How do we measure productivity of employees & give them feedback on how they coped with remote work?

You should trust your people and let them work. Its sad that some top execs still prefer micro-management and don't trust their people. That actually creates a toxic company culture.

The best way to measure productivity is by using remote connectivity tools. They can help you evaluate the work done, and the time it took. Further, these tools can help keep your employees engaged and connected with everyone on your team. Connect is one such tool that you can use. https://www.producthunt.com/prod...

I think a high-level task management approach works well with measuring productivity. For example, let's say you agree with a team member to complete a set of 20 tasks for a week. You can then, without micromanagement, engage in a discussion the following week/month if they completed either 50, 100, or all tasks and additional ones. It's not to the dot measurement but should allow employees to know what is expected from them while providing management some sort of measurement. Of course, a discussion is always relevant in case tasks were blocked, reprioritized, or much more work than expected.

What is your end goal for doing this? I ask because different approaches will work for different objectives and for different people. There is no one-size-fits-all here.

I run a mobile app software agency and I find use these two qualitative measures 1. Customer Happiness 2. Team Happiness I literally just phone customers and ask "Is there anything we can improve about our service?". If the customers are happy, then I know that we are collectively delivering value and we are productive enough. I also speak to team members often and get a feel for any conflict or issues. If the team are happy, they usually believe that work distribution is "fair" and they all support each other. So everyone is productive enough. If clients or team report issues, then we look into it further and try and address the problem. It's simple but seems to work. If people are productive, how does that impact your own customers?

A tiny bit of snark, here...I'd rather know what's in the heads of managers that they need/want/desire the employees to return to in-office work, and why they can't get past the idea.

I'm in the early stages of building a remote team and this is what I've found successful for our team (for now): 1. Regular standups: We have a standup call 3x a week. It's 30 minutes. The team chats about any challenges they've been facing, new updates, changes in direction, etc. 2. Weekly deep-dive: We have a 1-hour deep-dive with each team every week where we work on our areas of focus. We also brainstorm and enable alignment with long-term goals. 3. Self-reporting: Each member of the team puts their jobs to be done in their work tracker on notion. We mark when the work is done, challenges that they faced while working on that task, etc. so we can asynchronously work on things together.

I think it's all so important to be checking in on employees' wellbeing while remote. When you understand how people are doing, it's easier to understand what they need to be productive an effective, and they're also more likely to be open and honest about what's working and when they feel they're falling short.

with people you trust make the best team.

Working hours don't matter also the micro-management of tasks, what matter is the quality of work that comes out. Don't schedule unnecessary meetings if things can be communicated via messaging or emails. There should be Goals assigned to the team or a member and they should be given free hands to achieve the goal in a time frame. This way you can get productive and qualitative output and the team will feel more trustworthy and will be more accountable. The outcome will tell you if they have coped or not and the quality of work can give you points which you can share as feedback to them.

While lot of people are saying its best to trust people and let them be, it may not always be possible for every company. Big organizations have abundance of resources and they might still be able to cope up with deliverables even if productivity of some of the employees is not up to the mark. Startups or smaller organizations would find it hard to complete the deliverables/meet deadlines if productivity of even few employees goes down. For Start Ups, resources are of utmost importance and thus it makes sense to measure the productivity. Word of caution : One should ensure that productivity tracking doesn't become a daily thing and people are given enough room to explore newer things as well.

At Sendible, we set company-wide KPIs and proxy metrics. We assigned one to each individual to make them accountable. They reported on their progress towards key metrics every quarter. As long as they got close to them, we weren’t too concerned with how productive people were on a daily basis.

After all productivity is the output one generates during his working hours. What output means is very different depending on the business unit you're operating in. For sales, it's deals closed, for CS it's customer tickets closed, for PMs its % of objectives achieved. Bottom line, everyone has his/her own KPIs to track how well they are doing, and if they happen to achieve these KPIs in a shorter time, they are more "productive". All productivity tools out there try to cut the time/effort it takes to achieve these KPIs. Our product (VoiceLine) is no exclusion :) - Lino

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Little face-to-face interaction - how we're dealing with it? We block out times during the day when we're available for short sessions with remote employees and share our calendars with them so they know when we're available. Lack of social exchange - we plan remote interactions, start a fun chat channel, or "grab coffee" together — whatever helps maintain a sense of normalcy. Virtual trust - controlling and micromanaging are not the keys to a successful remote working relationship. It's all about trust. Teams work well together when they know the other person, trust them, and are confident in their reliability and performance. Increase trust among your team members. Encourage teams to take responsibility for their contributions to discussions and decision-making. This indirectly encourages them and prompts them to consider the quality of their work and process. Information exchange - managers who lead virtually have a variety of options to ensure that they and their staff members always have the same, most recent information and can, therefore, work and communicate with one another optimally. Create a remote communication policy that you all agree on. This can include mandatory weekly standup calls, task assignments that must be done within a project management tool, or that instant messaging should be mainly used during specific hours. Make sure everyone follows the rules and policies, and your communication should become less chaotic and more conducive to producing great remote work. Management of workload and performance - one of the difficulties in managing remote employees is ensuring that everyone understands exactly what is expected of them. When delegating tasks, consider what other deadlines your teammate may have. This allows you to determine an appropriate timeframe for completing the work. Cheers! 😍😎

Part of our team works remotely. We use our own tools to hold meetings every day. It can write project progress and communication in the document for project management. We only need to use this document every time we have a meeting. We can directly open the voice call on the document and have a meeting directly. It greatly improves the efficiency of our team. https://www.mojidoc.com/

This is one of the things we are trying to solve at https://skilledup.life - free talent for tech startups. I should write a blog and share our game plan.

I put more attention and energy into motivating the team (and preventing de-motivation) because the productivity comes naturally and they don't feel micro-managed. When the team is highly aligned and motivated, it doesn't matter where they work and you won't have to question their productivity

The best way to Measure productivity is to understand how people in the org are aligned with Organization's goals! What are they doing about it & How? Setting OKR (Objectives & Key Results) will help you to identify it clearly, then comes the feedback part, which includes feedback on work (Sharing about them) and receiving feedback on how motivated & encouraged they are feeling. Would love to connect & discuss in detail to help you solve this :) Best, Dheeraj Wrky.ai

'Productivity' is usually a way for controlling managers to measure how busy someone seems. You'll get a lot farther in your company and with your team if you measure the Value someone is bringing to the table, and collect feedback on how you can best support them in doing that. This encompasses basics like "are goals being met", "are you doing what you say you will accomplish" and "is the company on track", but also "are you supporting your team members" "are you contributing to a healthy work environment" and "are you supported in leveraging your unique skillset and perspective".