You might think “Why is this even necessary, I can just click to go on a break when I want?”. The problem is if you want accurate time tracking you need a reminder sometimes when you come back to the computer to select that you are working and also when you are on a break to select that you are on a break. It’s very hard to remember to click “Break” every time, you will probably forget at times!

So if your team work in an office you will definitely need to select “yes” for “Allow off computer tracking”. In an office environment there will almost certainly be some meetings and you want to make sure that time is tracked effectively. If your team works only from home and never need to be away from the computer, then you can select “no”.

Changing the away from computer settings

You can also change the pop up so that it doesn’t come up as quickly. Instead of 3 minutes you can set it at 5 or 10 minutes for example. Admins can change this under: Settings > Company settings > Reminder pop ups. We don’t usually recommend you change this setting however, as it will mean that your time tracking will be less accruate.

Secondly we are launching to a paid version for all users within the next week. Time Doctor is very costly to run. We have 7 full time developers working on the software. It’s not something we can offer for free, and it’s now time to move to a paid service.

To explain the plans a little. The solo plan is best for an individual. The free plan is limited to the use of the desktop software only (although the free plan will still get full access as a trial for 30 days). All the  plans are equivalent in features and just vary in price per user. If you have more than 10 users you get a bit of a discount (per user) and over 20 users you get a further discount. So the choice in the plans really is based on how many users you have.

The goal of the Time Doctor team is to make the best time tracking and time management software to help people get more done and be more productive. Especially for remote working teams, where team members are working from home or even in multiple countries across the world. I believe that we’re part of the way there to our vision, but there is a lot to do in order to make Time Doctor even better and easier to use. We’re committed long term to this software as we don’t see anything that is comparable to what we are doing.

Some of the future plans we have for Time Doctor are:

* Integration with Jira – we have this already and if you would like to test it let support know

* Integration with Basecamp – we have this also

* A simple task management system in Time Doctor

* Task management software for your desktop for arranging and managing your tasks (at the moment our software is great for timing your activities, but is not as appropriate if you want to manage all of your tasks, we worked on this before and we are going to finish this and launch it as an additional alternative to the current desktop software)

So this post will give you an update of how much it will cost and what is going on with the software.

How much will it cost?

The pricing can be found on the pricing page here, however there will be a discount available to beta customers.

The new desktop version

There have been three main versions of the Time Doctor desktop version. In case you are still on an older version, I want to introduce the new version which is currently on version number 2.1.8. This is how it looks:

What is new with this version?

– It’s super fast and easy to use

– It provides a simple way to edit time. So now there are just two categories of time, “On computer” and “Edited” time. This is a much needed simplification compared with the previous versions. It makes it a lot easier when you are away from the computer.

– There is a window that pops up when you were away from the computer to track the time when you were away. This make it much easier to use for people that are going away from their computer constantly. This feature is optional however it should definitely be turned on for people in an office situation. For teams working from home, admins might want to turn this feature off if team members spend all their time on the computer. It can be turned on or off from the “manage users” page.

What’s different about this version is that it does not have the complete task management features that were present in version 1.3. This might be a disappointment for some people who really enjoyed the task management aspects. We are developing an improved version of the 1.3 software that we plan on releasing into 2012, however task management and project management is not the main focus of Time Doctor. We’re focused on making Time Doctor the best time tracking software on the planet, and this smaller version is more in line with that vision. We welcome feedback from you on this new version.

Coming soon:

– It will soon integrate with many different project management applications such as Basecamp and Jira.

– We’re improving the way that you allocate tasks to projects, to make it super-easy to allocate tasks to the correct project.

- We’re providing language support initially for Russian and then several other languages.

Project management, Task Management and Time Doctor

We have decided to focus Time Doctor on time tracking only and move away from Project management and Task management.

There are a large number of very good project management applications which you can find in this article.  Some of them are even totally free.

We decided that it’s probably not a good idea to create another project management app as there are too many good options, and instead are planning on integrating with all the major project management apps. This means that you can choose a project management application that works well for your team and then use Time Doctor for the time tracking component, to add accurate time tracking for the tasks in your project management system.

We are focused on making Time Doctor the best time tracking application in the world. What does this mean? It means that you track activities, you know that the time tracked was accurate and you can use this tracked time to evaluate your own performance or the performance of a team, or to pay employees based on accurate hours worked.

If you’d like to see Liam, Rob and co. talk at SXSW, then please cast your vote.

Time Doctor is not only a task management tool that tracks time spent on your tasks, it’s also a valuable productivity tool which can help you see how any worker spends their time on the computer. Time spent browsing, checking email, and the types of software people use on a day-to-day basis is all available at your finger tips. This is just one of many cool new features we’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks.

Feel free to try out our BETA release by downloading the software here

“I run a call center where I research commercial properties all over the world….Before TimeDoctor, I had no way of tracking my employees that worked from home. Now, I see when they are working and when they aren’t. It has improved my company’s productivity by more than 25%!”
Reid Levy – CommercialWisdom.com, Broomfield, Colorado

To hear what our existing customers are saying about our software, check out the Buzz page.

If you see something you don’t like the look of you can easily click and view a more detailed view. Check out the new interface below, or give it a test run yourself and let us know what you think.

Remember, screen monitoring is just one way Time Doctor helps a team to be more productive. It’s also completely optional and some businesses may not need to use this type of monitoring to get the most out of Time Doctor.

Stay tuned for more exciting features; The new desktop Task Manager is a few weeks away, but is feature packed, elegant and will revolutionize the way you think about project management software.

More than a few project management tools are quick to announce “integration” with Google Apps – but what does that actually mean?

Project management applications that integrate with Google Apps

The the most popular project management apps on the Google Apps marketplace are:
Manymoon, Zoho Projects, Freshbooks, Smartsheet, Deskaway, Ace Project, Huddle, Comindwork, Wrike, Mavenlink, Teambox, Harvest Glasscubes and Jira.

How do project management apps typically ‘integrate’ with Google Apps?

• User can create tasks from emails. A button at the bottom of the email that allows you to create a task. Used in; Manymoon, Zoho Projects.
• Attach Google docs to tasks, messages and projects. This is available in most of the apps.
• One click sign in with a Gmail account. This is pretty much a given for all apps that integrate with Google.
• Exporting reports to Google Docs
• Importing Google contacts into your project management app. A great way to expand your user base.
• Integration with Google Calendar. For example, adding milestones or due dates on tasks to the calendar.

There are also some other more unique integrations:

• Smartsheet allows you to attach a Google doc within a row on your Smartsheet. An interesting the approach when you consider that Google might be seen as their main competitor.
• Jira which is primarily for software development also has some unique features. You can embed a Google Doc within a wiki on Jira. Also you can access Google Talk within Jira as well as Gmail and Google Calendar.

Which project management software offer the best Google Apps workflow?

It really depends on the way that you work and the type of tool you are looking for. Manymoon has perhaps the most comprehensive Google Apps feature set. However if you need other project management features such as invoicing or Gantt charts you should choose look around…

We’ve compiled a list of the top project management software solutions that integrate with Google Apps to help illustrate exactly what type of integration each service offers:

http://www.timedoctor.com/google-apps-project-management

Our experience is that you can but it’s not easy. You need to know exactly how to find the right people, and where to spend the time recruiting and selecting candidates. With the right know how, you can find programmers with the equivalent skills to someone earning $80 USD an hour for as little as $15 an hour.

Typical rates for developers in Russia and the former Soviet Union

It depends to some degree on the region and country. Salaries in Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus for example are significantly lower than Moscow (in Russia). In fact you will find salaries in Moscow are not that much lower than the west, so the comparative advantage of hiring a programmer in this city is not great. If you are hiring in the Russian Federation, you’ll have more luck elsewhere.

Rates that you can expect for programmers in most of the former Soviet Union vary depending on a number of factors. Keep in mind that local companies can hire with salaries 10-40% lower than this range (generally, but not always, there’s are a different set of rules for foreign businesses). Typical salaries for a full staff member are around:

Php programmers $1500-$2500 USD per month
C++ programmers $2000 – $3000 USD per month
J2E programmer $2000 – $3000 USD per month
Web developer $1200 – $2200 USD per month

As a general rule it’s better to find talent from the top of the pool, rather than hiring people who are willing to accept lower salaries.

Finding the right person for the role

You need to treat the recruitment effort more seriously than you would if hiring a person from your own country. It requires determination and effort to first find  and screen a significant number of suitable candidates, and then time to evaluate each applicant – don’t expect to succeed unless you put serious effort into the recruitment process….

Where to search

Cast a wide net and you’ll be more likely to find the person with the skills you really need. Try outsourcing sites such as Odesk, Vworker, Freelancer.com and Staff.com (affiliated with Time Doctor). All three of these sites have the advantage that they manage the payment process for you (and you can also test any promising candidates with a short project before moving on to more serious work).

You should also search in other locations including programming forums, especially those that target the skills that you are looking for. Linked in and Facebook although less popular in Russia are still worth a look.

There are a number of excellent web sites in Russian where you can find great programmers such as sql.ru, rsdn, Vkontakte (the equivalent of Facebook in Russia), rabota.ua, work.com.ua and hh.ru. You might need to hire someone to post the job ads for you (if this is the case, initially try and outsourcing site… which is in English).

You can’t expect to find someone great just from posting a job listing

Just like everywhere else, posting an advertisement for programmers in the newspaper might help you find someone good, but you are less likely to find someone great.

The great programmers usually already have jobs, or are working on their own projects. They may also are looking for challenges or a more dynamic and interesting environment (…and you need to sell the idea  that you can provide those challenges for them, as well as the opportunity to grow with your company).

