When I'm consulting with companies who are testing the waters of remote work, one question comes up time and time again. How do we monitor when our employees are working? What if they are playing games or surfing the Internet during work? How will we know? Traditional offices typically rely on tracking employee attendance, They ask, "Are people in their seats?" Then they assume, well, they're probably working. But in remote work, there's no real way for you to gauge whether people are present or what they're doing at any given time. Some companies are testing out surveillance systems. They're actually monitoring team members screens to check what they're up to. Now if that idea makes you uncomfortable, you certainly aren't alone. Employees tend to feel that this is an invasion of privacy, and it overall lowers morale. Other organizations try to track output. For example, how many e-mails did you send during your shift? That's possible to quantify, but does it really tell the real story, or are you just encouraging people to spam? The truth is, there's no great way to monitor employee activity while treating the people with the respect that they deserve. Instead, we recommend asking yourself this, what do we really want to understand? For most people it's this, the results of the work, not the minute-to-minute activities of individuals. What you really want to know is how well are my team members contributing to business goals? For that, measuring attendance or activity is useless. Later in this course, we'll talk about how strong team values create a culture of success and high-performance. But you'll see the first example now. GitLab's most important value is that of results. Above all else, the result of our work is what truly matters. Many companies these days use an OKR system to achieve results systematically, and so does GitLab. By setting up a system of written objectives and key results that all ladder up to business objectives, we can make sure that each team member knows how they are individually contributing to a shared goal. Once you have goals outlined, then you can implement regular review cycles. Employees can be evaluated on how well they are reaching their goals, which is much more useful to them personally and to the organization. OKRs help with collaboration because there's a transparent understanding of the objectives. For example, you couldn't negotiate with, I can't give you x resources, but let's take a look at what the priorities are. But it's not a perfect system. As with any goal-oriented system, OKRs can compete, conflict and even block each other. It's not up to the individual team members to set goals without conflicts, rather it's a manager's job to check for potential blocks, and help to free your team members forward motion. This is where communication comes back into the conversation. Make sure your team member is encouraged to work with others, instead of competing or becoming siloed. Help your team understand that they're all working towards the same outcomes, and as a leader, help them be strong contributors. In the end, would you rather spend your time monitoring employee attendance or helping them be more effective and raising the output overall of your team. The answer should be clear.