How CleverControl Helped Boost Productivity in a Tech Company

How CleverControl Helped Boost Productivity in a Tech Company

Time theft, lack of accountability, ineffective work patterns, and compensation for lazier colleagues are just a few productivity problems plaguing modern workspaces. But what if you could get real-time insights into employee activity, identify or even prevent these issues on time, and boost your team's productivity? In this CleverControl case study, we will explore how a tech company combatted these challenges and boosted productivity with employee monitoring software.

The Challenge

Our client is a fast-growing mid-sized software development company with 47 employees. The company specializes in creating custom software solutions, including mobile apps, internal company platforms, and CRM systems for small and medium-sized businesses. The company started as a small startup and relied on direct visibility as the main method of attendance and performance management at first. As the staff grew, the head of the organization could not control all employees and processes directly.

The company faced challenges tracking work time, measuring productivity, and project visibility. Traditional time-tracking methods were unreliable. Employees often forgot to fill in timesheets on time and, as a result, turned in inaccurate, approximate data. Moreover, the head even discovered several cases of time theft.

Observing work processes through supervision and regular team and one-on-one meetings was time-consuming, subjective, and inaccurate. This lack of reliable data hindered accurate project estimations and made it challenging to identify time-consuming tasks.

The team missed deadlines: around 15% of projects exceeded their original deadlines, which dissatisfied clients and damaged the company's reputation. It was difficult to pinpoint the real reasons for the failures: bad management, inefficient processes, or personal unproductivity. Each employee gave a different perspective on the problem.

Besides, the head had no means to monitor 12 remote team members directly and could not solely rely on their reports. He wanted more real-time visibility to identify problems on the spot and provide timely feedback.

Finally, the head looked for a way to spend less time monitoring productivity and get more objective results.

The Solution

To solve these challenges, the company decided to try employee monitoring software and chose CleverControl. CleverControl automatically tracked the beginning and end of the workday, which allowed the company to eliminate timesheets completely. The monitoring reports also included active and inactive periods during the day, which could reveal habitual slackers.

CleverControl's Live Viewing feature provided the company head with the desired real-time visibility. The head could view any employee's screen and see what stage the work was on during the workday.

The detailed activity reports and statistics on top-used apps and sites allowed for analyzing how much time the employees actually spent on work tasks and what could be improved.

The Result

The first monitoring results were not surprising: most team members showed high levels of productivity and engagement. The productivity boost was caused by monitoring itself. Knowing that all their actions are tracked, the employees were less likely to spend time on unproductive or non-work-related activities.

As the employees grew accustomed to monitoring, they gradually returned to their usual work patterns. Monitoring these patterns lent much more interesting results. As such, with CleverControl, the head revealed several inefficiencies, for example:

  • One of the software developers would spend hours meticulously documenting every minor task and creating excessive reports. Although documenting is vital in software development, the employee was micromanaging himself to the point where it hindered actual progress.

  • One of the managers would schedule numerous meetings on every minor issue. While his purpose was to keep the team updated, most of these frequent meetings were unproductive, time-consuming, and ruined the workflow for the day for other team members. Reports showed a 15% increase in inactive time, personal browsing, and less productive activities on the days the team members had to attend several such meetings.

Monitoring also helped the company to find out the causes of some employees' habitual unproductivity:

  • One of the IT specialists was considered a habitual slacker until the manager analyzed her activity report. It turned out that the employee spent a significant part of her workday helping her colleagues or completing tasks they delegated to her. Naturally, she missed her deadlines and could not properly focus on her direct responsibilities.

  • CleverControl's AI Scoring detected a few remote employees who did minimal work-related activity and spent extensive time on personal browsing.

  • The PR manager turned out to be a true "social butterfly." His use of messengers reached almost 40% of the workday. He frequently interrupted colleagues' work with lengthy and irrelevant conversations or messages, making it difficult for them to concentrate and complete their tasks.

Identifying these and some other inefficiencies allowed the company to work towards eliminating them and boosting productivity. With accurate time tracking and real-time monitoring, managers could assess project deadlines more accurately, resulting in more projects and tasks delivered on time. Additionally, they could reallocate some resources and employees, ensuring that the right people were working on the right tasks at the right time.

The company decided to take advantage of the self-monitoring feature. Employees could access and analyze their activity reports, which increased their accountability and boosted their engagement by 7%.

As a result of monitoring, on-time project delivery reached 96% within the first six months of implementation. The management cut unnecessary meetings, leaving only weekly and monthly check-ins.

In general, the company saw an 11% productivity boost within the six months since implementation.

Wrapping Up

Employee monitoring helped the company transform its approach to work management. "Before CleverControl, we were flying blind," says the head of the company, "We relied heavily on gut feelings and subjective assessments. With monitoring reports and activity stats, we see a clearer picture now and can make informed decisions."

This CleverControl case study demonstrates that the software helped the company improve its work processes and foster a culture of transparency and accountability.

Want to learn more about CleverControl? Visit the product page or contact us.

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