6 Remote Work Productivity Metrics to Check On

Tracking employee productivity is crucial regardless of which working model you use, i.e., on-site, remote, or hybrid. However, remote working environments present unique challenges to business owners, like the loss of managerial oversight. How do you zero in on productivity issues when team members are in different time zones?

One answer is adopting productivity monitoring software. While these tools help you track team members’ work activities, employee surveillance can have the opposite effect, especially if it’s intrusive employee monitoring. It can erode trust between managers and employees, decrease morale, and impair performance.

Fortunately, evaluating the productivity of remote workers isn’t very different from regular employees. So, you may be familiar with the key performance indicators (KPIs) discussed in this article. These remote work productivity metrics help you identify productive vs. non-productive team members without violating employee privacy.

Six remote work productivity metrics

1. Cost per project

Cost per project helps identify productive and non-productive teams by highlighting their contribution to the business’s bottom line. Labor often constitutes a sizeable portion of a project budget. So, the longer the project takes, the more it costs.

Say you have two teams developing an app. They have the same budget, timeline, project scope, and resources. Team A finishes its project on time and within budget, while Team B incurs time and cost overruns.

The first development team was more productive than the second, as it completed work within the specified time and budget. So, if your actual costs don’t align with the planned or budgeted numbers, you might have a productivity problem.

Many project management software solutions have planning and tracking features to help you track how much time and money you’re spending.

The finance dashboard above displays various costs associated with a website design project. You can compare the billed vs estimated costs and gain profitability insights.

2. Employee retention

Employee retention refers to how effective businesses are at retaining high-performing workers. The goal is to minimize turnover by keeping these employees engaged and satisfied.

Retention can be an indicator of how productive employees are. Only happy employees are likely to stay with a company. An Oxford study in 2019 found that happy employees are 13% more productive than unhappy ones. In other words, if your employee retention is high, your remote team is also likely productive.

On the other hand, if your employee retention is low, it may indicate decreased productivity – there’s more work but fewer people to do it.

There are various reasons employees leave. These include poor company culture, lack of professional development, limited career advancement, and inadequate compensation.

To improve employee retention and productivity, conduct exit interviews and surveys to identify where you could improve. Here are questions you can ask in an exit survey:

Then, of course, make the necessary adjustments to improve your work environment. For instance, if an employee’s reason for leaving was the lack of professional development, you can put upskilling programs for qualified employees in place.

High retention rates allow business owners to shift into thrive mode instead of stalling in survival mode. It’s difficult to meet goals, let alone grow a business, with an unstable workforce.

3. Working hours and overtime

Tracking working hours isn’t as straightforward in remote environments as in the office setting. That makes it an essential remote employee productivity metric you should track.

The fluid work/leisure boundaries of work-from-home jobs mean these people work longer (usually unpaid) hours than regular employees.

The above chart shows that remote employees do more unpaid (overtime) work than those who never work from home.

The question is, are they productive?

To ensure an accurate response to this question, don’t just rely on your employee time tracking. Look at the deliverables of each employee during the time they worked. You can conclude they are if they met their target and even exceeded them. If they don’t, then the next thing to do is to determine what the problem is. Is there a competency or time management issue? Or maybe there’s too much on that employee’s plate? Maybe they’re just plain lazy.

Perform the necessary course of action to address the identified issue. For instance, if you find out your employee works long hours because they have difficulty performing the assigned tasks, give them the training required. You can train them yourself and send them relevant supplementary resources using marketing automation software for the best results. For inspiration, see how GetResponse developed its remote training program to onboard new employees.

Once addressed, you can remind employees of your time management expectations and outline disciplinary actions. Don’t forget to refer to your local labor law to ensure your remote monitoring policies are compliant.

4. Employee satisfaction

Employee satisfaction metrics measure how happy employees are with their job. Satisfied workers meet their goals and get along with their coworkers. More importantly, as seen in the Oxford study mentioned above, happy employees are more productive than unhappy ones. In short, if employee satisfaction is high, overall productivity is likely high as well.

It’s easy to pick up body language cues about employee satisfaction in an office setting, but not so in remote environments. You have to be proactive and ask remote employees how they feel about their work.

