No matter how much you trust your employees to do the right thing, nearly every employee can benefit from monitoring, which allows you to offer feedback to improve their work. It's a good idea to regular meet with each worker one-on-one, which will allow you to hold your employees accountable and help you keep up with the details. Still, there may be occasions where you have the need to keep up with their work outside of regular meetings. In these cases, there are a few best practices to follow.
Spend some time watching your employees work and interact with each other. If someone is struggling with a certain task, spend some time shadowing them while they are doing the task. Even if they work remotely, you can use technology to stay connected, whether it’s through a video call or a screen share. Shadowing employees can be especially beneficial in the case of fleet management when you need to focus on safety. Dash cams sometimes allow the ability to live-stream the video, allowing you to take a virtual ride along with the driver. You can then offer feedback, even if you aren’t able to be there in person. If you’re interested in this method of monitoring, you can look at a guide that explains how it works.
Show your trust in your team by having them help you. You can ask them to use tools to monitor their tasks. They may follow checklists, project plans, or activity logs. That allows teammates to see for themselves whether they are meeting deadlines or goals. Then they can report to you if they have questions or need more information. They can also keep activity logs of time spent working and breaks taken throughout the day, as well as interruptions experienced.
When you meet with your team members one-on-one, you can ask them to give you an update of the things they have been doing. You can ask if they have met the expectations, you specified and ask them about specific actions they may have been required to take. Listen carefully and ask questions as needed. When employees know, they will need to give an account of what they have been doing, they are more likely to stick to their assigned tasks and even have completed work to show as evidence of what they have been up to.