If you want to find a truly phenomenal programmer you need to spend some significant efforts recruiting, and searching of the right person. You ideally need to speak Russian or have someone help you who speaks Russian. It’s also more difficult to persuade highly talented people to work for you unless you meet them in person (or use a specialist recruitment company).

How to evaluate the candidates

A short test is a good way to initially evaluate candidates. If you can start with a local programmer who is excellent and get them to devise a very short (1-3 hour) test that is  difficult and exactly matches the skills that you are looking for. Then give all of your candidates this test.

Another option is working together on a short project to see how you work together. Also looking for people who have worked on programming projects in their spare time is a good way to find top talent.

Developing trust

If you don’t use a local recruiter or one of the freelancing sites you might find it difficult to develop trust with the person. However there are other ways to develop trust such as working together on some interesting but short projects first, and then moving later to a full time working arrangement.

In a longer term relationship it is ideal to meet in person. A remote working situation can work, but meeting face to face you will strengthen your relationship with your employee by gaining a deeper understanding of who they are, how they work, where they are working from what they have to offer.

How to pay your staff

There are a few options. If you are using Odesk, Vworker or Freelancer they have their own payment process built in. They charge a 10% fee and use Payoneer which is a credit card service where the programmer in Russia will simply go to the ATM to withdraw the money. You use Payoneer directly, or try Ikobo, Moneybookers. Sending a wire transfer directly to a person’s bank account or into their credit card is easier than it used to be, so talk to your bank.

Which countries should you hire from?

Why not try the entire former Soviet Union: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Georgia and Serbia all have talented coders. You will find the largest number of available programmers in Russia and Ukraine but all of these countries have great software developers.

Odesk team tool
Odesk is a platform to help you find contractors in any country and a software platform for managing workers. They have a screen capture technology that works by taking screen shots every 15 minutes. They also have activity notes and they track how often the person has used their keyboard and mouse.

Odesk Team Viewer allows contractors to view their screenshots and remove any that they’re not happy with. When a screenshot is removed the system will deduct 15 minutes of time from that person’s worked time for the day. So the overall effect is that the software will track reasonably accurately the hours worked for that person. Odesk charge 10% of the contractors salary, so if you are not planning to actually hire a contractor through Odesk then it’s an expensive solution.

Agent Guardian
This tool has screenshot history, keystroke recording, activity updates and a representation of how much the person has used their keyboard and mouse. The cost for Agent Guardian is $15 per month per user.

Silent employee monitoring software

Webwatcher and StaffCop are a couple more example of applications that have a comprehensive set of monitoring features including: keystroke logging, email monitoring and web site monitoring. If the software is not visible and controlled by the user then it is actually an invasion of privacy in our opinion, and definitely is not suitable for work-from-home employees. It may also be illegal in your country to install monitoring software without an employee or contractors consent. As always, do your research.

What is ethical monitoring?

We believe that an employee should have access to any data that is monitored. Any employee using time tracking software should also be fully aware of what is monitored and when they are being monitored. An employee should be able to turn off monitoring at any point; If you need to send a personal email, you should be able to (…by easily disabling monitoring and then switching it back on when you go back to work). Likewise, you should be able to surf the Internet during a lunch break and not have your activities monitored. In short, tracking internet usage during designated breaks is invasion of privacy. Unfortunately most monitoring software doesn’t meet these requirements.

Different approaches to employee monitoring

Screen monitoring paints a fairly accurate picture of what a person is doing during their work hours. The biggest downside is that it can take a lot of time to review each image. It’s not a great way to see is someone is programming in a text editor, but can be useful if you want to see what a designer has been working on.

Web site monitoring and application monitoring is faster because you can easily see in one report the time spent browsing non work related web sites (although It should be combined with automatic tracking of breaks so that your team is allocated as on a break when away from the computer, or at least that you can see exactly how much time was spent on and off the computer – see Monitoring Activity below).

Keystroke monitoring is invasive for work-from-home employees in and creates greater security risks than other monitoring methods (all data entered into the keyboard is monitored).

Monitoring Activity (keyboard strokes or mouse movement) is useful to make sure someone is at their computer, but nearly useless as a way to see if someone is working effectively (some activity monitors track the amount of typing, number or mouse movements, etc). This information is most useful when combined with screen shots, but even then it’s not likely to provide any useful feedback (unless you are interested in how fast someone can type!)

Using Time Doctor as employee monitoring software

Time Doctor does have a screenshot monitoring feature. However it’s not the primary focus of our software. The software is designed for improving productivity rather than just monitoring workers. Monitoring is useful to some degree, but it’s only a part of what is needed to improve productivity.

Our software includes: priority tracking, screenshot monitoring, monitoring web sites visited and applications used on the computer and time tracking. The software automatically puts users on a break if they move away from the computer. This means that time tracked for your remote working team will be accurate. There are also project management features under development where you can quickly allocate tasks to users (faster than any existing web based project management software).

Time Doctor is currently in free public beta and we welcome you to try the software at http://www.timedoctor.com

So what’s new? Apart from a fresh design, we’re moving to a fully functional drag and drop system for managing task lists. To-Do items can now be rearranged and you can edit them in place as well as easily assign them to a Client or Project.

We’ve been working on the new design for 3-4 months now, and there are a number of new features that will be rolled out after new Task Manager is launched. The ability to schedule tasks (including repeating tasks) and the option to assign tasks to other team members (as well as view projects tasks from the desktop) are just a few of the innovations we’ll be launching in 2011.

For now, let us know what you think of the new design. Feedback and suggestions can be sent by email or by visiting http://feedback.timedoctor.com

You can post a job description, have people bid on the work, negotiate on price, and look at previous ratings and work history before settling on either a contract rate, or a pay-per hour agreement. Generally, money is escrowed (or held) by each of the websites and they release the payment to the worker when the work is complete (skimming a neat profit at the same time – typically 10-15% of money that changes hands).

So why outsource?

Vworker argues that it makes workers “More accountable”: According to Gallup Research, 54% of traditional U.S. workers “sleepwalk through their day” and an additional 18% actively sabotage other workers. Ian Ippolito (the founder of Vworker) believes that “in today’s competitive environment, that’s simply unacceptable”.

Odesk tow a similar line: “Guaranteed work. Guaranteed payment”.

In a recent interview, Ian Ippolito made the following comment: “When I hire a traditional employee, I can’t be sure they’ll do the job right, spending time at the water cooler or playing solitaire instead. But in our virtual environment, we’re proud to guarantee performance”.

The added flexibility of having to hire staff only when you need them is another reason why many businesses are turning to outsourcing. You also can get access to top quality people at a much lower rate than if you were hiring in your own country and the cost savings can be very significant….

To hire a quality programmer in California is probably going to set you back $80-$120 per hour. Using outsourced web sites you can find quality programmers in the US for $30-$40 per hour, or in India, the Philippines or Russia for $10-$15 per hour.

TIP: For more tips on how to managing a  remote worker, take a look at these 7 useful strategies for managing virtual staff – see also the 8 best collaboration tools for virtual teams

Getting started

Outsourcing  can be overwhelming at first – each of these sites uses a different system, have a different layout, and in the case of Vworker, can take days to get used to (although they’ve recently improved their website usability). Deciding on which site to use while striking the balance between competitive rates and effective results can be like walking a virtual tight rope.

As mentioned above, all of these sites will require you to:
1. Post your job.
2. Start receiving proposals from candidates.
3. Compare profiles, reviews, ratings, credentials, portfolios and price to select the best fit.  Methods of payment and working together generally vary from site to site (explained in more detail below).

We’ve outsourced work for over 10 years and our virtual team extends to several countries around the world. We’ve used these sites many times for many different projects (small and large). Here’s what we know.

Elance vs Odesk vs Vworker vs Guru vs Freelancer.com and Scriptlance

Based on Compete.com rankings these six sites are the top outsourcing sites on the Internet (at least in terms of traffic). From most to least popular:

1. Elance – Hire Online Workers. Get the Job Done.

How it works: You can hire by the hour or by the project and then track progress in your “Workroom” where you can “View and manage work-in-progress online instead of on-site. Messages, screenshots, files and completed work are automatically saved here”. One nifty feature is the ability to Invite co-workers to join your Workroom as needed.
Payments: Approve milestones or time sheets prior to making payment.
Fees: Elance deducts between 6.75% and 8.75% from each payment (depending on the project budget), transferring the remaining amount directly to the service provider’s Elance account.  In addition, there is a one-time $10 account activation fee to set up an Employer account.
Our experience: Generally higher quality providers that are bit more expensive. Probably the best option for larger jobs where you need to hire a team with strong technical skills, or if you don’t want to be bothered with mediocre providers.

2. Freelancer – Outsourcing for Small Business.

How it works: When you hire a worker you need to create payment milestones, as milestones are completed, payment is released.
Payments: based on milestones, or completed work.
Fees: Here’s where it gets messy.
Posting a project US$5 (refundable) Fully refunded on selecting a Service Provider.
Selecting a Service Provider US$3 or 3%, whatever is higher
Posting a Featured Project US$19
Hide Project from Search Engines US$3
Optional Hide Bids from Other Users US$3
Gold Membership US$24.95 per month  (0% project commissions)
Posting a Full Time Project US$99.95
Our experience: Better for project based work (one off jobs). Easy to use, and suited to smaller jobs – “The average job is under US$200, making outsourcing for the first time extremely cost effective for small businesses.

3. oDesk – Changing how the World Works.

How it works: Pay only for verified time spent working for you – Odesk’s Team Room feature allows you to see each of team members activity levels (keyboard and mouse activity), and feedback (Work diary), as well as web cams and screenshots of their computer to make workers more accountable.
Payments: based on hours worked, or completed jobs.
Fees: The oDesk fee is 10% of the employer’s payment to oDesk which equates to 11.11% on top of the amount paid to the contractor.
Our experience: great for when you have a task where you’d prefer to pay by the hour.

