The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Managing Remote Teams

During the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, we have learned that remote work options are crucial for businesses to run. Work from home (WFH) and remote work have become a necessity for businesses. Digital work is no longer an option. Organizations are adopting policies to make it easier for employees to work remotely, as remote work and work-from-home adoption have skyrocketed. As of late, remote work has been growing in popularity, and it has grown 400% since the start of the decade, and with offices being forced to close due to the pandemic, remote work has been directly pushed into the spotlight by the pandemic.

As far as the job platform FlexJobs is concerned, it has been confirmed that a significant increase in remote jobs has been reported, ranging from IT professionals to programmers to customer service representatives. As predicted by Gartner, organizations will be able to support 40% more employees with the same amount of office space they are currently using because of the increase in remote workers.

While this transition is taking place, it can be challenging to oversee work updates and task schedules that pertain to each team and resource during the transition process. To achieve better workflow efficiency, AI-enabled project management tools such as time-tracking software are one of the most effective and efficient ways of implementing and managing remote workplace strategies.

Challenges Of Working from Home

Distractions affecting your work at home

Previously, we used to go to a physical office where there was a common space created to keep us focused and to ensure that we only had one purpose in mind - to complete our work. But now with remote working, we are all confined to our homes, where there are all kinds of distractions.

As a manager, it's important to keep in mind that every member of the team has a different background that needs to be understood and that there is a need for an empathetic understanding of each member's background. The doorbell may ring many times, the vacuum may run or other members of the family may be making individual calls.

Issues with technical aspects

Technical problems are also a common issue for many people. In India, for instance, there are times when there is a power outage, and with limited backup options, this may result in a lag when they are on a call. Another example would be when there is a power outage, as in India. When there is no backup, it may affect work negatively.

Censorship

The office used to be an environment where we all collaborated. If someone had a question, they could swivel their chair around and ask or they could walk up to their manager and ask. Our response needs to be more focused on semiformal or formal modes of communication that might cause some apprehension or delay in accessing that information when it comes to accessing it.

Lack of detailed supervisor control

Face-to-face supervision existed in a physical environment, making it easier for the manager and the employee to understand what their employees are doing. Supervision aims to provide accountability for both the manager and the employee by exploring practice and performance. This initiative's objective was to ensure that employees grow as a person, where their time was utilized constructively, and help managers and employees stay accountable for their work.

How AI allows managing teams Globally

Promoting smart project management using artificial intelligence

In addition to identifying if the project is on schedule and budget, predicting project disruptions, tracking the status of tasks, and solving various issues, project management is a challenging task. There are several types of applications for project management, including status reports, analytics, and insight generation. The problem with most project management tools is that they can't connect the data points from each of these tasks and make intelligent decisions. Artificial Intelligence can solve this problem for them.

AI-based business automation tools of TrackOlap generate insights into project data and create visibility into employee productivity and performance, which is especially important for a remote workforce. With the aid of AI-driven data, managers may create, quantify, rate, and streamline essential performance metrics. Leaders might reassess their approach to achieving their objectives in light of this information. Additionally, to strengthen project management with powerful dashboard statistics, AI-based solutions provide greater transparency and accountability to stakeholders.

Additionally, AI-based tools have the following benefits when it comes to project management, in addition to these.

● Collaborate more effectively with colleagues through a relationship-centric approach

● Provides employees with data-driven insights to help them improve their performance

● Analytics is a powerful tool for creating organizational transparency

● Identifies and calculates the risk associated with a given situation

Priorities Time-tracking

The feature of remote employment that most appeals to people are its flexibility. Flexibility was cited as a desirable quality by many respondents in a Microsoft survey of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries about their expectations for the potential of working from home. According to the findings, more than 70% of individuals surveyed wanted flexible work arrangements to continue after the pandemic.

There is the possibility that some members of your team will take advantage of the invisibility of their remote workforce and slack off during working hours even though managing a remote workforce requires trust in your team members. Although you may have set expectations for your remote team, you still may encounter distractions.

