Several industries had embraced remote working long before the 2020 pandemic. However, since the Covid-19 outbreak, flexible working arrangements have become even more popular. The benefits of remote teams have become more apparent to companies as they can hire people from all over the world while saving on office space, utility bills, and other resources.
Employees also say they love working remotely due to the freedom and healthy work-life balance. It’s a win-win situation for both employers and employees. No wonder reports suggest hybrid and remote work are the future, with 72 percent of companies saying they plan to provide flexible working arrangements permanently.
Employers need new techniques to ensure all employees are meeting organizational targets. But how to do so in a remote work setting when traditional in-person management tools are no longer available? Several critical remote work productivity metrics and new techniques play an essential role here. Let’s break them down.
1. Cost per project
Remote work reduces business expenses in several ways. For example, if you decide to go fully remote, you may save on office rent. Even if you decide to provide a hybrid working environment, you can still save thousands of dollars that would have otherwise gone on utility bills and other expenses.
However, you will also encounter new expenses. For example, you may require a premium collaboration or project management tool. You may also need to invest in a timesheet app to track hours worked. You may even be forced to equip your employees with resources like computers since they no longer access office facilities.
You must track the cost per project with all these expenses in mind. Also, this is not a metric you measure once and then forget about. You need to track it over time, for several quarters or even years. Doing so helps you see the trend of your company’s expenses. You can then compare this figure with revenue to determine if your company is breaking even.
2. Talent retention
Maintaining a high employee retention rate is vital. Why? Hiring new employees is an expensive affair. The recruitment process, onboarding, training, etc., is costly and time-consuming.
Your brand reputation could suffer if people find out your company has a high attrition rate. Retaining customers can get more challenging if they have to interact with new staff every other month. Moreover, acquiring new talent can become difficult. The best workers tend to steer clear of companies with high employee turnover rates. Also, it’s hard to take your company to the next level if you keep losing your top talent.
You can calculate and track your employee retention rate by dividing the number of employees who left within a specific period by the total number of employees present during that same period and multiplying by 100.
3. Employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is critical for both onsite and remote work. The problem, however, is it’s harder to gauge employee satisfaction within a remote team than within an in-office team. That’s because there are fewer interactions with remote workers. Still, you must find a way to assess their satisfaction; this is especially crucial because loneliness is one of the major challenges experienced by most remote workers, according to Buffer.
Challenges like loneliness and the inability to unplug can cause employee satisfaction and overall motivation to drop. This will ultimately affect remote workers’ productivity and ability to meet company goals. It may also increase your employee turnover rate.
You must, therefore, be intentional about determining the satisfaction levels of your employees. Organize weekly or biweekly interactions with your employees. You should also have both one-on-one catch-ups with each employee and general meetings with the entire team. Use these meetings to see if your employees are satisfied and motivated and also to identify any potential problems affecting performance.
Consider organizing events like virtual team-building activities to boost employee morale and satisfaction. You can also encourage your employees to engage in online communities relevant to your company and other topics of interest. This will reduce feelings of isolation and help foster a culture of inclusivity.
4. Revenue per employee
Revenue per employee shows how much revenue every employee generates for the company. The metric is usually calculated by dividing the total revenue generated within a given period by the total number of employees.
As you can tell, the figure is usually a rough estimate of how much each employee generates for the company. It doesn’t, however, provide insight into each specific employee’s performance. Still, it can help you determine the efficiency and productivity of the average employee of a company.
Revenue per employee can also be analyzed alongside other key performance indicators like expenses per employee. Comparing these two metrics can give you a clearer picture of your organization’s efficiency. This can also prove useful for decision-making.
Let’s say you notice the expense per employee is growing at a higher rate than the revenue per employee. In that case, you’ll need to make difficult decisions to either cut down the company’s expenses on each employee or explore new opportunities of growing your revenue per employee.
To know whether you have a healthy revenue per employee rate, you’ll have to compare your figure to the industry’s average. You can also compare your own revenue-per-employee figures over a given period to see whether your internal operations and workflows are improving.
5. Customer satisfaction
Finally, you must keep track of customer satisfaction. This is crucial for all companies, regardless of whether they have a remote, hybrid, or onsite working environment. However, it is even more critical if you have introduced remote teams to your company recently.
Customer satisfaction will tell you whether your remote workers are doing enough to satisfy customers’ requirements and what needs to be done to keep your customers happy.
Create a customer satisfaction survey and distribute it to your customers through marketing and communication channels like email and social media. You can also set up the survey on your website with the assistance of a business VoIP or tools like Hotjar.
Wrapping Up
Remote work has many benefits, but it also poses challenges to both employers and employees. As the employer, you need to support your remote team’s productivity so they can hit their targets.
In this blog, I’ve covered six key remote work productivity metrics that can make all the difference in reaching company goals. We’ve also looked at how to track these metrics, what you can use them for, and some tips on how to improve your results.
We’re confident you’re now ready to take your company to the next level with remote teams.
–
About the author:
Baidhurya Mani is the founder of SellCoursesOnline.com. He regularly shares tips, tools, and strategies to help creators and entrepreneurs build a successful online course business.