Expanding your workforce is a great way to help your business grow. However, it can backfire on you when these same workers aren’t being efficient. You’re essentially paying them for their time so if they’re not getting things done when they should, then you’re just throwing away money.

People are wasting more time at work than you think: A Paychex survey of 2,000 full-time staff in various industries across the United States reveals that an average of 41% of salaried employees and 46% of hourly employees waste time at work.

Yes, even those in upper management loaf around sometimes.

Now that all the communication and entertainment tools we need are at our fingertips, it’s understandably challenging to resist the temptation. Also, there are distractions unique to those working from home. Choosing to ignore these concerns is akin to driving away your own customers.

As a leader, it’s part of your job to create and maintain a productive working environment even if your team is fully remote. Doing so ensures that they won’t be spending more time on social media than on their tasks. Here are ways to help your employees keep cyberloafing to a minimum.

Set a time for deep work

It’s hard to get in the zone when notifications keep popping up. What you can do is leave enough time for your staff to focus on their work alone. Schedule a block of time or a specific day when no meetings or training are allowed.

Encourage your staff to block off time on their calendars to minimise any interruptions. Decide on a signal to let people know when they’re in their flow state. Being on do-not-disturb mode on Skype or any other app you’re using for communication is an option.

Make it normal for members of your team to practice deep work. Maybe you can make it so answering messages doesn’t have to be an urgent job. Categorising or labelling emails also enables your workers to determine which need immediate attention or which can wait.

Provide the necessary tools

Don’t waste the talents of your staff on tasks that can be easily automated. It’s often the case that these assignments are the most time-consuming. If it’s something an app can handle, leave it to the software so your employees can use their skills elsewhere.

Agile project management tools, like Trello, Wrike, Asana, Teamwork, and Zoho, help you compute the capacity of your team, show team progress over time, and keep the task list current. Not only do they automate your workflow but they also enable you to move forward with a few clicks.

If your budget is limited, creating templates for common documents is an affordable means to get things done at a faster and more efficient rate. Providing a formula or format that they only have to follow reduces the time they have to think and accomplish jobs.

Require agendas for all meetings

You can save precious time and resources by requiring your team to prepare and send out their meeting agendas well ahead of time. By making this mandatory for every meeting, everyone will have to think carefully about the topics they want to cover.

Plus, it’ll be easier for everyone to determine if a group discussion is necessary or not.

An agenda serves as an outline for how the conversation should flow. It gives your workers a chance to handle all of the brainstorming, do their research, and organise their data ahead of time so they won’t have to in the middle of your video call.

This way, talks are more productive rather than full of long pauses. It also reduces the chances of them requesting a follow-up soon after because they forgot to mention something or realised too late that a minor problem was actually a sign of a major one.

Consider tracking their time usage

It’s hard to make a process more efficient when you don’t know which part is taking up so much time. This is where time tracking and productivity software are useful. These monitor apps and URLs to provide you a better idea of where the time is going.

There’s often a big difference between what people remember doing during their day versus what has been recorded on the time tracker. For example: they might think that they spent only 15 minutes scrolling social media but the report shows it’s more like 45 minutes.

There’s no need to worry about scaring away your employees as many professionals are comfortable with monitoring as long their client is transparent about it. Besides, remote workers consider it a given that an employer will want to monitor them since they aren’t meeting physically.

Offer an incentive for productivity

Rewards can go a long way compared to punishments. You’d be surprised at how many people are motivated by freebies or recognition. Having an incentive program that offers rewards to the most productive can help motivate your workers to go beyond what is expected of them.

The incentive can be in the form of a prize or bonus. The idea is to encourage them to hit certain benchmarks or to just perform better than their colleagues. It doesn’t have to be an all-expenses-paid cruise trip either. What matters most is that it’s fun or what your staff actually want.

Look up what the majority are into. For instance, your members might be fond of watching TV shows so Netflix gift cards are worth considering. Gift certificates for department stores or nice restaurants are also appreciated, but make sure these are for establishments near the recipients.

Put a Stop to Wasted Time at Work

There are countless reasons why employees are wasting time. It may be because they’re easily distracted, bored or unsatisfied with their work, or lack the motivation to work harder. There’s also the possibility that they’re spending so much time with tasks that can be automated.

If you’re more worried about the former than the latter, hiring diligent workers is key. There may be moments when they’ll also get tempted but they’re less likely to get distracted.

We at Remote Workmate can help you find such dedicated, high-performing virtual staff. As an offshore staffing agency, this is what we specialise in!