Success-oriented team leaders and managers actively and consistently adopt a variety of techniques to monitor their employees. Subsequently, they can adopt the right measures to check the low quality, and unproductiveness, while rewarding and fostering productivity and efficiency. Whether they are regular employees or outsourcing vendors, it is important to monitor performance.

Define Expectations

The first step towards effective employee monitoring is to define expectations. If you do not define expectations, then you won’t have to blame an employee who is oblivious of what your expectations from him or her are. So, start by defining expectations, so that everyone will be clear about the expected outcome.

Here are practical ways to define expectations;

• Put Your Policies in Print for Employees to See

Clearly written policies made available to employees in print, in the form of a guide or handbook can help employees imbibe the organization’s policies. Ensure there’s no ambiguity in explaining your policies. The guide should also state possible disciplinary actions against none adherence to the clearly written policies.

It may be helpful to provide some basic explanation of why the policies were adopted — so that employees won’t feel you are prying on them. Typical examples of areas you should set clear policies include personal use of the company’s internet, timekeeping, personal phone calls, and billable hours.

• Stick to Disciplinary Guidelines Strictly

If you delay or decide not to discipline a defaulting employee, you may be indirectly giving other employees the room to go against set policies — they will assume after-all, the policies are just in print for the sake of it, they do not exist in reality. Also, do not be partial when carrying out the stipulated discipline for defaulters.

Assess Productivity

In order to monitor employees effectively, you also have to assess productivity. You should do a routine check on the employees to see how they are executing assigned tasks. Some of the things that employees do when they feel supervisors are not watching include browsing the web or chatting their work time away on social media. One of the signs of such misconduct is that defaulting employees will quickly click away or minimize a window when you suddenly show up.

Also, the assessment requires asking employees directly. When you do the routine visit to your employees’ offices, you can request to know the project they have been working on. You should not just do it on the surface, you should request for the details of the task they’ve been handling since resumption.

In the case of an outsourcing partner, especially an offshore outsourcing partner, frequent phone calls, Skype conversation and exchange of emails are necessary for accomplishing the distant monitoring of an employee.

Finally, you should adopt a monitoring software program that will help promote efficient employee monitoring.

Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.