Right at this moment, millions of people are working from the place they live. This is no longer a daring demand or a lavish trend but an inclusive, regular workforce model. And as things are going, the chances of us quickly adopting the old work style is pretty low. In fact, a majority of small businesses want to continue with remote work even after the end of the global pandemic.
Remote work has had its fair share of challenges during the transition. Most of the businesses went full-time remote due to necessity- they did not have an option to consider or optimize for the best remote work arrangement. This came with certain challenges, especially for small businesses that were looking for ways to ensure proper team management, engagement, and productivity.
In this article, we will think about the question like how to increase the productivity of remote employees, how to assure that employees are doing their jobs from home, or how to keep the remote team motivated.
It starts with your people
Remote work has been here way before the appearance of Slack or Zoom- there was a time when people worked from home using dial-up internet. But technology is not the entire secret behind successful remote work.
You have to have the right mindset to adopt this system. If an employee fully depends on one-to-one meetings for every single piece of the task, a miserable failure is obvious to come. Employees are responsible for their own productivity. When they are disengaged, it works like a silent killer and causes the business to lose in terms of money, time, and opportunity.
Employees have to figure out if they are a particular type of people who can perform well in the remote working environment. Employers, on the other hand, should empower all people to do their best regardless of the company size. The key is to use a model that serves every member of the workforce, not the only way around.
Choose the work right balance for your team and business
To be fair, a remote workplace does not have to be completely remote nor completely based on a single physical location. Employees should have the option to choose what way makes them most productive at work. If they prefer to work remotely for some days and collaborate with others on the others, allow them to do so.
Although the flexible model may not be always an option to choose. Due to the current global pandemic, you are maybe stuck managing everyone doing everything. In such scenarios, it is the best interest of your success to custom build a model around the needs of the workforce.
Establish a robust communication mainframe
Effective remote team management consists of the right tools and the right mindset. When you have an extraordinary, self-motivated team that does not receive guidelines for successful outcomes, they can feel lost and unsupported, resulting in a team of disengaged people.
This is why you need to consider technology for leveraging virtual collaboration, projecting management, and communicating constantly. Help your team in the work process by delivering computers equipped with a webcam, high-speed internet router, and any other necessary hardware mandatory for the job.
Increase the productivity of remote employees with monitoring tools
Remote work has an uncanny similarity with new couples. It starts like a honeymoon- people are energized and empowered by the newfound working system for a couple of weeks or months. Productivity remains the same as in the office, sometimes it even goes up. Communication lines are always active with professional and personal talks.
Then suddenly, the excitement starts to fall. People do not care to respond immediately to emails and calls. Work goes slower than ever, and before you know it, engagement submerges and the deterioration rate goes up.
As an employer, there is no way you can let this happen. Keep the productivity rate up and ensure employee engagement with the CloudDesk® remote employee monitoring software. It helps to keep employees job-engaged by sending periodic pop-ups and helps to analyze performance by showing productive and idle times.
It also lets you know if the employees are going on the right track with work by taking random screenshots. Employees, on the other hand, can work flexible hours with this tool by pausing the time clock. This feature allows them to attend to personal issues without taking a day off, and keep a good impression at work as well. Try the software to get all these features and increase the productivity of remote employees.
Keep in mind that you will always face new challenges in managing remote teams, no matter how well you measure and encourage productivity. So know your team, establish relationships that contain trust, and realize which employees will need more support than others to overcome those challenges.
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