A Guide To Driving Remote Productivity with Tech

In an increasingly interconnected world, remote work is quickly becoming the norm, with a growing contingent of the global workforce now giving preference to companies that offer hybrid or fully remote working arrangements. With employee expectations shifting, there is little choice as an employer but to adapt and embrace remote work so that you can attract and retain the best talent in your industry. However, doing so successfully is often easier said than done.

While the transition to remote work is undoubtedly a worthwhile one, it can also be highly challenging from a productivity standpoint. When employees are dispersed across different locations, many companies fail to get the most out of their remote teams due to a lack of proper time management, inadequate access to resources, and ineffective collaboration between team members. However, with the right technologies on hand, you can ensure that these issues don’t slow your business down.

In this article, we’ll look at some essential technologies for remote work, highlighting how they can empower you to drive remote work efficiency and productivity at your organization.

Time management

One of the key challenges of managing remote teams is ensuring that employees are using their time effectively. This can prove a delicate balancing act, as you try to monitor project progress and productivity without constantly interrupting employees’ workflow for updates. By implementing workforce analytics and productivity software such as timeTracko, however, managing remote teams becomes a much simpler affair.

With workforce analytics and productivity software, you can stay well-informed on how your remote employees are utilizing their work devices. Using real-time time tracking and detailed device usage summaries, these tools can give you a complete picture of how much time remote workers spend on specific projects and tasks, as well as idle time and time spent using certain applications.

By tracking and analyzing daily, weekly, or monthly working time, this software can enable you to easily determine which employees are using their time efficiently and which need further support or motivation. Additionally, the software can allow remote employees themselves to discover inefficiencies in how they use their working time, empowering them to optimize their own performance for greater productivity.

Remote access

When working with remote teams, it’s essential to ensure that employees have access to the resources they need to fulfill their responsibilities effectively. However, this is not always as straightforward as it might seem.

The main stumbling block in this regard is the issue of remote access. Depending on the projects they’re working on, remote employees may need to access resources from your company’s internal network. However, allowing them to do so can potentially put your network at risk of a breach, since you cannot attest to the security status of their connection. In such cases, you need a solution that employees can enable remote employees to access company resources securely, and this is what virtual private networks, or VPNs, do exceptionally well.

Since they apply strong encryption algorithms to user traffic, VPNs protect sensitive data from third parties. That means employees can use them to establish secure connections for safe remote access, even in situations when they need to rely on open Wi-Fi networks, such as in public workspaces. The technology is also highly accessible for workers, with providers like Urban VPN offering free premium applications that employees can install within minutes to get up and running quickly.

Digital collaboration

With your employees working from a variety of different locations, it can be difficult for remote teams to achieve the kind of effective collaboration and teamwork that traditional on-site teams are capable of. Fortunately, digital collaboration tools have been developed to help foster effective remote communication and collaboration.

With a unified communications platform such as Microsoft Teams, remote employees can use real-time messaging, video conferencing, and file-sharing features to stay in regular contact and work together seamlessly. Additionally, by integrating communications platforms with project management tools, teams can schedule tasks, set deadlines, and track projects to ensure smooth progress and completion.

By bridging the gaps between employees, digital collaboration platforms can help remote teams work together more cohesively. As such, implementing these tools will enable you to boost the output of remote teams significantly.

Final thoughts

The remote work revolution is well underway, and the companies that achieve the greatest success in the coming years will be those that adapt best to the change. Though there are certainly challenges associated with relying on remote teams, leveraging the right technologies can help you overcome them to achieve greater output than ever before. Using digital collaboration tools, virtual private networks, and workplace analytics and productivity software, you can establish a digital workplace that drives productivity, empowering your remote teams to carry your enterprise to greater heights.