4. Guru – Find Freelancers at the World’s Largest Online Marketplace.

how it works: Pay for completed work.
Fees: Memberships are available from $29.95 to $99.95 per quarter.
Project Fee – Either 5 or 10% of the Invoice or Escrow amount, depending on your membership level.
Escrow Fee – 2% of the escrowed amount. Only charged when SafePay Escrow is used.
Employer Payment Method Fees – Up to 4% for a credit card payment and 2.5% for  Withdraw Method Fees – $3 to receive funds by check and $9 to receive funds by wire transfer.
Our experience: caters more to US based freelancers (182,000 workers in the US vs 51,242 in India, and only 1,887 in the Russian Federation). Working with a native English speaker is sometimes a good option when you need to be able to verbally communicate project requirements. Guru is also a good option if you are looking to work with a US based provider.

5. Vworker – More capable, accountable and affordable. Guaranteed.

How it works: pay for work  (“deliverables”) or pay for time using the AccuTime Card system which takes screenshots of the workers screens and webcams (if available).
Payments: can be made for hours completed, or can be released for milestones or as work is completed.
Fees: At the top end of the spectrum (although it’s free join and post jobs). Paying for deliverables slugs the worker with a 15% fee, although paying for time a is charged at 9%  (although this can be less when using a preferred payment method). A full list of fees is available here.
Our experience: Our preferred option – we’ve posted over 500 projects at vworker.com (formally rentacoder.com) and had mostly great results using workers in many different countries for all sorts of projects.

6. Scriptlance – Connecting business with programmers.

How it works: pay for work
Fees: Buyers can post projects and receive bids/quotes for free. Once the buyer selects a winning bid their account will be charged a flat fee of $5, which must be paid within 30 days.  Programmers are charged a $5 or 5% fee (whichever is greater) when their bid is selected as the winner for a project
Our experience: it’s ugly as hell but it’s okay when you need a script developed on the cheap. It’s mostly an Indian (and developing country) base of workers. It’s cheaper than the other sites, but we don’t use this site very often (see below – Which country to hire in).

Which site is best?

In short, it depends on the type of work that you are doing. For hourly work, oDesk is possibly the best option. For one off project based work vWorker, Guru and freelancer.com are great options as they have a process where you upload funds into escrow (giving the provider and reassurance). Disputes over completed work are usually handled swiftly – although it’s important to have a clear job description (see below – Tips for posting jobs). In our experience vWorker is best for getting project based work completed.

Guru is great if you are looking for a US based provider. With Elance the providers need to pay to be listed. This provides a bar that eliminates some of the lower quality providers. The result is that you are more likely to pay a little more, but you are also more likely to get a good end result. Scriptlance is not really recommended unless you have a small budget.

Another outsourcing site that is worth mentioning is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Strange name, but it has some great funcionality. MTurk is based on the idea of taking a job and separating it out for many different people to work on (in pieces). An interesting approach and worth checking it out if that approach fits your project requirements.

If you aren’t happy with our recommendations, you can always check out http://whichlance.com/reviews which has full list of outsourcing portals, including websites like 99designs.com where you can run design competitions and have numerous suppliers pitching for your job.

Comparing the software used to monitor paid by the hour work

If you are hiring on an hourly basis you’ll want to monitor how many hours are worked (and confirm they were actually worked). If you develop trust in someone you might not need to do this, but generally it’s hard to trust a new person that you are paying on a hourly basis that they will deliver the results you want (and /or that they aren’t just sitting around fiddling with their mouse).

Odesk has the “oDesk Team Tool” which takes screenshots of the person’s computer at regular intervals. vWorker has similar software (AccuTime Card) which records hours, screen images and takes a camera image at regular intervals using their web cam.  Both systems work well.

Time Doctor software (that’s us!) is another alternative which can be used to monitor paid by the hour workers. It’s a much more comprehensive and a more effective tool for working with remote teams and has many advantages including automated reports, time usage reports (for application and internet usage) and it doesn’t attract an ongoing fee (as the Team Tool and AccueTime Card would).

Project based work versus paying an hourly rate

Generally, you can hire either on a project basis, paying for a completed project, or on an hourly basis. Project work is generally safer for you as there is a fixed amount you need to pay to get the task complete. When you hire on an hourly rate you don’t have any reassurance of the maximum amount that you will spend. An hourly rate is more appropriate for longer term work or where you have a variety of different tasks for the person.

Tips for project based work

If you hire on a project basis make sure that you do complete and detailed specifications of the project. Exactly what do you want to happen, how will you know when it is complete. List the requirements in detail. Be careful that you select someone who has experience doing projects of a similar level of complexity. It is easy for freelancers to say yes to a project without thinking through how difficult it might be to complete (particularly if they are desperate for work).

Having someone quit halfway through a project is the worst possible outcome (and an experience we’ve have had many times). Having to start over means you lose time and money. Learn from our mistakes – see below.

Hiring an individual versus a team

On all of these sites, there are generally 2 types of workers – individuals and teams. The advantage of hiring an individual is that you know exactly who you are working with and you can get familiar with the working style of that person. If you are working long term on an hourly rate, you can negotiate lower rates if you are working directly.

You will also have more control if you are hiring a person rather than you hiring a company which has a number of employees. On the other hand a company might bring more training, synergy and an environment where people can ask for advice and direction. In our experience working with an individual is a better move especially if you are working together in the long term.

Which country should you hire in?

About 5 years ago, we worked with an online researcher and programmer based in Mumbai. Things were going so well that we asked him to set up an office for us. We paid for computers, office space, etc and wrote up some contracts for 2-3 new staff who would work under his supervision. 5 weeks later we received an email that went something like this “Hi, I am the younger cousin of ________ and he is forcing me to do work and doesn’t pay me. He threatened to stab me with a knife if I talk to you”.

Our Mumbai contact had forged receipts for office equipment, falsified personal documentation and was sitting between 2 computers pretending to be 3 different people.

In general most of our experiences with workers from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have been negative. In our experience, it’s common for freelancers to ask for bonuses before work is completed, complain that the work is taking longer than expected, ask for money, and will often create really poor excuses for not reaching milestones: rare diseases, non-existent floods, house fires and everything in between have been used to excuse under-performance.

As always, it really depends on the person. There are extremely talented people in India, however it is sometimes difficult for you to get access to them on freelance sites. We work with a designer who is Indian – he’s an illustrator and does great work and has never missed a deadline.

It’s important to look at work history carefully to make sure that past performances matches would you’d expect from a worker (and make sure their experience is in the right area). If they have multiple very high ratings on the freelance site you are more likely to be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

Other Locations

Former Soviet Union (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine etc) – a good place to find low cost, technically superb coders. Usually not the clearest communicators (or the best designers), and you’ll have more luck if you have a detailed blueprint at the beginning of a project – However,  they are generally hard workers and honest in answers to any questions you have.

Philippines – incredibily diligent workers in all areas. It’s possible to find good writers, marketers, researchers and programmers. One of the cheaper places to hire great staff.

USA / Canada / UK – excellent if you are looking for skills in a particular area, but it’s important to look at work history. We’ve had bad experiences hiring people who are new to freelancing. In general hiring someone in these places is more likely to get you a better result but is also more likely to be 2-10 times more expensive.

Graphic / Web design – don’t hire designers from South East Asia if you expect a western looking result.  South America seems to have good illustrators and Flash programmers.

Expats – hiring someone from the US or UK living in Thailand for example can be a great way to get very talented people at a lower hourly rate. Their living costs are lower and they might not find it easy to get a high paying job in their place of residence – freelancing might be an extremely appealing option. Try advertising on expat forums.

Note: In each country be aware of natural disasters, for example Typhoons can wipe out power to entire cities for a number of days in the Philippines. Political turmoil or severe heat waves can also create problems in some countries.

Tips for selecting the right worker

A common struggle with outsourcing is ending up with people that can’t get the job done or leave half way through a project. One way to overcome this problem is to hire people that have good feedback and ratings. If we are posting a complex job, we never hire anyone with less than 30 completed jobs and they must have ratings of higher than 90% (or 9 out of 10).

Another way to dissect your applicants is to avoid any generic responses. If someone hasn’t addressed your criteria in a clear and simple way, it’s probably not worth looking at their work history. You can even put a simple test in your job description like “mention the word elephant when you are replying so that I know you’ve read our job description in full”.

Kick the Tires

Although it takes a little longer, if the job is important, you should create a small test that can evaluate a person’s skills. For example when hiring a writer for my web site, I asked them to write 3 sentences for a specific page on my site. “Please look at this web page, evaluate the current content and then add another paragraph of 3-5 sentences that you think are missing on the page, and that fits with the current style of the content”.

Here’s a very good example of a short job advertisement / test by Jason Fried from 37 Signals they used to hire customer support representatives for their business.

Alternatively (especially for larger projects), hiring someone for a small-project they can do in their spare time is a lot easier for both sides to swallow. “Kick the Tires” in Getting Real talks about this:
Before we hire anyone we give them a small project to chew on first. We see how they handle the project, how they communicate, how they work, etc. Working with someone as they design or code a few screens will give you a ton of insight. You’ll learn pretty quickly whether or not the right vibe is there. Scheduling can be tough for this sort of thing but even if it’s for just 20 or 40 hours, it’s better than nothing. If it’s a good or bad fit, it will be obvious.

It’s also a good idea to think hard about what you’re offering and how you can make your situation as attractive as possible – Flexible hours, bonuses for work complete before deadlines and any other sweeteners will help attract a great pool of workers to select from.

