Tammy : Nice to hear from you again here today, Ray!

Ray : Hi Tammy, and Hi to our listeners, I hope you are all doing well. Today’s another episode is for entrepreneurs who now transitioned their business digitally.

Tammy : Yes, those of you already adapt to the new change and are planning to transform digitally. In today’s episode we will give a short guide on how to manage your business and your employees while everyone is working remotely.

Ray : While the employer tracks their employees’ activity at home without being worried if the task has been completed or not.

Tammy : You all know how hard it is to manage business these days given the current situation. And the good thing is that the internet was invented decades ago, and now is a way of life.

Ray : Social media is an amazing platform to promote small startups. Let’s talk about ways to manage businesses online.

Tammy : Everyone depends on the internet on their day to day basis, we have to maximize the use of the internet. So today, we will be giving some tips on how to manage your business online and as well as your employees.

Ray : That’s right. We will give you some tips, ideas and maybe recommend some tools or platforms that we think might be useful to you and your business.

Tammy : Let’s first talk about the business you are running and how many employees you have.

Ray : Like how big is your company? Do you have 5 or more employees working with you? Actually, whether it’s 2-3 employees you can also monitor their work at home.

Tammy : Do you also require their working hours or is it flexible? Like is it 8am – 5pm or is it work anytime in their convenient hours as long as they finish their task?

Ray : There are a lot of things to consider when working from home, of course employers should be monitoring the work of their employees because it will also be connected with the salary you pay them.

Tammy : Yes, you don’t want to send payment when you aren’t even sure when they finish the task or not. Work-from-home is so different from the office set up where you see them everyday. 

Ray : In this case, you may track your employees everyday by using different kinds of time tracker tools. See which best suits you, like in our company we use the timedoctor to track time of the employees, what good about this is, it also sends screenshots of work from the employee’s computer. Like you can check them for what task they are working on. 

Tammy : There is also harvest-time, clockify – I think this clockify is free?

Ray : Yes, I think it’s free.

Tammy : Okay, then that would be a good choice too, if you are just starting and checking how to track employees, you may use free tools like that. There is also a Jobcan which I think is free too and as well as the Odoo. So these are the free tools that you can use if you want to try to monitor the productivity of your employees. 

Ray : At this point, you can monitor productivity, see how long different tasks take to complete, and  time in and time out of your employees. This is the first step to manage your work-from-home set up or your employees remotely.

Tammy : Yes, and besides the tool that I mentioned. I will tell you the top 5 time tracker tools you may want to use for your business. (1) Toggl Track – this is free and a lot of users are using this one. (2) Harvest – this is best for tracking hours and expenses in teams. (3) Everhour – best for viewing and managing team availability (4) HourStack – This is for visualizing time differently, and last but not least is the (5) RescueTime – For reducing distractions.

Ray : You mentioned the Toggl Track – I know this is one of the top because it has a lot of applications you can use from simple team and project planning, effortless time tracking and reporting to Smart hiring with skills test. 

Tammy : Oh wow! Skills test, not all applications have this skill test.

Ray : Yes and that’s what makes it to the top, like before you hire an employee you can have them take a skill test first to see if they are skilled enough to join your team. 

Tammy : That’s why they have more than 5 million users already!

Ray : Correct, and another tool you mentioned is the Hourstack – Besides that it can track your time, you can also use this tool to manage your employees schedule and as well as to gain actionable insights. 

Tammy : And it makes it a unique tool to have it put in the top list!

Ray : Now that we mentioned how to monitor your employee’s time. Let’s go on task monitoring. How do you monitor your employee’s task if it’s complete or not? Or which task are they working on? This is also crucial to your online business. Of course you want your employees to be as productive as you wish. 

Tammy : Yes, in this case there are also tools you can use to check on the task which your employee has completed, in the process or in the to list. You can also follow up or add tasks in your employee’s work. 

Ray : In this task monitoring, you want to collaborate with your team and everyone in the company. You can use Trello which is on the top list – Collaborate.

Tammy : I’ve been seeing Trello a lot in the online world. Like I know a lot of companies are using this one, so yes, I believe this is one of the best tools for collaboration and task tracking. 

Ray : What is nice about collaboration tools is that, it’s only that you work and do the task, but also working together with your colleague. Another one is the Asana – where you can collaborate with your colleagues with the task, you can also see if the task has been completed or not. 

Tammy : Actually, for me it’s so easy to do Asana, like you make a list of tasks to do everyday, new projects and a lot more. While the employer can check the progress daily. There’s another tool for task tracking and it’s called ClickUp.

Ray : ClickUp is a unique tool too. As it can Automatically import your stuff from other ‘productivity’ apps in minutes and instantly bring your team together.

Tammy : Of course, employers will easily know what his teams are working on.

Ray : Yes.

Tammy : I think so too! And there are also the best task tracker apps like : Todoist, Ticktick, Workspace, Jetbrains, Capterra and a lot more. There are free tools you may try as well. 

Ray : I think there are trials in every tool so you can choose which best suits your company. 

Tammy : Yes, that’s right! Anyway other than time tracker, task tracker. What else do employer’s need to manage their business?

Ray : I think beside that 2 most important tracker. Use a communication app where you can directly communicate with your team. Like whatsapp, viber, or wechat?

Tammy : Yes, I like whatsapp more than the others.

Ray : And when scheduling an online meeting, the best tool so far is the Zoom meeting – which I think most of the people right now are using this. Not only for webinars, simple meetings but also schools are also using this one.

Tammy : Actually, they can also try using the google meet, or the miscrosoft meeting I think.

Ray : It can also be that one. Anyway, so these are the tools you may use to manage your online business with your team or with your work-from-home teams. 

Tammy : I hope this podcast gives you ideas on how to start your business digitally.

Ray : So if you have any questions, just write down your comments below.

Tammy : Or email us at info@uniprohk.com!

Ray : Thanks everyone and stay safe!