Today’s workforce is becoming increasingly global, and that requires employers to adopt different standards when working with workers off-site. There may be specific hourly requirements these employees must fill, or the need to track activities to assess the value of a service. A Web based time clock can help, but here are some other tips on tracking employee activity.

Project Tracking

It’s important to quantify what your employees are actually doing with the time they spend at work. For one, you’re paying them for their services, but you also want to make sure the client’s needs are being taken care of. Project tracking software can save your workload in the cloud, allowing employees access from anywhere they may be located. With internal solutions, employees are typically land locked to your intra-web. Cloud-based solutions are just one method. Simple email works for smaller businesses.

Time Tracking

Whether you are paying your employees hourly or not, it might be a good idea to have them keep an online time sheet. This way, you can assign scheduled tasks to your employees and better estimate how long something will take to complete. This way you can schedule your workload, allocating rush projects to the contractors most likely to complete them quickly. Project managers also benefit, with more data to help estimate the amount of time a project will take to complete based on the workers your company has available.

Accountability

Every contract employee should have a point of contact to work with. They may not interact with this person daily, but it’s important for accountability. Managers should keep track of the quality of work, and be able to provide quantifiable feedback to freelancers. Remember, these employees are not in office or privy to day-to-day affairs. Having a manager to hold them accountable also ensures they get updated guidelines and protocol as it happens, which helps cut down the time you might spend correcting easy mistakes.

Final Thoughts

The biggest adjustment to working with freelancers is not having someone on site for face time. Get in the habit of checking in with your contractors. If you can’t do it daily, schedule some time once a week to send an email out saying hello and asking how things are going. When policy changes are made, make sure these contractors receive word of those changes and that they know how to comply with them. Freelancers can be a huge benefit to anyone in business, but you have to know how to work with them to get the best usage of your time and money.
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Allied Time makes online time tracking software that helps businesses manage their employees. Allied Time can help you improve your scheduling efficiency.