
  
• Agreeing on client budgets - With access to a wealth of time data, you can bill clients based on accurate hourly rates.
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• Choosing software to use -  App usage tracking gives you insight into which apps are most and least used, and whether you could get a better ROI with other software tools.