The most common frustration is in not getting the output that you desire out of the contractor. Another potential problem is needing to spend a lot of time back and forth training the person or fixing issues with their work. Here are a few pointers for overcoming these and other challenges:

• Hire people with a lot of great feedback.
• Test many different people, possibly using several different outsourcing sites.
• After testing, select the best few people and hire all of them. Then start working with these few different people on test projects and continue working long term with the ones that produce the best results.

Really it’s a matter of trial and error to a large degree, and once you work with dozens of people you will find a few who always come through for you and whom you can depend on. Over time you’ll develop a list of preferred contractors that you can contact for work that you know they can deliver.

What can you outsource with these sites?

Theoretically you can outsource anything. Looking at the types of work listed in Odesk for example there is: programming, web design, writing, sales, customer support even legal work or accounting. VWorker has over 50 categories ranging from “Travel Plans” to “Order processing” and “Business plans and marketing strategy”. In practice the more specialized and complex the task, the more difficult it is to find the right person on one of these sites.

Hiring staff directly vs Using an outsourcing site

Outsourcing sites are best for finding people to do project based work. If you want a longer term full time person you might want to try hiring them directly. Target the country or area where you are most likely to find the right staff. Then use a multi-pronged recruitment method including: posting in job sites, linked in, posting in relevant forums and referrals from people in your network.

Recruiting remote staff (in your own country or abroad) is really no different to recruiting locally. All of the same hiring and firing principles apply.

In the US, Craigslist, Linkedin, Monster are good ways to advertise for people. Sometimes you can get better results from word of month, from advertising on Facebook or from advertising or relevant forums or industry specific web sites. For example if you are recruiting Java programmers, there are a number of Java forum web sites where you can advertise for free or for a small fee. This helps you to go direct to the place where your target employees are hanging out. You can do the same thing with Linked in.
Recruiting overseas in the Philippines, Russia, India etc is similar. You can use Facebook, Linked in or local job websites to recruit in all of these places. For example to recruit in the Philippines you can use: http://www.gopinoy.com, http://www.bestjobs.ph – in Romania, there are English language job websites like http://www.bestjobs.ro. In general it’s not hard to find popular job sites any country and posting a job add is usually $50 to $100.
In other developed countries you will find sites like http://www.gumtree.com.au (Australia) where you can advertise jobs for free (or find people looking for work). Similarly, in the U.K. Where the job market is tight you can find highly skilled travelers who might be interested in any sort of work (try the jobs section in http://www.tntmagazine.com/).

10 Tips for posting projects requirements

1. Write your description as if you are explaining them to a 10 year old child
2. Set clear milestones if you want use them for payments
3. Ask someone else to read your project description before uploading it – sometimes things that make sense to you will make no sense at all to someone who has no involvement with your project or company
4. Invite workers who have matching experience. For instance, if you are looking for Joomla help, search for workers with Joomla experience and good ratings. Sort them by the by the last sign in date and then invite them to your project.
5. If you are worried about protecting your intellectual property or idea, create an NDA and make sure you are exchanging it with a real entity. Make your terms and conditions reasonable (most of these sites have a standard NDA you can modify).
6. If you don’t want to draw attention to what you are doing, keep your job description vague and discuss details only with parties you are interested in working with.
7. Post the majority of your job description in an attachment and leave a small “test” to make sure the person has read the description (for example, mentioning a particular word or asking them to address 2-3 key criteria).
8. Use a service like gomockingbird.com to clearly outline your ideas in a visual medium
9. Make your project sound exciting and include that it will look good in any portfolio
10. Post your job to specific geographic regions depending upon the sort of worker you are looking for

Update: Staff.com for hiring long term full time workers

Staff.com is a new site with the same owners as Time Doctor. We are launching in early 2012 and are focussed on finding top quality talented people at reasonable salaries, and only for long term work (not for projects or short term work). Check us out and send any feedback you have.

Some of the feature suggestions are already underway, while others are on the back burner while we finish off some of the more important tasks at hand (namely, making sure that Time Doctor is bug free and water tight). For instance, we’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes code re-factoring to try and make things run more smoothly.

Anyhow, our feedback forum is live (powered by User Voice). Please vote, or post your suggestions so other people can vote on them. We’re providing Time Doctor free of charge, so it would be great if you can give a little back – a few minutes of your time is all that we ask.

Please visit http://feedback.timedoctor.com

So what’s new?
The biggest change is the ability to view and assign tasks for each of your team members. Select a team member and you can easily view the hours worked, the current top priorities and any recently completed tasks (as well as the task they are currently working on).

If you have a new task, or a change to an existing task, you can now make changes from the dashboard which will update each team members desktop Task Manager. Assigning tasks directly like this has many advantages – primarily that it saves time by avoiding email. As we roll out new design features for the desktop app, users will be able to see when new tasks have been assigned and by who.

From the new dashboard, managers can also see which team members are online, who’s on a break and also view and edit the tasks for users who aren’t online (tasks will sync with the server as soon as they start work).

This is just one of many new features we’ll be launching in the next few months. Next up, time tracking for clients and projects, and a time usage tab which will show you exactly how your staff are spending time on the computer.

Trying to make a decision about which project management or collaboration software to use for your business?

Take a look at the list (and table) below. We’ve put the most popular hosted software options under the microscope by comparing must-haves and other essential features (including mobile compatibility, price, and more).

We love (and use) Basecamp for its mind-bending simplicity, but it still leaves much to the imagination. Incidentally, there’s a full list of collaboration tools we use to manage remote teams on our blog here.

Here are the contenders:

(Listed in descending order from most popular to least popular based on Alexa rankings).

Basecamp –  simple to use and very popular. One of many popular products that flys under the 37 Signals banner.
Zoho Projects – a wide range of applications available on top of project management including CRM, calendar, chat and a wiki. Over 3 million users.
Freshbooks – a very popular invoicing application that includes time tracking, task and project management. Over 2 million users.
Central Desktop – 425,000 users, includes real time integration between Microsoft office and the central workspace.
Manymoon – A project management tool focused on integration with Google Apps, recently purchased by Salesforce.
Deskaway – includes timesheets, calendar, contacts and a micro-blogging status update feature.
Smartsheet – project management, CRM and other features based around using online spreadsheets.
5pm – very colorful interface, and lots of features including time tracking, contacts and an iPhone app.
Teamworkpm – includes time tracking, contacts and calendar.
activeCollab – includes invoicing, time tracking and email reports.
Ace Project – some HR and expense management features.
Teambox – includes a twitter style updates feature.
Feng office – includes time tracking, calendar and contacts.
Huddle – integrates with Microsoft office so you can save Microsoft files directly to a shared workspace.
Comindwork – includes Gantt charts, and a business wiki.
Nozbe – project management based around the David Allen “Getting Things Done” methodology.
Harvest – focused on invoicing and time tracking, a competitor to Freshbooks.
Wrike – some unique features such as the ability to create and update tasks via email and timeline view of project plans.
Goplan – includes a twitter like activity stream.
EGroupware – Consists of multiple installable applications and includes a calendar app, address book, eMail, project management, timesheet and others.
Clarizen – many features including budgeting, billing, Gantt charts.
Hyperoffice – has a hosted email service and contact management.
LiquidPlanner – project scheduling, time tracking and lots of graphs and analysis.
Severa – includes CRM and invoicing.

And here are a few more hopefuls:

TeamWork Live, Nirvana, Projectplace, Intervals, ProWorkflow, Teamly, Glasscubes, Copper, Workspace, Tenrox, Journyx, Clientspot, Vertabase, Celoxis, 24sevenoffice, Project Spaces, PlanDone, Teameffect., Attask.

Some notes about this list

This is only hosted SaaS online project management software. There are other open source projects however these will not be hosted set and forget solutions (you have to install them yourself), so we haven’t included them on this list. We have also not included products more focused on CRM or products that are more bug tracking focused such as Jira. We also excluded sites that did not have their pricing listed on the site. We know that the ranking of sites is not completely accurate, but it’s the best we could find. Compete or Quantcast are other alternatives for ranking sites but we decided to use Alexa.

Project management software comparison table

We have started an open Google document with a list of all SaaS project management providers here. Please add any project management software that you feel is missing on this list.

Software tools designed to replace the “benefits” of an office

There are several perceived and real benefits of an office environment versus working virtually. Let’s take a look at these and see how virtual office software tries to compensate and provide enough of these benefits to enable staff to work from home effectively:

1. Face to face communication – working in an office environment enables communication and collaboration to take place face to face.
2. Better collaboration – the fact that employees are sitting next to each other can help to improve collaboration and teamwork.
3. Attendance and time management – ensuring that staff actually turn up to work on time and are working (not watching TV in the living room). This lack of management trust that staff will actually be working is a significant reason that companies are less likely to allow staff to telecommute.

Lets take a look at some of the software that can be used to create an online virtual office and provide these same benefits of a real office space.

Replacing face-to-face communication

There are several free software tools that can be used for video chat as a way to replace face-to-face communication. Skype has a video chat facility including a team video chat room that allows team members to chat for free over the Internet. Oovoo is another paid option that claims to be higher quality than Skype.

There are also many web meeting and screen sharing technologies that can help members to see each others’ computer screen and so simulate being in the office together discussing and demonstrating something on the computer. This technology can also be used by technical support staff to troubleshoot problems with another person’s PC, or provide trainings. These technologies include: Yuuguu, Team Viewer, Dimdim, Show My Pc, Mikogo, GoToMeeting, Yugma and WebEx.

