3 Reports That Show You How to Efficiently Track Staff Efficiency in a Remote Set-up

As more businesses shift their operations to an exclusively remote set-up, finding efficiencies in daily tasks and staying on top of them is becoming a top priority for managers. This is especially true for agencies where several stakeholders are engaged in multiple channels of communication, all in order to service a sizable portfolio of very distinct clients.

While most processes of a fully functioning agency can be replicated in a remote set-up, a completely digitised arrangement can bring with it a whole new set of difficulties.
Aside from the inevitable tug of war with Wi-Fi connections, project managers and team leads might find it difficult to gauge inefficiencies within teams when you can’t physically see them doing work.

As a result, you need access to a unique combination of data points and reports pertaining to staff efficiency. Ideally, this combination would include a bird’s eye view of the many moving parts of a project or campaign coupled with more granular insights to determine the progress of specific tasks and employees.

There are umpteen metrics one can look at in an effort to assess efficiency, and we are not about to inundate you with all of them.

We’ve found that irrespective of what your agency’s priorities might be, the following 3 reports will be valuable for any team lead and project manager in a remote set-up. When used in combination, these reports can yield some truly powerful and rewarding results.

Here are the reports you want to keep an eye out for:

Report #1: Daily & Weekly Timesheet Report

This report is ideal for when a new remote set-up might leave you frustrated because you don’t know what your teams are working on, on a daily or weekly basis. A timesheet report such as this one will help you stay on top of the daily and/or weekly tasks each employee is engaged in and for exactly how long.

Report #2: Real-Time Progress Report Dashboard

Simply knowing what tasks your employees are working on, however, is not enough. Now, more than ever, there is great pressure on agencies to churn out work that represents quality and meets deadlines, all in an effort to keep clients satisfied. So, in addition to viewing tasks, viewing progress of these tasks in conjunction with pre-set deadlines is where the real value lies.

Here is Function Point’s Progress Report Dashboard. It gives you real-time summaries of all tasks underway along with a progress bar to monitor headway. A utilisation graph helps you determine if your staff is meeting their billable targets or if they’re trailing behind. You can customise this dashboard and always stay on top of which tasks are to be fulfilled, who the owner of the task is, and how close they are to completion.

In fact, this report goes one step further and lets you compare the time invested in a certain task by an employee with how far the task itself has progressed towards fulfillment. This insight is a great precursor to our next recommended report.

Report #3: Staff Workload Report

We mentioned the need to access more in-depth, granular data, especially when you’re sitting miles away from your team. A Staff Workload Report is designed to give you exactly that.

Function Point’s Workload report allows managers to see each team member’s individual workload. With a planning layout such as this one you can view your entire team’s load in one glance to ensure tasks are evenly distributed and no one is suffering from burnout.
Aside from identifying overload, this dashboard does a great job of also identifying whitespace in your workforce- employees with more time on their side can now be tasked to take on more initiatives.

Business might be slow at the moment for a lot of agencies, and the last thing you need is an overworked staff, especially if their spending excess hours on unprofitable tasks. More importantly, health and well-being are top priorities at the moment; if employees need to access emergency leaves, businesses need to be prepared to adjust team workload accordingly.
A well-structured workload report will give you insights into all these areas, so as a business you can help relieve the stress from an overworked staff or action a new plan during uncertainties.

Agency resource management can be a precarious territory for managers to charter in both, an office or a remote set-up. Function Point equips you with the right set of reports, outside of the cookie-cutters, so you can assess efficiencies accurately and realign tasks, timelines, or resources in a way that does not disrupt daily operations.

Learn more about how Business Intelligence Reporting can make this possible