Customer case: 3 challenges of remote working that Plecto has helped with

Something that we have all learned during this rollercoaster of a year is to adapt. Adapt to a whole new way of interacting, to the uncertainty, to making an office out of a bedroom or a living room… In short, to adapt to whatever comes next. 

It hasn’t been easy nor successful all the time, but we surely have gained some valuable lessons that will shape the way we see our working lives from now on. 

And that, it’s also something to adapt to. 

As our customers have been facing different challenges and changes, we have tried to make our part and also adapt to their new normal. 

We’ve always known that Plecto is a great tool to use remotely, because that was the idea for it since the beginning. But this year has tested us, making us develop into an even better solution for every company that needed some remote flexibility. 

We’ve learned, we’ve improved, and we’ve adapted. And so have our clients! 

To bring some more facts to the table, we’ve gathered the 3 challenges of remote working that Plecto has helped with… Can you relate to any of those?

1. Managers lack information from their employees

We lost track of the amount of clients that were calling our Support team to find a solution for this when they were first changing to remote working. 

As the office closes down, the TV screens are no longer available to show the real-time data and the progress towards the KPIs. But in order to keep doing what they are good at, managers needed to have an overview of their team, from home. 

So we got hands-on to help our customers visualize their data also from home! 

For instance, we made sure to create updated step-by-step guides to show Plecto users how to display their dashboards on their TV screens at home. They could easily bring the ‘office vibe’ to their new home offices, and keep visualizing their team’s performance anytime, anywhere.

We also created some more dashboard templates, so that our users could get started with Plecto from home in a matter of seconds. They were designed to make it even easier to use Plecto outside of the office, so that every employee could follow their individual and team performance.

2. The team lacks motivation working from home

This was also one of the challenges that our customers had to deal with when they moved to work from home.

In the office, it was very easy to have the personalized notifications triggering in the TV screens displaying the dashboards. Or to celebrate their achievements showing a specific badge next to their name. 

But how could managers keep their employees motivated, if they couldn’t see them?

Again, we love a challenge at Plecto! And we also should admit that we have a very creative team coming up with ideas to use for ourselves, that of course we were thrilled to share with our customers. 

Therefore, we gathered in an article the 3 best tips to increase performance from home, so both managers and employees had a helping hand always available if they needed some advice to spice up their new routine.

Moreover, we came up with easy and creative ideas to keep the team close while working from home!

One example was to create a fun reminder for the lunch break, so that we could all keep our usual habits as much as possible. For this, we created an easy to follow step-by-step guide to show how quick it was to have this notification popping on the dashboards, which your employees could display from home.

Another idea was to better introduce Plecto admins to our gamification features to promote friendly competition among their employees, with our easy-to-create contests and badges. We made sure they all knew how easy it was to organize a fun contest for a specific department, or give personalized badges for specific achievements, related or not with work. 

And everyone could follow it from home!

3. Some employees need an extra boost for their KPIs

We soon realized that managers around the world were struggling to keep all employees motivated, because some of them needed some more help than others to stay focused on the targets. 

Therefore, we thought, if Plecto is all about having an overview and following the progress of the objectives, why not allow them to establish individual KPIs?

And so, Performance Agreements became the tool to boost individual KPIs while maintaining the overall overview of the team. These are, simply put, agreements between the manager and the specific employee in regards to a specific KPI that needs some extra attention for a determined period of time. 

This way, managers could help their employees stay on track with their individual performance very discreetly, because the agreements are only visible for the two people involved.

But that’s not all! We also thought it would be a great idea to provide admins at Plecto with the possibility to limit or give access to the dashboards. Why is that?

In the office, the TV screens simply display the dashboards that are relevant for all your team. But what if you also have some dashboards that are not relevant for all your employees?

That’s what the ‘Limit Dashboard Access’ feature was for, so that managers could easily decide who should access each dashboard. And that also includes that an admin could create a dashboard for a specific employee, and grant access just to them. 

This employee, therefore, could better understand their performance at just a glance, and follow their progress in real-time. Wouldn’t that be a motivating incentive to have?