In a world where time is becoming an important currency, it can be challenging for individuals to focus on work, with distractions, which makes proper planning even more difficult. Time management has become even more critical now since we work in a hybrid work from office/work from home environment. Remote working is the new normal and the work culture is fast evolving into Work From Anywhere (WFA). The pandemic has compelled organizations the world over to focus on things that really matter.

From an employee’s point of view, the things that rate higher include their device performance (endpoint performance), smooth collaboration, quick IT support, good quality of work, and a continued level of engagement. From the employer’s viewpoint inclusive culture, higher levels of engagement, productivity and time management continue to top their list of business objectives while also ensuring that employees do not suffer burnout.

What modern organizations need are IoT-enabled enterprise-wide insights into the digital footprints of their people, process and technology to stay on top of their game. 

The need

In a remote-first world, IoT-enabled solutions are making action oriented, moving from gut feeling to fact-based enterprise digital transformation’s a reality. As IoT forges into work activity analytics, HR leaders are faced with the challenge of dealing with a deluge of data analyzing information that is relevant and critical. There is a constant need to correlate information to create a highly engaging hybrid work environment.

Clocking in at 9 and clocking out at 6 is no longer the measure of productivity. Time needs to be used effectively by both managers and team members to ensure that there is a collaborative effort towards a common goal. Conversation among devices therefore is not enough as there should be a more empathetic dialogue between team members.

As Sarah Fisher, General Manager, Human Resources, Microsoft EMEA explains, “For many businesses, their normal day-to-day reality has been based in a traditional office setting. So, it’s hard for many workers to quickly adapt to a new way of remote working. This includes managers and leaders who face the challenge of not only making sure core business objectives are met in times of increased uncertainty, but also ensuring their teams stay cohesive and engaged during a stressful time.”

Employee engagement, performance ratings, time leaks, error analysis, learning and leadership, downtime losses, etc. need to be studied in tandem to make informed business decisions using analytics keeping employee privacy sacrosanct. After all, trust is the linchpin between employees and employers while clear communication is the key to building a responsible workforce. Organizations need to ensure that their people feel empowered, connected, and heard. Only then will they step forward with new ideas and work unanimously to achieve team goals.

The solution

There is a strong correlation between time management and productivity. It is important to understand how employees spend their time without them feeling they are under constant scrutiny.  The focus should be on output insights with a detailed analysis of employee productivity on each project and the time invested in fulfilling a task. Time management and analysis should be employed to understand how time leaks can be avoided, and to understand the ratio of time spent on important tasks versus time spent on avoidable tasks. This kind of analysis provides the means to identify waste, process bottlenecks and work unobtrusively. Modern solutions based on an IoT platform offer highly sophisticated data collection, aggregation, and correlation mechanisms. They are powered with a presentation engine that creates user friendly dashboards that display productivity and time analysis in meticulous detail to help identify patterns and define business goals and priorities.

This data also helps employees as they get a 360-degree view of their own activities and how they can effectively manage their time to ensure they are prioritizing and meeting their assigned objectives. It’s all interconnected. Employees get a perspective that helps them identify the areas they need to focus on while becoming more accountable, and in turn more reliable. This produces a self-reinforcing productivity loop that creates a win-win situation for all.

According to a Gartner survey involving a mix of industries, 47% respondents plan to allow their employees to work remotely full time going forward, some indicated they were in favor of flex days while others reported granting flex hours. Elisabeth Joyce, Vice President of Advisory in the Gartner HR practice expressed, “The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a huge experiment in widespread remote working. As business leaders plan and execute the reopening of their workplaces, they are evaluating more permanent remote working arrangements as a way to meet employee expectations and to build more resilient business operations.”

The Workplace productivity checklist

• Choose outcome over punched in hours. More hours do not imply better performance. It’s important to know what each employee brings to the table.
• Define objectives. Establish goals early on for employees to navigate through tasks and be on track.
• Pick the right tools. Choose IoT-enabled solutions or tools that are specially designed to manage enterprise work activity analytics for better time management and productivity.
• Communicate often. Regular communication will ensure there is no friction among team members and lead to better collaboration. It’s also a great way to gather qualitative feedback.

Trust the experts

The easiest way to fast-track workplace productivity is to collaborate with Sapience Analytics. Our solutions are deployed across 18 countries and can help enterprises save money and time and increase work output efficiently. For contactless data and enterprise-ready IoT-enabled solutions, choose Sapience Vue. It provides cross-functional views of team effort along with customizable reports that factor in core time, focus time, meeting time, and more to help organizations get a comprehensive view of work patterns while safeguarding employee privacy.

Brad Killinger, CEO, Sapience Analytics elaborates, “With employee privacy at the core, Sapience Vue, our SaaS next-gen contactless and automated enterprise knowledge workforce work analytics solution, is built to help enterprises drive greater business value by providing accurate and real-time insights into the business effort data. With Machine Learning, Sapience Vue helps predict future operational outcomes that can help drive fact-based and better business decisions.”

Final thoughts

Enterprise business work activity analytics is critical in a hybrid work environment. Contact our Solutions Specialist to optimize productivity and get a better grip on time management. What’s more, it works exceedingly well for employees as well as managers and HR leaders. Request a demo now to get started on a more productive journey to success.