One way to do this is with employee pulse surveys. They gauge employees’ feelings about management style, company culture, and other work-related issues. For example, you can ask team members if they have the necessary resources to perform their jobs well or whether a new leave policy is fair.

Another tool that measures employee satisfaction is the eNPS (employee net promoter system).

Employees rate the survey question on a scale of 0-10, 0 being unlikely and 10 being most likely. Survey respondents then fall under either one of three categories – promoters, passives, and detractors.

Promoters are not only satisfied employees but also highly engaged. Employee statistics show that engaged teams are 23% more profitable and productive than their unproductive counterparts. Passives aren’t necessarily engaged, but they are satisfied. Detractors are both dissatisfied and unengaged. They are usually underperformers and are most likely to contribute to employee turnover.

All that said, your aim, of course, is to get as many promoters as possible.

But the eNPS is a quantitative metric; it doesn’t provide insight into the organization’s strengths or weaknesses. So, you’ll need to add a comment section for responders to explain their scores. Then, you can make changes to or double down on policies to enhance employee satisfaction.

You don’t necessarily have to wait for the results of your employee pulse surveys to boost employee satisfaction, though. There are other no-brainers to implement in your remote work setting to keep employees happy. For instance, why not reward good performance? That can be as easy as sending a company-wide email to recognize the exemplary employee publicly. Holding virtual team buildings can help boost employee satisfaction as well.

5. Revenue per employee

Revenue per employee (RPE) measures how much income each employee generates for the business.

You get this number by dividing your total revenue by the number of employees. It gives you an idea of the value you’re receiving from workers and can be a helpful remote work productivity metric when comparing historical data.

Let’s say you’re a digital learning platform and want to compare the RPE for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.

From the table, you can conclude productivity levels increased in 2023 because the same number of employees brought in more revenue than the previous.

But it’s not enough for you to know your RPE. You’ll also need to know what factors contributed to this increase in employee productivity. For instance, maybe during that time, you invested in automation. Or maybe your employees underwent virtual training programs for the first time. Once you know what these factors are, double down on these to hopefully further boost productivity and your RPE for the next quarter.

6. Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a business performance metric that measures how happy customers are with your business. It can be an indicator of how productive your remote employees are as well. There’s a proven positive correlation between employee productivity and customer satisfaction. Employee productivity has been found to increase customer satisfaction by 18%. If your customer satisfaction is high, chances are, your employee productivity is high as well.

In regular work settings, managers can oversee customer interactions in real time. You don’t get this with virtual setups. So, to ensure remote teams meet customer expectations, you need to survey customers about their experience.

There are various tools you can use to measure customer satisfaction. They include:

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures experience
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – measures customer loyalty
• The Smiley Face survey – measures customer sentiment
• Customer Effort Score (CES) – measures how easy a product/service is to use

Respondents rate service on a scale of 1(terrible) to 5 (great). To calculate your CSAT percentage, divide the number of satisfied scores (4 and 5) by the total responses and multiply by 100.

A good CSAT score varies by industry. However, results below 60% are cause for concern. Find out where the issue lies by asking your customers directly so you can address it. For instance, if it’s a productivity issue, you can give your remote employees access to tools to help them perform their tasks more efficiently. Say the customer tells you they never got responses to their multiple email queries. To address this issue, you’d give remote employees access to email software that can send automated responses, for example.

Wrapping up

Workers claim they are more productive in remote work models, but how can employers be sure? The lack of managerial oversight makes it challenging to identify performance issues. A popular solution is productivity monitoring software, but there is pushback against using these tools due to privacy concerns. Moreover, some remote work is offscreen.

The good news is there are remote work productivity metrics you can check to ensure your team is on the right track.

Look at quantitative measures like cost per project, working hours, employee retention rate, and revenue per employee. Qualitative metrics like employee and customer satisfaction can also help you. These remote work productivity metrics focus on business outcomes. They give a more accurate reading of employees’ productivity, not just from home but also from the office.

Of course, as a final tip, if you identify productivity issues, make sure you address them quickly. Ultimately, with this holistic approach, you can ensure a more productive remote team that will take your company to greater heights.