Collaboration software

How can you use software to help with collaboration in a virtual office environment? There are many online software tools designed to improve collaboration and help teams to communicate more effectively

Firstly there are project management tools such as Basecamp, Wrike and Central Desktop. A different approach is to try to use software that is similar to Twitter in that each team member posts their updates, and it appears as an activity stream. An example is Yammer. It’s difficult to say which approach is best for you until you have tried them and see how it works in your company.

Attendance and Time Management

At the end of the day, one of the major reasons why companies maintain an office is to make sure that staff turn up to work each day and work a solid 8 hour work day. In a virtual office environment it is difficult for managers to know if staff are really there, and know what they are actually working on. Are they working or just sitting in front of the television? There are a few different approaches to this problem, but one of the issues is that employee monitoring software is usually not specifically designed for a virtual office environment. In fact this type of virtual office monitoring software is usually focused more on keystroke monitoring or other intrusive ways to monitor workers. The problem with this strategy is that it is highly likely not to be accepted especially when a person is working from home using their own home computer. They certainly do not want to have everything they say and do monitored, and in fact it is illegal to do monitor in some jurisdictions, especially if private communications are monitored.

Time Doctor is software that is specifically designed for this purpose – managing a virtual team and making sure that managers knows what team members are working on. Time Doctor helps to make sure that all team members are working and this software will create a “virtual office” for your business. Here are some of the features of this virtual office software:

1. Recording the exact hours worked by team members.
2. Multiple non-invasive methods of ensuring that the person is really working the hours they say they are. These methods include: tracking web sites visited and applications used on their computer only whilst working, automatically allocating the person on a break if they move off their computer when they say they are working on the computer and optionally screenshots of the persons screen every few minutes (this method is more invasive and actually is not necessary for most companies).
3. Record the activities of each team member, and show the manager exactly how long they worked on each activity.
4. You can view at any time who is online and working and exactly what they are working on.

Try Time Doctor software as a solution to create your virtual office. Using this software you can be sure that your team members will work just as if you had a real office.

Time Doctor http://www.timedoctor.com

Refog is really purely a monitoring program. Time Doctor is focused on improving the time management of a team with enough monitoring to make sure that a person is really working. Time Doctor also tries to strike a balance by not being too intrusive in what is being monitored versus making sure that management have enough information to make sure that staff are actually working.

Screenshots, Web History and Key Logging

Screenshots are provided by both Time Doctor and Refog. Actually in Time Doctor they are an option and not a standard feature as we don’t believe it’s necessary in most work places.

Web history is provided in both Time Doctor and Refog. Time Doctor however takes quite a different approach to Refog in analyzing the information. As an employer you don’t really want to spend a long time reviewing a list of every single web site that an employee visits. You just want to make sure they are not spending 1 hour each day on Facebook. So Time Doctor provides a simple report once per week that tells you all the web sites visited in the prior week for over 10 minutes. This gives you the important information you need without getting bogged down in the details of reviewing every single web site. It also allows a little error room for employees in case they have Facebook active for on a minute or two during the week. Applications are provided as categories of time use in Time Doctor as well, so you can see if the person has been spending time on computer programs that are not work related.

Key Logging is not provided by Time Doctor. If you require this feature then you will need to use a program like Refog or another similar application. We feel that key logging is too intrusive and not necessary in most organizations. Employees need to know that they are being watched enough to not spend a lot of time on time wasting activities, but the Refog keylogger feature is probably the most “big brother” and intrusive you can get with every email, every chat logged by an employer. There are many employees who would not work under this type of environment and there are some downsides to such intrusive monitoring including the additional security concerns of having all of this personal data sent to management and the central server. Also there is the time wasted in monitoring and reviewing this information.

Work from home versus computers in an office

Refog is designed for an office environment, and monitors all activity on the computer it is installed on. Time Doctor operates in a very different way, only monitoring when the person is working. This means that it is possible for employees to use Time Doctor on a home computer, as it does not record anything when they are on a break or not working. Perhaps you might think staff can simply go on a break and then do anything they want at that time. Yes that is exactly the point. On a break staff can do whatever they want, however their work hours are not being recorded, and if you are paying the person based on the hours of the software, less pay at the end of each month.

Two very different approaches for monitoring employees

Refog is designed really to log as much as possible, and to monitor all activities, silently, all the time on each computer in an organization. For some companies that are actually trying to look for corporate espionage or truly to spy on employees, then this type of software is needed.

Time Doctor on the other hand is designed for time management. The monitoring is there to make sure that employees are effective at work, but it’s fundamentally just to make sure that staff are productive. Also there are a number of other time management features in addition to the monitoring. One of the major benefits of Time Doctor is that you can record the exact hours worked by staff members. If they are doing computer work and then get up from their computer for a few minutes, they are automatically recorded as on a break. This feature and a number of other features make sure that time tracking is accurate. This means that staff are truly working the hours that they say they are working. This is an additional way to improve time management in an organization that is actually more effective than simple monitoring. In addition Time Doctor helps to keep staff members focused on their priority tasks and record how much time they spend on these priority items. Time Doctor is packed with other features that are specifically designed to improve time management for employees.

So that gives you a comparison of Refog Employee Monitor and Time Doctor, you can download these applications here:

http://www.refog.com

http://www.timedoctor.com

oDesk also has a very handy set of evaluation tests which help to quickly review potential applicants. The “oDesk Team Tool” is used to track team members working hours (with screen shots and activity tracking to make sure that employees are accurately recording their hours worked).

While there are huge number of benefits to using a platform like oDesk, there aren’t  a lot of options for employers who are hiring staff that aren’t registered with oDesk. There’s also the matter of the 10% fee – For a full time staff member in the US (with a salary of $5,000 per month), a fee of $500 per month isn’t feasible or realistic.

Time Doctor is very different to the oDesk platform, however it does offer a unique alternative to the oDesk team tool and it can be used by anyone, for any type of workforce (including telecommuters, office staff, or  remote teams). If you have staff outside of the oDesk platform and are looking for software like oDesk you might find Time Doctor a useful alternative.

Feature Comparison – oDesk Team Tool vs Time Doctor

Screen shot features and web cams
On Odesk  screen captures are taken every 15 minutes, and  are viewed by workers as they are taken. This is great for the worker as they can easily remove the image if they were not working at that time. If they remove a screen shot their time will not be recorded for that period. Additionally, oDesk enables employers to view their employees via a web camera.

The Time Doctor system has screen shots as an option, although it’s usually not necessary for most users as there are several other features to confirm that a person is working (such as recording web sites visited and applications used). Time Doctor allows managers to change how frequently the screen shots are taken. It also allow  you to download all the captures to your desktop so that you can view them quickly after downloading. It does not include any web cam features.

Activity and Task Time Tracking
Activity tracking on oDesk is done via notes every few minutes where you enter the latest activity. Time Doctor takes a different approach where staff members have a list of their daily top priorities  and then they simply click on the priority that they are working on. In this way, Time Doctor allows real time tracking of all activities, including the exact start and finish time of an activity (instead of tracking broad categories of work).

Odesk has the ability to view an “activity meter” which shows how much the person used their mouse and keyboard during each 15 minute time slot. Time Doctor does not have a similar feature, however it will automatically allocate a worker as “on a break” if they are away from their computer for more than 3 minutes. There are also options for the person to track time off their computer (meetings, phone calls, etc) which you can’t do with the oDesk Team tool.

Time Doctor Features
Time Doctor has some additional features which include tracking web sites visited and applications used (tracked the entire time while working, but not when a person is on a break). Time Doctor also provides daily reports of exactly how long a person worked on each task and what their planned priorities are for the next day.

Probably the greatest advantage of using Time Doctor over the oDesk Team tool is that it can be used by organization of any size with staff anywhere in the world; the platform contains a number of user management features and enhanced reports to help streamline daily management tasks. In terms of time tracking software used to manage contractors working from home,  there is nothing that we have found that can comprehensively track time worked and monitor if the person is really working as well as Time Doctor.

At the time of writing, Time Doctor is free to try – a commercial product will be available mid 2011 with a tentative price point of 15 to 20 cents per hour tracked (depending on the size of the organization).

If you are interested in finding or hiring remote staff read this article on how to manage an overseas remote working team.

If you are considering other software, please contact us and we’ll let you know how it weighs in.

At Time Doctor, we work with completely virtual teams in over nine countries. Along the way, we’ve come up with seven strategies that work in our business when managing a virtual team.

1.    Know what your team members are working on

It’s important that your team members not work in isolation. They should always be aware of what their teammates have to do. This encourages collaboration when needed, and also gives workers a “big picture” that motivates them to accomplish smaller tasks.

It’s vital, of course,  that managers are aware of what team members are accomplishing each day. This can consist of a simple daily report covering what was worked on and what the top priorities are for the next day.

2.    Communicate often and effectively

There are many ways to communicate between virtual team members, and it’s important to choose the right method, depending on what needs to be said. If you are discussing an emotional issue, it is best to talk over the phone rather than a text chat or email. The ideal method of handling emotional issues are in-person meetings, but that’s often not possible.

Also, if you find that an email communication keeps going back and forth, it might be more effective to convert that into a phone meeting. A company policy of writing brief emails is useful for increasing productivity in your virtual team. Short emails save the time of both parties and force the writer to get straight to the point.

3.    Track your team members’ productivity and goals

This is important for any team, but especially so when managing a virtual one. You need to have clear benchmarks for what productivity means for each person. You should track outcomes and set minimum standards on an individual basis. It’s almost always more effective when team members set and commit to their own goals, rather than having outcomes dictated by management.

4.    Deal with issues related to the lack of face-to-face contact.

Working remotely can be isolating – how do you combat that feeling of isolation? Do whatever you can to provide some level of connection and camaraderie among the team. If possible, organize regular in-person social meetings with team members. If it’s not possible to meet in person, try virtual alternatives.

