Tracking Hacks and Tools for Remote Teams: How to Keep a Remote Team Engaged

The ability to work remotely has been a boon to employees and businesses alike, but managing productivity in remote teams is an increasingly difficult challenge. As a digital company ourselves, we know how hard it is to successfully run a digital business and coordinate remote projects. In this entry, we will cover the best hacks we’ve learned and some excellent tracking tools to make your remote team members as productive and as engaged as possible.

Remote work is changing business. For one, it improves lives and productivity. It also helps save businesses millions each year. Check out some of the latest statistics:

1. Remote workers are more productive.
2. 86% of employees said they wanted to work alone to achieve maximum productivity.
3. Working from home reduces employee turnover. 
4. Aetna saved $78 million dollars in office space by having remote workers

That doesn’t mean that working remotely is without its challenges; namely, how to keep people productive when they aren’t under supervision.

The answer is simple: tracking. Productivity tracking is an easy way to let employees know they have their freedom, but you are still in control. Managing projects in remote teams is all about choosing the right set of tools.

The best ones for managing remote teams are:

Hubstaff

Hubstaff lets you know when and what your employees are working on. It either runs on your desktop or as an app on your phone. Currently, over 8,000 teams use it every day. With screenshots, an app, internet monitoring, and more than 30 other integrations, it is a great tool to keep employees plugged in and working. Some of its best features are:

1. Time tracking
2. Activity levels
3. GPS and location
4. Advanced reporting
5. Invoicing

It even integrates with Asana and Trello. If you’re looking for a simple tool to manage a remote team. This is a great start.

Time Doctor

Do you manage other people? Do you think your people could be more productive? Would you like an app that shows you exactly how time is spent in your company and boosts productivity?

Well you’ve found it. Time Doctor is another heavy hitter on the tracking market, and is used by names like Apple, Allstate, and Home Depot. They claim it can cause a 22% increase in productivity. Concrete numbers aside, it’s clear that employing this tool will help you easily track employee working time and make them work harder. Screenshots, automated time tracking, web and app usage, and auto payroll features make this a comprehensive, flexible, and reliable way to track remote team productivity.

Productivity Hack #1:

Having a short scrum every morning or at a set time where everyone’s day intersects is a great way to get updates and set realistic goals. These meetings really help reinforce movement toward an objective.

Slack with Worklogs.Co

Slack is an amazing team communication app. It helps remote teams coordinate and stay on top of things. But it becomes a tracking hack when you add in Worklogs.co. Worklogs is the brainchild of a team of developers who were working remotely and could never coordinate.

By integrating your Slack with this tool, you can easily track time and reasons for logging in. You create a Slack channel, install the tool, and that’s it. From there, you get one-click sign in, detailed summaries of each working session, and the reason why the person signed in to begin with. It helps keep the team coordinated and motivated while letting everyone know what everyone else is up to at all times.

Productivity Hack #2:

Create a Wiki for your team. Creating a team Wiki allows you to put all relevant information in one area. For example, you can put:

1. Procedures
2. Standards
3.  How-Tos
4. Goals
5. Team Bios
6. Meeting Notes
7. And FAQs 

All in one place. Now nobody will have an excuse to wait for you to log in anymore!

As a project manager, you need to know how to squeeze the most productivity juice out of each team member. Keeping your team engaged and productive isn’t easy, but with these time tracking tools, you can do just that. Use these time tracking tools and productivity hacks, and you’ll be able to get more juice than ever before. All with minimal effort!

For more articles on working remotely, check out:

5 Easy Tips for Working Remotely

5 Tips on How to Manage a Remote Team

The 5 Best Video Conferencing Apps for Virtual Meetings

The Top 10 Online Collaboration Tools

We know how hard it is to be a project manager for remote teams. If you’d like to make your life a bit easier, Soda PDF is a revolutionary tool that will help your team create, share, and store beautiful PDFs.