You need to track virtual assistants to increase their efficiency and maximize their results. The best option is to use a special program to help you to track daily progress and improve their productive flow. This also improves their time management and increases business profitability for you.
Here, in this article, we will take a gander at different types of software that will help you track virtual assistants as they work.
Virtual Assistants and the IT Solution
Many companies practice hiring virtual assistants. Compared to hiring in-house employees, the labor cost often turns out to be lower. This is of great benefit when they also come with high professional competencies and experience in their fields. A company that leverages these remote talents saves even more because it no longer needs to spend money on additional training.
Such businesses often use special software to monitor work and track virtual assistants to keep an eye on their progress. Some kind of content management system is a must-have tool to run any business smoothly and successfully. As a rule, most use-cases prove that programs to track virtual assistants increase the overall team’s productivity and efficiency. This helps businesses get higher ROI.
Deep down, choosing a service for tracking the progress of remote hires depends on the specific purpose and type of industry. These services range from those that record screens to simple organizers allowing companies to check on how a project is running. While some of them are available for free, others charge you a certain amount of money. The majority are adaptable and easy to use. To make the right choice and get the most out of these tools, you first need to understand why and how you aim to track progress of your virtual team. So, let’s dive into different solutions offered by IT technologies.
Software to Track Progress: Types and Cases of Use
File-sharing Software
Here, the market gives us a variety of tools among which are Dropbox, Google, and Huddle, to name a few. Team members can upload their finished work and that’s the main virtue of these tools. Of course, there are more features that help you to collaborate and manage content. This type of software comes in handy for companies that have multiple virtual assistants engaging in different aspects of the same project. Tools that offer features like task management and team communication rolled into one are even better than pure file sharing apps.
Task Management Software
One of the most effective of these tools is Todoist. Its robust system can handle tasks varying from grocery lists to large-scale projects. This to-do-list software allows for listing down tasks, setting deadlines, and assigning people to perform them. Besides, it makes it easy to visualize how an entire project is going. A big benefit is the ability to track virtual assistants progress with a simple click of a button.
Performance Platform
To know your remote team’s achievements and the pain points they might struggle with, you can opt for a performance platform. For instance, 15Five allows you to view the issues that your virtual assistants are facing. Actually, it can be used for both in-office and remote work. Anybody under the jurisdiction of a team leader will be able to inform them of any pressing concerns. This platform integrates performance reviews, feedback, and periodical objectives.
Project Tracking Software
An overall project can be broken down into tasks, and these tasks can then be titled and given a description, as well as a checklist. Here comes Trello, the most popular and highly-used project tracking software. It helps greatly with tracking task completion and meeting project deadlines. If a task is assigned to a particular person, when it’s finished, it’s possible to even attach the file associated with the task. This can then be moved forward to the next phase, or labelled complete by the overall project head.
Hybrid Services
Combining the features of a project management tool and a time-keeping software, it becomes easy to track virtual assistants. Wrike is especially efficient when a company is working on various projects with different clients and a different team of virtual assistants for each project. With Wrike, you can track project progress on a daily basis, and see the amount of time and money spent on each project. Also, it allows you to break down the project into tasks, and assign these tasks to particular individuals.
To provide proper communication between the members of the team and allocate the right person for each task, go for Hey.Space. This tool is a well-organized program that allows you to check everything on one screen. This software also shows a to-do-list, the assigned person for each task, and a unified board with an open chat stream going.
Supplemental tools
When you track virtual assistants who are located in different time zones and different countries, it can get tricky. You and the team might get confused when discussing dates and times and face misunderstandings. The app called World Time Buddy is an excellent tool to handle the problem of scheduling when it comes to different time zones. It helps to keep everyone on the same page when setting deadlines and scheduling meetings and calls.
Project Management Software
An example of this type of software is Asana, which helps managers and team members stay focused on projects and keep track of progress throughout the entire process. The best feature of this tool is its simplicity. Yet, you can integrate multiple things into this program. Users can tie in emails, files and other items. Once a task is done, it can easily be ticked off the list and a team leader can create customized fields to monitor pertinent information.
All in all, among all the software discussed above, time trackers prove to be a one-stop and win-win tool fitting all types of businesses and purposes of use. Now we’ll discuss why these tools deserve attention and how they can benefit you and your company in the long run.
Time Trackers: What, Why and How
What is a Time Tracker?
Time tracking software is a little plugin to track virtual assistants as they work. Each person activates the plugin on their computer, and it times them. Needless to say, there are plenty of time tracking systems on the market now: Hubstaff, AtTrack, Timely, Desktime, to name a few. They offer different functionality, depending on objectives and industries. Whereas some of them deliver screenshots to strictly monitor activity, others just help to make sure that projects are running along at the required pace.
To show you the ultimate functionality of time trackers, let’s have a look at one, which is noted for complexity, multifunctionality and flexibility.
AtTrack is a reliable, easy-to-use and affordable time tracker. AtTrack keeps a per-second record of work time, evaluates projects precisely based on time spent, simplifies the task reporting process, analyzes activity and efficiency levels, tracks the applications used and websites visited during workflow, and creates detailed reports of work-related activities. Its biggest selling point is a modular structure, so you can even build your own customized time tracking system and use only the features necessary for you.
Why and How?
The best time trackers are of vital importance in managing virtual teams because they don’t just track work time. Some trackers help to prevent professional burnout by providing valuable statistics on users’ work days, so that you can manage their workloads if things get too intense. You will see when it’s time to give them a break by looking at how their activity levels change.
When using a time tracker, you get the ultimate picture of an individual’s work routine, and can better control what is happening with the team. It becomes easier to streamline work since you see who works more than others, who’s overloaded, who struggles, and with what.
Also, time trackers help you to make sure that everyone is accountable for the money you’re paying them and don’t charge you more than they actually work. They give a clear overview of what people have worked on, what they’ve accomplished, and what their day looked like. This will help you to improve work processes.
One important point to note about using time tracking software is the trust factor. Before you decide to track virtual assistants by logging their time input, make sure that you are not doing more harm than good by implying that you don’t trust them to work and not play. Outsource School does not recommend using time tracking software for this reason. Instead, the key to high productivity and all-around efficiency and satisfaction in the workplace is hiring A-players to begin with.
Conclusion
When leveraging virtual assistants, the distance between both sides can make it impossible to have face-to-face meetings. So, physical monitoring of work becomes problematic as well, and you can face the possibility of wondering what they’re doing. If you want to get higher ROI from hires by regularly keeping them productive and effective, you need to manage teams properly. The key is to track virtual assistants daily to stay on top of their progress. This way, you are always aware of how projects are going. Then you will know how to streamline if something is not going according to plan.