Call team members on their birthdays. Send something personal to your team members, such as a photo card with each member of the team. It’s important to compensate where you can when you don’t have face-to-face relationships.

5.    Prevent distractions for team members working remotely

One of the great advantages of team members working remotely is that you automatically remove the distractions that come with an office environment. However, working remotely can come with distractions of it’s own, and it’s crucial that team members are not overly burdened by them – dogs’ barking, constant demands from children, unstable Internet access etc.

Confirm with staff members the details of their work environment. Is it a private area? What hours they will be working, and what sort of distractions might arise? Preferably, they should have a computer that is used for work only. Any communication tools on their computer such as Skype should be set up only for discussion with work contacts and not with their friends.

6.    Confirm that each staff member is suited to working from home

Some people enjoy working from home or multiple locations, while others cannot cope with this type of arrangement at all. It depends on a few different factors such as their level of discipline, their need to connect in person with others while working, and their ability to complete projects independently.

While some people love it, others are not going do well in a work-from-home situation, so it’s important to know that it’s not for everyone.

7.    Track attendance and time worked

In a such a flexible environment, it’s difficult for a manager to actually know how many hours team members are working or even if they are working at all. If you are paying only for performance, you might not care as much, but if you are paying hourly you generally want to know if staff are working the hours you pay them for. When working from home, they could easily have a job on the side, they could be distracted by their partner, children, or just generally unable to focus.

Of course, if you are happy with their results you may not care if they slept in for 3 hours or if they are watching TV while they work. However, there is often a gray area where you can’t know or track immediately the results a person is achieving, and that’s when it’s valuable to take a closer look. Time Doctor Software is perfectly suited to this purpose;

All activities are tracked in real time, and there are options to confirm that a person is working, such as seeing a list of all web sites and applications used. Plus, if the person stops using the computer, it automatically puts them on a break, which is an extra confirmation that the time they track is accurate.

To read more about Time Doctor, and it’s benefits for managing remote teams or to try it for free – please visit www.timedoctor.com. Also if you are looking to hire talented people anywhere in the world check out our sister site www.staff.com.

With Time Doctor you know that your team is really working even when you are not there. Even if your team are working from multiple locations around the world. You know exactly how long each person has worked. The software records web sites visited and applications used so that you can be sure staff are not wasting time. You will also be able to assign tasks to team members and know if they actually worked on these tasks or not (this is a feature we are launching soon).

So may not be able to manage all aspects of your business with just 5 minutes, but you can review reports from team members on what they accomplished, to make sure they are on track. And with Time Doctor you know that your team is really working effectively. As a manager that saves you a lot of time.

We are thinking to charge $5 per month for individual users and $15-25 per user for organizations. We intend to launch a full version of the product in mid to late 2011 which will contain a number of major enhancements.

We don’t intend to launch the product until we are 100% convinced that it is at least two times better, faster and more useful than any other time management, project management or task management app for organizations.

Additionally, there will also be some discounts available to Beta testers who have provided us feedback and stuck with us during this initial development period.

We are truly committed to making Time Doctor absolutely amazing as a productivity tool -  We’re not quite there yet, and we need your ideas and feedback.

To start using Time Doctor – click here

To read more about how we protect your privacy and confidential information – click here

It also sends Web Site Usage Reports once a week outlining all application and website usage for each week for you and your staff (a great feature for businesses and individuals who want to find out how more about how they spend their time).

2. Time Doctor reduces multitasking
For most tasks multitasking is an ineffective way to work, especially those tasks which require a high degree of concentration. Time Doctor helps its users keep focused on their current task while preventing outside distractions. The activity bar is a constant reminder of what you are working on right now (and how much time you’ve spent on it).

3. Time Doctor helps you focus on your priorities
One very simple, but perhaps the most powerful principle of time management is to focus on your most important tasks. Time Doctor helps you to be constantly aware of your top priorities for the day and keep you focused on these tasks.

4. Time Doctor tracks every second of your activities in real time

In our opinion most other time tracking software is flawed, and only Time Doctor is able to track effectively all of your activities in real time. This kind of real time tracking is the only way to effectively track because it’s impossible to accurately remember at the end of each day exactly how long you worked on each task. 

Tracking in “real time” is essential to get an accurate picture of where time is spent. This kind of real time tracking also has other advantages; for instance, it helps you to be more aware of distractions and you can also see clearly how long each activity is taking.

5. Time Doctor encourages better communication within your team
Typically, other project collaboration systems work by creating a list of tasks for each person. This usually fine, except that often the tasks descriptions listed don’t really match what is taking place in real life. 

Another problem (especially in larger organizations), is that tasks can remain on the system for months without anyone looking at them.

Time Doctor works differently; because user tasks lists are focused around what is being worked on at any moment in time – your tasks and priorities are nearly impossible to lose track of. Optional screen captures can also verify exactly what is taking place on screen – managers can easily see if the work taking places matches the task description (with great accuracy). 

Additionally, managers receive daily reports of where time has been spent, what tasks have been completed and what their team’s top priorities are. Managers who use Time Doctor will always have their finger on the pulse (with next to no effort).

6. Time Doctor helps to improve email productivity
Time Doctor keeps sends weekly application usage reports so that you and everyone in your team will be aware of how much time they spend on email and chat each week. 

At the time of writing, we also have a new feature in the pipeline which records how many times you check your email each day. This helps to overcome problems such as “email addiction” (checking email multiple times through the day). In most types of work it is better to check email in focused batches rather than many times throughout the day. Time Doctor helps inbox addicts break their habit.

7. Time Doctor will help you spend less time “working”
Most people think that they work hard. However when you examine the reality of how much actual work was done, it’s often not as much as you think. What seems like a 50 hour week is 30 hours of real work, and 20 hours of wasted time. As you begin to measure what you actually do, you can cut down on the wasted time, and continue with your real work. The net effect? Achieve the same result with less hours worked. Working effectively is not about working more hours, but about getting more done with less effort.

Google docs – provides free online spreadsheets and document management with a Gmail/Google Account. The spreadsheet feature is particularly useful when you need to have multiple people working on the same spreadsheet at the same time (something you can’t do with Dropbox). It doesn’t have all of the features of  Excel, but it’s very useful for collaborative editing of documents (including text files).  You can use Google Docs effectively as a company “wiki” where anyone in the company is able to add any information to the document.

How we use Google Docs: Domain management, financial reports, feature suggestion lists, payroll coverage, performance appraisals, ranking reports, login information, directory lists and online resources.

Jing Project – This is a fantastic free collaboration tool  (although you need to pay for some  features). It allows you to take a screen or video capture of anything on your desktop. Screen captures can be easily annotated, and you can record your voice along with any video to easily explain something.  You can upload the capture to Screencast.com and they’ll turn it into a simple link where anyone can view the capture. This is perfect for communicating with designers for example when you wish to write comments and explain to a designer what needs to be changed. Here is an example: http://screencast.com/t/GuTz0hjDteI

How we use Jing: communicating with designers and developers, creating training and instructional videos for induction, walk-throughs when screen sharing isn’t an option because of different time zones.

Skype – if you’d told someone you’d be able to have a meeting with five different in different countries 20 years ago it would have seemed like an absurd notion (particularly for if you mentioned that it was free). Skype is now common place and has become the standard for voice calls over the internet (as well as chat, video conferencing and file transfers). It’s free to use across a number of devices, including iPhones, Nokia, Symbian and just about every operating system known to man. More than 520 million people worldwide use Skype – if you haven’t joined the party yet, you should download it and create an account today.

If you’re an existing user and chat or video conferencing is part of  your business, you might want to think about how to make your Skype usage more productive; Firstly you want to make sure that team members are not distracted by messages from friends. So consider a policy where all team members have separate Skype accounts for work, and the rule to only use this account with work contacts. Also if a text chat discussion starts going past a few sentences at a time, it’s usually faster to switch to a quick phone call and discuss thing the old fashioned way. Note: we are working on some specific productivity features for Skype which will give you reports of how long you chatted on Skype each week and with which people.

How we use Skype: Training, quick questions to other team members, all of our phone calls (including to clients), video conferencing, daily meetings for our development team, simple screen sharing.

Screen sharing technology -  Skype allows you to share your screen to another user, and Jing allows to record your screen – If you need something extra, there are some great screen sharing technologies around which are perfect for technical support or sharing information that needs a visual demonstration on a person’s computer screen. There are several companies that provide this technology, the ones we recommend to try are: Yuuguu , Team Viewer and Dimdim.

Drop Box – Is one of those ideas that’s so simple you can’t help but wonder why you didn’t invent it yourself.  It makes file sharing a breeze and nearly guarantees that you’ll never need a USB storage device ever again.   Whenever you add something to your Dropbox folder it will automatically update to the other people that you shared the folder with (or another computer that you might use at home). As an alternative to Google Docs for example you can put an excel spreadsheet in here and then when one person makes a change to the spreadsheet and saves the changes it will be available to others with the shared folder (Google docs however is better for simultaneous edits where two people are editing the spreadsheet at the same time). With Drop Box if there are simultaneous edits, two separate versions are created and you then have to manually edit and combine the two documents.

How we use Dropbox: sharing training materials, files, sharing files with clients, backing up documents, images, passwords, accessing files from multiple computers.

Mantis – is an online bug tracking script (free under GNU) – It’s a great way to record and log any bugs, improvements or feature requests – it’s designed for development teams but you could probably use it for any issue management collaboration where teams are involved.  For a fee bit of software it has an impressive feature list. You need your own server to install and use Mantis.

How we use Mantis: Bug tracking, feature requests – We use Zendesk for our support tickets and knowledge base, Snapabug to for instant chat, issues are forwarded to Zendesk using the API and anything that needs to be fixed ends up on Mantis.

