It’s natural to think about how you’ll navigate through your business after building your remote company. This comes without seeing what your staff is doing during work hours physically. As much as you want to foster trust among your work from home team, it is inevitable that you as the business owner, still have that nagging feeling of time theft being committed. It is a valid worry considering the role of the internet and social media in home-based work.

Time theft occurs when employees get paid for the time that they did not actually work. Hitting the snooze button on tasks not only contributes to your company’s losses but also hurts overall productivity. In a study done by business software hub Software Advice in 2015, 43% of employees are guilty of time theft, costing companies an annual productivity loss of $400 billion.

Time theft comes in many forms

Working from home offers a multitude of benefits. There’s the no-long-hours-in-traffic benefit; the meeting-deadlines-from-the-comforts-of-your-living-room advantage; and all the other perks of having a more flexible schedule. Consequently, as a huge chunk of these benefits deals with time; remote employees are prone to procrastinate whilst completing projects. In other words, time may be intangible but people who do home-based work can still be guilty of stealing it.

In fact, time theft in a work from home set-up can be in many forms. One example is incorrectly jotting down the time it took to work on a project. It’s also easy to say that they’ve been working for three hours and counting even when they’ve just begun work five minutes ago.

Taking extended breaks is similarly another form of time theft. This is prevalent and can be difficult to monitor because of home-based-work nature. Who knows, they could be taking hourly coffee breaks or logging on to their Netflix. Lastly, internet indulgence. This gave birth to ‘silent productivity killers’ like excessive browsing of social media accounts, checking personal emails, and online gaming or even shopping!

Time-theft proofing your remote team

It is worth to note that time theft is not exclusive to employees. Employers can steal time too by asking employees to work extra hours without compensating them for it. In particular, time theft can be in a form of unnecessary meetings in disguise. This gives employees inadequate time to complete their tasks causing a delay on deliverables.

Thankfully, you can battle time theft through time-tracking apps. These tools will help your staff get the work done while providing strategic monitoring solutions for your work from home company:

1. Hubstaff is a time tracking software that can allow your work from home company to manage the productivity level and workflow of your home-based team. Additionally, it’s great how it allows you to track time on Windows, Macs, and Android and Apple devices.

2. Toggl is web-based time management and tracking tool designed for teams that work across multiple projects and workspaces. It provides a breakdown of your employee’s hours by project and syncs your time entries between phone apps, desktop apps, and the website.

3. Harvest has data features that track billable hours and implement proper strategies aligned with your work from home company’s goals. Once a specific work is completed, invoices are automatically generated.

4. Time Doctor provides a daily summary of what your team is working on at a glance. It provides productivity insights by identifying tasks that are slowing your team down. Furthermore, it automatically tracks the time and sends hours to payroll. You can even try it for free!

5. Paymo is a project management tool that seamlessly integrates planning, scheduling, time management and time tracking. It keeps track of your projects and ensures that they are completed successfully within the time limit.

6. Humanity is a cloud-based employee scheduling software with time tracking. The platform offers features that include timeclock, aviation management, advanced reporting, messaging, and training.

7. Chrometa is an automated tracking app that acts as a personal timekeeper that creates invoices that are exported to your designated billing system. Similar to other apps mentioned, it records work on different programs on your PC, Mac, and Android-powered smartphone.

Making Time your Partner to Success

As a business owner, your responsibilities do not stop at building your remote team. Be wise enough to choose the right time tracking software for your work from home company to experience unwavering productivity. You can also ensure that your business is running smoothly by seeking HOPLA’s help in hiring staff with proper time management skills for you.

After staff onboarding, HOPLA can let your remote team know about your policies around work hours. Afterwards, they will be briefed smart time management as well as setting clear, achievable targets. Eventually, this creates a culture around respect for the time and building trust that encourages peak performance.

In your business’s race against time, don’t make time your opponent. Instead, make it your partner. Let HOPLA show you how. Call us today.