Managing a remote-work team can be a thrilling and fun experience that can work well for many different professionals. However, your team is running into work-from-home time management problems, and you must ensure they stay on task. Thankfully, work-from-home metrics can help you.
We did thorough research for you and found 7 work-from-home metrics to help your remote team get to the next level in efficiency! These metrics will help you track your work-from-home facts and stats and gain better insight into your team’s overall efficiency as a unit.
7 Work From Home Metrics to Track
The following 7 work-from-home metrics are an excellent way for managers like you to ensure your remote workers stay on task and work productively. Whether you have stay-at-home moms, housewives or other professionals on your team, these metrics will give you the insight you need. We’ll include tips and additional insights throughout each section that helps make these concepts more straightforward.
Metric 1: Subjective Manager Appraisal
Subjective manager appraisal is the process of appraising your remote workers on several criteria once or twice a year, including the quality and efficiency of their work. You can rate them on product defects, number of errors, and promoter score and provide 360-degree feedback on their progress.
This method is often the most common because it includes multiple metrics that comprehensively understand an employee’s capabilities. Tracking them includes gauging their work hours versus their productive hours and ensuring they are as efficient as possible.
Tips
- Plan subjective meetings at least twice a year to gauge your employee’s progress.
- Give constructive feedback to your employees that helps them build on your appraisal.
- Track how employees have changed through the months and years to measure their progress
Metric 2: Number of Sales
While this work-from-home metric might seem basic, it can be powerful when working with a remote sales team. Tracking how many sales your team and team members make can help you gauge their overall productivity and see how well they use their time.
Note that if the person hasn’t made any sales, it doesn’t mean that his day was unproductive, more advanced sales metrics, such as conversion rate and lead quality, can also help improve your understanding. These metrics gauge how many conversions a salesperson makes and whether their sales create long-term connections.
Tips
- Consider potential sales slump periods, such as declines after the holiday season.
- Integrate a support system to help your remote team make better sales, such as a customer network
- Expand your sales understanding with sales-tracking applications and software suites
Metric 3: Units Produced
When your remote team produces things like software programs or similar products at home, you can track their unit production to ensure they stay on task. The most basic metric to measure includes the total number of units produced, though more complex performance-based metrics analyze deeper levels.
For instance, you may measure how many problems they solve but also gauge their flexibility with their programming and whether their codes are high-quality. Tracking these facets helps you change the product quickly and find areas where your team might need to improve.
Tips
- Use production-management apps to get real-time feedback on your team’s progress.
- Focus on quality and not quantity when tracking production effectiveness
- Prepare for potential downtime issues, such as power loss during a production cycle
Metric 4: First-Call Resolution
If you manage a call center or a similar remote service team, a first-call resolution is a critical metric to track. It gauges how well your team resolves your caller’s issues on the first call and how professionally your teammates interact with each consumer during these calls.
Gauging this metric can include customer feedback rating the employee and remotely listening to their calls during training periods. This metric may vary heavily based on an employee’s progress but can help your call team better handle multiple complex service situations.
Tips
- Understand that poor first-call resolution may be due to customer quality
- Listen in on your team’s calls to gauge when a service rep is shy
- Gauging call length can help you understand how long it takes a rep to resolve an issue
Metric 5: Revenue and Profit Per Employee
Revenue per employee and profit per employee are important metrics when working with multiple remote teams. Each metric gives an idea of how much revenue and profit your team brings into a company, with profit being your company’s revenue minus its operational costs.
You can use this metric to gauge how well your company is growing and what steps you may need to improve productivity. For example, you may notice a decrease in your profit by employee level and identify a worker who isn’t pulling their weight. Create a few other metrics, like traffic generated and leads created, to gauge their value on multiple levels.
Tips
- Let your sales team take steps to improve their focus, such as adding a puppy to their workplace.
- Understand that some employees may contribute more heavily to profitability and change your expectations
- Give your team feedback based on these profitability expectations to improve your success.
Metric 6: Task Tracking
Tracking how many tasks your employees do is an effective measure of their productivity and effectiveness. For example, you can track how many things they do every day and every week and rate that against expectations and other workers.
This metric lets everyone in your company know how productive they are compared to others, giving a strong measurement that can help you make important promotion and task-assignment decisions.
Tips
- Gauge an employee’s tasks fairly, i.e., an employee with more difficult tasks will naturally do fewer than one with easier tasks.
- Discuss why your employees aren’t hitting task milestones and make schedule adjustments to help
- Talk with your team about ways to improve efficiency, such as assigning tasks differently.
Metric 7: Overtime
Overtime is a common problem with remote teams and can negatively affect your team’s productivity. For example, excess work can make your teammates fatigued and decrease their work quality by minimizing their focus. Tracking overtime hours is critical for gauging your team’s progress.
This metric is fairly simple and includes any extra hours over 40 that your team may work during a week. Track these extra hours and talk with your team to see why they’re working longer. If they need support, find a time management tool or productivity app that meets their needs, like the Pomodoro Technique.
Tips
- Try to minimize how often you encourage overtime for extra pay for your employees.
- Create work-efficiency exercises to help your team if they keep working too long
- Gauge your project management methods if you feel like overtime remains an issue
What Experts Say About Metrics
One of the most powerful quotes about metrics came from Scott Graffius in his book “Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions.” He said, “If you don’t collect any metrics, you’re flying blind. If you collect and focus on too many, they may obstruct your field of view.” In other words, use metrics to understand your employees better but rely on your insights as a manager and your decision-making skills to direct them toward success.
Tools That Help You Track Work From Home Metrics:
Many software programmers and app designers have created high-quality tools to help track work-from-home metrics for your team. We did our research and tried out a few options and found that the following two are the best choices for you! They not only met our quality standards but were highly rated by users and consistently well-reviewed on various software websites.
Basecamp – A Powerful Task Management Tool
Basecamp lets you set up employee tasks and track performance, connecting you with a remote team worldwide. Your team can update their progress in real-time to give you a better idea of their performance. Basecamp also includes several tools that track your team’s performance metrics.
For example, you can gauge productivity by tracking your employee’s paid hours versus their on-task hours. You can use this information when deciding on promotions, raises, bonuses, and other important rewards. If you’re interested in trying Basecamp, you can purchase it here.
DeskTime – A Great Way to Measure Employee Performance
DeskTime is a useful tool that tracks employee progress on different projects and automatically gauges them as productive, unproductive, and neutral. It tracks what employees do during their workday, such as how much time they spend on social media versus working.
This application also includes URL and app-tracking services that help you gauge what sites your employees visit and how long they’re away from their computers. You can also set up automatic screenshots if you think an employee is wasting time. Download this app here if interested.
Conclusion
Use these work-from-home facts, statistics, and metrics to help your remote team thrive and reach higher levels of accomplishment. Integrate each of these metrics into your management routine and talk with your team about the tools you plan on integrating into their work-from-home schedule and routine.
Remember what writer Jerry Muller said in his powerful guide “The Tyranny of Metrics”: “In the end, there is no silver bullet, no substitute for knowing one’s subject and organization…” In other words, use work-from-home metrics as a powerful tool, but continue learning about your company to stay successful as much as possible.