Freshbooks –  is simple to setup and is probably the most widely used web based invoicing application. Freshbooks has a neat feature set and allows your staff to manage and add time to a company invoice. It also has some neat add-ons like Basecamp integration. We have plans to integrate Time Doctor with Freshbooks with in the next 6 months, and it will automatically sync clients and projects between the 2 platforms.  Not really a “team collaboration tool” but a great tool for business.

How we use Freshbooks: invoicing clients, managing billable timesheets, creating estimates.

Basecamp –  is an online collaboration tool which can be used to effectively manage projects, tasks lists and team communication. It takes a very nuts and bolt approach to optimizing workflow and is far less complicated than many of their main competitors like Central Desktop. There’s an increasing number of new collaboration tools that are similar to Basecamp – most of them are hit and miss or get bogged down because of feature overkill.

How we use Basecamp: managing tasks assignment, managing projects, communication and team spaces. We are using Basecamp mainly for internal messages and discussion now as Time Doctor (see below) effectively manages most tasks and do lists.

Time Doctor – Last but not least  -  think of it as the infrastructure for your virtual business. It’s like having a “virtual office”  and fills in the gaps that other applications seem to have forgotten about.

You can use Time Doctor for time personal and team time tracking  so that you know exactly what everyone is working on and how long they are spending on these activities. It increases productivity of a virtual team in multiple ways , and helps to prevent productivity problems such as personal Internet use during work hours.  Time Doctor can also be used for monitoring attendance, which is sometimes difficult with a virtual team.

Time Doctor is a great tool for collaboration in virtual teams because it helps managers and team mates to know at all times what other team members are working on. Daily reports to managers show the top priorities of their team and the tasks accomplished in the previous day.

How we use Time Doctor: Managing to do lists, managing attendance, automatic time sheets, website monitoring, application usage monitoring, automated daily reports, improving productivity.

As Time Doctor users would know, distraction free work can happen anywhere…

This problem is HUGE. Wasted time at work is one of, if not the most important challenge facing companies all over the world. The cost to business each year is in the billions.

In an their annual “Wasting Time at Work” survey, Salary.com found that sixty-four percent of respondents report wasting one hour or less each day, 22% waste approximately 2 hours daily, and 14% waste 3 or more hours each workday. Personal Internet use topped the list as the leading time-wasting activity according to 48 percent of respondents.

More recently, a UK based employment site MyJobGroup.co.uk surveyed 1,000 British workers and found that almost 6 percent of them spent over an hour a day using social media of some kind, including Facebook. This is roughly one-eighth of their workday. By extension, about 2 million of Britain’s 34-million-person workforce likely were doing the same, costing the British economy about 14 billion pounds in lost productivity.

So how are businesses waging war against wasted time and cyber-slacking?  Banning internet usage, or certain sites or monitoring internet activity are some of the more typical  approaches used in corporate Internet monitoring – all of these methods are flawed;

Banning the Internet at work – this is obviously not going to be effective in most work places as the Internet is essential for nearly all business at some level.

Banning certain web sites such as Facebook – this is also not a good approach for several reasons. Firstly the ban is not likely to be comprehensive (Facebook isn’t the only website that wastes time). Secondly the person may need to use social media sites for work purposes. Thirdly it  doesn’t allow staff to use the Internet for personal reasons during their lunch break for example.

Monitoring employee internet activity – this also not effective for a few reasons. For starters, it is more and more common for workers to spend part of their day on their home computer, their laptop or to work remotely, whilst on the train etc. Also even if Internet is monitored on their work computer, staff can most likely browse the Internet on their iPhone or another portable device.

A different approach to managing personal internet usage at work

Time Doctor is more effective than other employee internet monitoring software options and has a completely unique approach.

In essence, Time Doctor monitors the web sites visited during work hours only and then sends this information to the manager and the employee in a simple weekly report into their email. There are several advantages to monitoring employee Internet usage this way:

1. It’s a very simple weekly email report with all the websites included in one email. This information can be used for improvements in productivity, not just to prevent personal internet use at work. The report is very easy to read, and only needs to be reviewed once per week so it doesn’t take long for management to review it.

2. This method works ONLY when the person is working, and not when they are on a break. It means that the person can use the Internet for personal reasons during their lunch break and it won’t be recorded.

3. This method can be used for remote working employees on the person’s home computer. As there is the ability to use any personal websites when not working, the software can be used on personal computers as it is totally inactive when the person is “on a break”.

4. Time Doctor also will proactively remind staff not to use potentially non work related web sites during working hours. For example if the person says they are working on “accounting task” and they visit Facebook it will pop up and ask – are you still working on “accounting task”? This means the person will be reminded that they shouldn’t be using  Facebook, but they still have the option to if it’s work related.

5. The weekly report of Internet Usage focuses on only websites that were used more than 10 minutes during that week. This is important so that management are focusing on the big details, and are not worried about an employee visiting Facebook for only 30 seconds during that entire week (This is 10 minutes of cumulative time during the week).

6. Time Doctor has a number of other benefits especially recording the exact use of time for staff members which means that employees and management are aware of where time was spent.

7. So other than being used to track employee internet usage, Time Doctor will help in a multitude of other ways to improvement the staff member’s time management skills.

To try Time Doctor for Free (in BETA mode) go to TimeDoctor.com

If you’ve answered YES to either of these questions, it’s more than likely that you’re fully aware of how problematic time tracking can be.  Most options (with or without time tracking software) rely on user input, and more importantly, an honest account of how work time has been spent.

Forcing staff to complete time sheets or report time spent on particular tasks will never work with any degree of accuracy.  Here’s why;

1. Real time tracking is not the standard

Popular web based software tools that companies use for tracking time include Basecamp, Harvest, Freshbooks, Wrike (… and there are dozens of others). They all have one thing in common; they rely on the user to estimate from memory how much time they worked on an item. This guesswork is not likely to be accurate as the activities are not tracked in real time.

Some of these software solutions do offer “real time” tracking (html windows, desktop software and even iPhone apps). However the real time tracking is not the standard way of using the application and it’s all too easy for staff members to resort to estimating how long they spent on an item.

Relying on people to correctly “guess” how long they worked on each item is the most important reason why time tracking reports are vastly inaccurate.

2. There’s no way to distinguish between time added “manually”

Some applications such as Toggl do use real time tracking as the standard or default way to track time. However, in the time tracking reports there is no way to distinguish between time that is tracked “real time” and time that is just added manually (adjustments made after the fact).

Real time tracking is the ONLY way to get generate real reports and time sheets. If you have no idea what time was tracked real time and what time has been manually added, you have no idea if the time tracking is accurate or not.

3. Tracked time is not allocated to a specific block of time

It seems blindingly obvious, BUT when a staff member works on something for 2 hours for example from 1pm to 3pm, that 2 hour work block should be allocated to the specific time in the day (1-3pm), and it should be IMPOSSIBLE to allocate another 2 hour block of time to this time period.

Bizarrely, 95% of web based time tracking applications will allow you to do this.

Workers can theoretically divide themselves into 2 people and work on 2 separate things at the same time.  While this would be possible in The Matrix, in the real world, most people are unable to clone themselves.

4. There’s no way to check what the person is really doing

Short of standing on top of someone while they work, most time tracking solutions don’t offer any way to verify exactly what a worker has been working on. Rescue Time is one application which purports to accurately track time spent working. While it does track application and web site usage, it’s really guess work. Other applications seem to have completely forgotten about this all together.

5. People forget to track their time

Real time tracking relies on the user entering the details of the task they are working on, as they are working.  This approach could work if each and every user is completely vigilant about tracking each and every minute of time spent working.

Unless prompted, most people will never remember to track their time, or enter the task they are working on. What usually happens is that people forget to track their time and they’ll end up spending more time trying “guess” what they did during the day, at the end of the day (refer to points 1,2,3 and 4 above).

Time Tracking that works

Time Doctor eliminates ALL of the flaws listed above AND it has several unique features designed to ensure that time tracking is accurate;

An example, if a person is working on a particular task, and they decide to start chatting on Facebook instead of the task they’ve specified, Time Doctor will ask the person if they are actually working. Features like this reduces the amount of personal Internet use at work.

Like Rescue Time, Time Doctor also records the websites visited and applications used and then presents this data in a simple weekly report – this creates an accurate picture of time use (alongside daily reports that include tasks worked on, tasks completed and time spent on each task).

If a worker stops using their computer, Time Doctor will, after a while, automatically stop tracking time – breaks, as well as time spent working, are tracked to the minute (although, users can still track time spent off the computer at the click of a button).

Time Doctor will also remind the person when they come back to the computer to start tracking time again, as well as asking what task they are working on. Everything is tracked in real time and it is impossible to allocate two activities to the same time slot  (even when adding time manually). It even works when there is no Internet connection available.

All of these features are fully automated, and require only minimal input from users as they are working. Because of it’s ease of use, and ability to address the flaws other companies have ignored, Time Doctor easily stands apart from other time tracking software options.

Try it with your business and let me know if you disagree.

Here is an example of what time usage report will look like:

This new report will be sent to managers for themselves containing data for everyone on their team, it will also be sent by default to all non-managers (without team data).

This is a great addition to Time Doctor reporting features as it allows you to zero in on exactly how your team has been spending their time (based on application and website usage), instead of just their reported tasks and priorities.

We decided to only include web sites visited for over 10 minutes in a 1 week period to reduce the amount of data for managers -  we wanted to make sure that we are helping you focus on the big picture instead of getting bogged down in too many details.

We hope you find this report useful and please send any feedback you have. I’m sure the report will continue to improve as we receive feedback over the next few weeks.