Having flexibility is typically considered a benefit at work, but it doesn't necessarily imply that employees can clock in and go whenever and wherever. Supervisors typically want to know how remote team members will schedule their workdays, while the specifics vary depending on the position. The good news is you can utilize time-tracking and remote employee management software to gain insight into how effective the team is. Artificial intelligence-inspired technology such as an employee location tracker offers managers sound performance here.

Time-tracking solutions with AI features are becoming more and more widespread. TrackOlap keeps track of what applications, files, and websites a remote employee uses throughout a workday in the background. The timesheet is then generated automatically for an employee to the manager to monitor his or her performance and managers can also track an employee’s assignments via an analytical dashboard. Thus, it requires less human tracking.

Automating administrative tasks

Remote workers are just like any other professional. They have to schedule meetings, email clients, and share reports with them. There are now many AI-powered tools available to remote professionals that have been developed to help them with these tasks, taking advantage of AI's ability to take over tedious labor.

TrackOlap being an “all-in-one” tool, integrates with other third-party tools to provide managers with an easy way to assign tasks, track productivity, downloading and schedule reports, and coordinate with their coworkers. Rapid advancement in technology has made it possible for workers to remain connected while sitting in an office, at home, at a coffee shop, or even on the move.

Employee tracking software let you Improve Productivity

As Managers and business leaders, we are expected to deal with several tasks back and forth. When all of these factors are taken into account, tracking remote employees’ productivity, locations, and generating reports can be tedious and error-prone.

The task of managing remote employees becomes even more challenging for managers when it comes to managing them to an extended level. In a business that allows employees to work from home, managers are always under pressure as a consequence of the company's ability to monitor the productivity and efficiency of these employees. There is a solution to monitoring employee performance non-invasively and correctly, thanks to artificial intelligence-based employee monitoring software , which is now easily available to businesses.

This modern system uses the information to provide unbiased performance reports and they can deliver accuracy in every step, which provides detailed insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each employee on a step-by-step basis as well as time taken in each task, their daily and monthly performance and their leave history, thanks to the advancement in technology. Artificial intelligence takes the lead here and provides an inspection level that is very hard for a human to replicate through manual management.

As we have seen, this is especially true when a company has a significant number of globally distributed employees who work remotely from different parts of the world. To be able to track when remote employees begin working and when they finish working, managers can easily use specialized AI-powered monitoring tools. As a result of the tool, all employee work activities are recorded and the work behaviors of individuals are used to measure and improve employee productivity.

AI in Performance Management

The majority of AI developments aim to improve employees' lives and performance. The activity and productivity of employees must be tracked by management in some businesses, nevertheless, as a performance indicator. This enables managers to assess their employees more accurately and aids HR departments in identifying those who want assistance.

Tracking employee data and instantly comparing important performance indicators are two ways AI may help with performance management. It goes without saying that this will appear different depending on the industry, but it is already possible to envision how valuable it might be in gauging the efficiency of production lines.

However, AI should not be applied haphazardly or operated without human supervision. AI can manage and analyze enormous data volumes, but it isn't yet ready to make the same sophisticated decisions that managers or HR specialists do on a daily basis. As a result, AI should be viewed as a tool to improve decision-making rather than a mindless benchmark.

Organizations can benefit from the use of artificial intelligence to unite employees around common goals and increase operational efficiency. The use of artificial intelligence systems can provide actionable insight that can help employees succeed, irrespective of their locations.

Last Note

Throughout the years, automation has proven to be one of the most effective solutions for remote work challenges, like tracking projects, communicating with employees, increasing business ROI, and building customer trust.

A remote team can easily collaborate and optimize its performance with the right tools. With the most satisfactory automation tool of TrackOlap , you can automate a variety of tasks at work such as assigning remote employees’ tasks, tracking their idle time, hourly productivity, and more.

Its centralized system delivers high-productivity capabilities to give team members and stakeholders access to information in real-time. It enables you to consolidate all of your assignments and projects onto a single platform. The automated features of this program enable you to centrally collaborate while coordinating your projects, assets, and work systems.