How Can I Track Remote Employees and Boost Productivity in the Telecom Field?

I am working in the telecom field, and my company has assigned me a new task, which is to check and confirm how many employees are not going to the field and are just sitting idle at home or doing other jobs. My problem is that if I confirm with them, they may provide a valid answer, and if I confirm with the Field Supervisors or Field Manager, they might also be involved in that fraud and give me fake information.

Suggestions Needed for Employee Tracking and Productivity Improvement

Please suggest to me how I can track those employees and what is the best way to improve the system to achieve maximum productivity. Your help will be highly appreciated!

It is always important to maintain work ethics and mutual trust between the employee and employer. There are ways to keep track of field employees, and I suggest it is best done with the awareness of the employees.

If you type "Tracking Employees" in the RESEARCH tab at the top of the site, you will find many discussions on similar topics. You can get answers there.

You have written that your employees are on "field duty." But then, what kind of job do they do? Are they technicians? Do they visit customers? If yes, then for what?

Chasing employees should not be a "cat and mouse" game. Monitoring staff productivity can be done effectively by sitting in the office as well.

There are scores of employees who work in the field for a variety of purposes. Now, how can you check the productivity of the couriers? It's simple - check the number of documents and non-documents issued to them for delivery and verify the actual deliveries made. At the end of the day, supervisors should check if there are valid reasons for non-delivery. Maintain statistics for non-delivery against each courier.

If employees are spending time at home or elsewhere, they may not have enough work. Many times, I have found that these field employees don't even have time for lunch. Why is the opposite happening in your case?

You need to conduct a study on workforce planning and staff productivity. Map out the entire delivery process and determine the cycle time for each sub-process. You will likely identify some gaps. Find out the reasons for those gaps.

If you start chasing your employees, you will end up treating them like children.

Thanks,

Dinesh V Divekar

Thanks for your time and for giving me insight into tracking ghost employees. Your comments really helped me create a check and balance and audit system for field employees.

In addition to Dinesh's question, yes, they are technicians and supervisors working on installing Internet and telephone lines for the vendor.

Thanks again.

Thank you for your response. We are certain you would resolve this. Here's my suggestion: once you review the job content and the time taken to deliver it, try to see if you can make it official for the employees to work only for those hours. A cutback in the number of working hours might offer an added benefit to your employees.

If you can make this official, you will be able to review how many employees you would require per area, per hour. That way, you might be able to optimize the talent allocation if it is feasible. Please share the options you may find and help us suggest what is best and legal for your company. Wish you all the best!

Today, life has become simpler due to technology. One way to monitor the activation time of the Internet or phone line completed by field staff is to check it against the standard work time. This helps determine whether they are efficient or wasting time. However, a more reliable method is the use of GPS trackers.

Using GPS Trackers for Employee Monitoring

Latitude from Google is one such software. Most of your employees likely have smartphones (my office boy has an Android phone), where Latitude can be activated and used to track the exact location of the person. Employees should be instructed not to switch it off during office hours. Ghost working will also be detected as you can call to check, and if the same voice answers multiple numbers, then you know what is happening.

Some Indian companies have developed personnel tracking GPS devices as stand-alone products. I know three courier companies that use these. Ostensibly, they are provided so that HQ knows where you are and you can be diverted quickly to a customer in emergency service needs. Actually, these are being used to know where the employee is. The tracker is accurate to within a 10 ft radius.

Being a telecom company, you can get free or low-cost connectivity for your GPS trackers. In India, the connectivity cost is as low as Rs 99 per month. The GPS devices cost between Rs 3500 to 9500 depending on what you want. Blue Dart, for example, has combined it with a barcode reader and takes the receiver's signature electronically to confirm and update the delivery status to the sender. That would be costly, but they can afford it. Another local delivery company has opted for a tracker built into a pager-type device that all their field staff carry. That’s at the lowest range.

Of course, the cheapest way is to use an app on a smartphone and track the entire workforce from the office free of cost.

Hope this helps.