If you’re a business owner who hasn’t tried our software, and the majority of your staff are using computers – you should be asking yourself why your team isn’t using Time Doctor?

As an employer, you have the right to know that your staff aren’t cyber-slacking on the job. Apart from tracking productive time, Time Doctor will also save you time every day – reports are collated and delivered automatically and you can see what tasks each team member has been working on, and how long it took in one simple daily email report.

(There are many other productivity features that are too numerous to list here. Take a look at our product tour for more information about how this software can save your business time and money).

100,000 hours of tracked time represents a significant milestone for Time Doctor as we move toward an official release  (in the first half of next year). At the moment we are concentrating on some fine tuning before we start rolling out some new features including Freshbooks integration, an edit time feature, time usage reports and client / project tracking.

Please keep the suggestions coming!

“Those distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ – more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking marijuana”.

In other words, when you multitask, you not only take longer to accomplish each task, but you are also less effective in accomplishing your tasks.

Time Doctor helps to reduce multitasking in a few different ways. Firstly there is the conscious attention of choosing exactly what you are working on. This is crucial. It’s easy to go with the flow from activity to activity, but this makes you much more prone to interruptions. Time Doctor helps you to consciously direct your activities (and focus) to a specific task.

Also the activity bar on Time Doctor helps to remind users what task they should be working on.

The activity bar appears on the desktop screen at all times displaying the current priority.

For example, I’m working on editing this article, and I also have about 10 other windows open (Skype, Email, Chat, Photoshop, Browsers windows). The constant barrage of interruptions (as well as phone calls, or people talking to you mid-task) could easily throw anyone off course. The status bar is a simple reminder that makes you aware of what you should actually be working on. It’s a basic tool which can’t fend off distraction, but makes it easy to remember where you are were up to and what you were working on.

Additionally, if a user suddenly starts farting around on Facebook or other web sites that are not work related, Time Doctor will pop up a notification to ask if they are still working on the current task. This gentle nudge is usually enough to keep workers from getting too far off course.

Just like we can’t force you to smoke marijuana, ultimately it’s up to the individuals to train themselves to work in a style where they multitask less and focus more on each task. Time Doctor provides a few simple tools to help you stay on track and focus on your top priorities.

Managing tasks and activities are important features of our software, and we’ll be working on some major improvements to both the way TD allows users manage tasks, as well as they way it remind users about what they are working on. If you have any suggestions, please get in touch.

On the other end of the scale, it’s not uncommon for companies to get burnt by rushing into a managed outsourcing arrangement with little or no experience working with remote staff. Just because you can hire 50 staff at $3 an hour doesn’t mean you should. On many occasions the systems that are required to setup a successful outsourcing operation aren’t in place (inadequate staff, cultural differences and poor management are common problems).

Time Doctor software helps to overcome some of these hurdles – this software makes managing a remote team much simpler than it otherwise could be… Using this unique time management and productivity software means that offshore workers or any of your existing workers who prefer to work from home, can more effective than your present workforce.

If you’re thinking about outsourcing parts of your daily business, or you’re simply looking for a new way to retain talented staff, then the following information will be useful to your business:

Don’t restrict yourself to emerging economies

Increasingly, there’s a large pool of talented workers in the US and around the world that are looking to work from home. Generally, you can get highly talented freelancers at reasonable rates because they like working from home or, or they want the flexibility of working from any location.

Time Doctor allows for flexible working arrangements while also accurately tracking the amount of time someone is working and what they are working on. Because Time Doctor can guarantee that your staff are actually working – the people you hire can live (and work) anywhere there’s electricity and an internet connection.

Hire staff in smaller urban centers

The average wages for a programmer in New York or Silicon Valley are often twice as high as a programmer in say Springfield, Illinois.

And although there is wealth of great programming talent in Silicon Valley, the competition is fierce (with Google and practically every large Internet company based there). If you are able to hire from any location in the country or in fact from any country in the world you can often get someone just as talented who is much cheaper – usually (with a bit of time and effort) you can find people living in smaller centers with the same skills who will work at lower rates – the comparatively affordable costs of living, and the flexibility of working at home, means that it’s possible to find talented staff whose salary expectations are much more reasonable.

Where to advertise for remote staff

Recruiting remote staff (in your own country or abroad) is really no different to recruiting locally. All of the same hiring and firing principles apply.

In the US, Craigslist, Linkedin, Monster are good ways to advertise for people. Sometimes you can get better results from word of month, from advertising on Facebook or from advertising or relevant forums or industry specific web sites. For example if you are recruiting Java programmers, there are a number of Java forum web sites where you can advertise for free or for a small fee. This helps you to go direct to the place where your target employees are hanging out. You can do the same thing with Linked in.

Recruiting overseas in the Philippines, Russia, India etc is similar. You can use Facebook, Linked in or local job websites to recruit in all of these places. For example to recruit in the Philippines you can use: http://www.gopinoy.com, http://www.bestjobs.ph – in Romania, there are English language job websites like http://www.bestjobs.ro. In general it’s not hard to find popular job sites any country and posting a job add is usually $50 to $100.

In other developed countries you will find sites like http://www.gumtree.com.au (Australia) where you can advertise jobs for free (or find people looking for work). Similarly, in the U.K. Where the job market is tight you can find highly skilled travelers who might be interested in any sort of work (try the jobs section in http://www.tntmagazine.com/).

If you are looking for a short term or contract role, http://www.vworker.com provides another alternative (you can still use Time Doctor to manage staff hired in combination with any  outsourcing portal). Vworker.com can be used to organize a trial period where both parties are protected.

Along with a catchy job description, you can generally ask people to nominate an hourly rate which you can haggle over later. Remember to let them know about Time Doctor when you advertise and explain that its use will be a requirement for any position within your company.

Selecting the right person

When hiring a remote worker you need to assess a candidates skills without a major commitment on their or your part (a C.V. Is not a enough to go by). One of the best ways to do that is to develop a simple online test that will evaluate the exact skills that you need in the role.

If you are looking for a support person, give them some hypothetical support questions and find out what answers they would respond with. A test that you can email to potential applicants is a fast way to evaluate candidates as you don’t need to spend a whole lot of time doing in person or phone interviews.

Once you have a short-list, a Skype video call is an effective way to do a final interview before offering a trial position to someone.

Usually it’s better to hire a remote worker in a part-time role (with a view to full time work if that’s what is required). This will give you time to adjust working with a new team member and also give them time to try working under a new working environment (especially if they haven’t done this sort of work before). Working from home isn’t for everyone!

Providing casual work at the outset also means that a person who is already gainfully employed can try something new – if both parties are happy with the results after a few weeks, the worker will be more confident about leaving an existing job to start full time (and flexible work) for your company.

Using Time Doctor to manage your staff

Once you’ve found your potential candidates you can invite them to use Time Doctor as a way to track time spent on particular tasks. This software will also send you a daily report outlining which each person has worked on and can even let you know which websites your staff member has viewed, how much time they have spent using different applications and also how much time they have spent on breaks.

If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one at http://www.timedoctor.com – adding new staff is a breeze. Once they have Time Doctor installed, there are a number of features such as a report of web sites visited during work hours, that help you to guarantee that your worker is actually working and not stuffing around on Facebook or reading a newspaper. To find out more about how this works, please take 5 minutes to view our product tour:

http://www.timedoctor.com/product_tour.html

How to pay remote working team members

There are a number of simple solutions for paying people. One of the easiest is to use an Ikobo card. Using this method a person will receive a debit card and you simply send the money from your bank account or credit card to their debit card. This method is better for lower amounts of money. You can also use a wire transfer, Paypal, Moneybookers or Western Union money transfers.

Consider using a turn key solution to hire and manage all of your staff

If this article gives you the impression that hiring people in a foreign country is easy, it’s not. You will likely go through a lot of pain and hassle to achieve the end result. For example we recently were looking for a programmer for Time Doctor and we literally spent months and had someone working full time just to find the right person, testing dozens of people. If you don’t already have the internal resources to do it yourself you probably need help. For many businesses the best solution is a turn key solution to do everything for you, recruiting, managing, payroll etc. Although you can find people and hire from Vworker and Odesk, these are NOT turnkey solutions as you still need to do the recruitment yourself and they will not handle HR issues such as making sure the person turns up to work each day. We recommend Remote Staff, for this type of turnkey solution.

The benefits of hiring a remote working team are very significant. With the help of Time Doctor you’ll be able to:

• Reduce or eliminate the costs of your office
• Reduce employment on costs (payroll sick benefits etc)
• In fact, reduce all elements of employment costs
• Select the highest quality most talented people from anywhere in the world
• A more flexible labor force
• The ability to attract more talented people as there is a large group of people specifically looking to work from home

If you have any further questions about outsourcing, please send us an email – we’d be happy to answer your questions.

Footnote from the Author (Proof that it works)
There are 45 + staff in our extended company – 95% (or more) of these people work from home in different parts of the world.

I’ve just finished editing and rewriting this article from a draft I received in my inbox – it’s taken me just over an hour. Later today this will be included in a report for our CEO who is in a different country.  When I check my email tomorrow I’ll also receive a consolidated daily report for the 10-15 people I manage (in Canada, the Ukraine and the Philippines).  In a few minutes, I’ll quickly check online to see who is working on what and how much time they’ve spent on different tasks.

I have six years of IT and project management experience. I’ve been using Time Doctor to calculate my billable hours for the last year while traveling, working from home in Australia and now from a new office. I really enjoy being able to work from anywhere in the world at any time of the day - Time Doctor really is a fantastic solution and I’m proud to be part of the project.

- John McCann, Newcastle Australia (john@timedoctor.com)