With a global workforce that’s becoming increasingly remote, how do you manage remote employees? What workforce management strategies can you rely on to keep your staff on track and, on the flip side, ensure you’re meeting their needs?
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What This Article Covers:
Who Are Remote Employees?
Remote employees are those who work from a site other than an employer-operated central office. A worker’s home, a co-working area, a private room, another shared location or any venue other than the standard corporate office structure or campus are remote work sites.
Because it has advantages for both management and staff, remote work has grown in popularity. The COVID-19 pandemic, which compelled many organizations to swiftly transition from a conventional, face-to-face workplace environment to a completely remote workforce for health and safety purposes, also significantly drew interest in it.
The potential advantages of remote work, such as faster or no commute times, easier hiring and employing, and increased productivity, all contribute to its long-term mass appeal.
Remote Working vs. Work From Home
Although one type of remote work includes working from home, the two definitions are not always equivalent. Remote working does not dictate where a person works; it simply indicates that they rarely enter a conventional office to carry out their duties. So remote employees could work from their residence, but it isn’t required.
Working from home could refer to sporadic or infrequent out-of-office work. This situation might involve, for instance, a worker who would typically work from the company’s office but is suddenly required to work outside the office for a day or two due to a temporary childcare need or any other extenuating circumstance.
Key Considerations
It takes the proper customs, procedures and technology to enable remote workers to function effectively from any location when working remotely.
For remote employees to be productive, there must be a cultural presumption that individuals or teams will frequently work without much oversight. While there is no specific guide for this strategic plan, managing a productive remote workforce typically requires the following attributes:
Reliable Connectivity
Fast internet connections and mobile technological advances that can withstand intensive employee connectivity are essential for virtual teams.
Although handling remote teams isn’t all that distinct from managing on-site teams, virtual work does add complexity to the leadership position. No matter where they are, managers face the same fundamental difficulties when leading employees, whether in the office or remotely.
Robust Collaboration Tools
Remote workers must be able to collaborate just as if each of them were available in the same place. This need calls for secure, high-quality apps and platforms for advanced technologies like chat, teleconferencing, document sharing, laptops and other standard business hardware and software.
Similarly, managers require robust tools to manage remote employees. We’ll touch more on how workforce management software can help you effectively oversee your team while working in separate locations later.
Healthy Culture
High-performing remote teams typically have cultures of integrity and teamwork that emphasize outcomes more than “facetime” or actual office hours. A management environment that supports remote work encourages such a culture and gives individuals and teams the tools they need to succeed in their jobs.
Updated Policies
Review the company’s guidelines for remote work. Policies should include the business’s requirements and standards for remote workers, including the appropriate technologies, IT and cybersecurity for remote workers and the ideal working circumstances, productivity standards and measures to safeguard sensitive data.
Better Follow Ups
The best one-on-one conversations don’t just focus on productivity evaluation. They can also be practical tools for maintaining the engagement and motivation of remote workers.
Scheduling one-on-one calls, regardless of whether daily, weekly or biweekly, is a beautiful idea because it can help you:
- Determine if the employee is doing well overall.
- Find and remove bottlenecks together with the employee.
- Talk about the employee’s professional future development plans.
- Respond to a variety of inquiries the employee might have.
Clear Productivity Standards
When talking with your remote employees about performance standards, it’s crucial to establish clear expectations. Some productivity requirements will change depending on the job; others might be uniform throughout the business.
Although recording productivity standards may appear to be an unnecessary extra step, it can help identify trends that require attention. It can assist you in identifying burnout or the requirement for additional training to remove a productivity-affecting bottleneck.
Strong Team Building
Even a virtual team can work together. Building cooperative, communicative groups that care about one another’s functioning is essential for a thriving remote work culture. This could include social gatherings, retreats and other practices like acknowledging team and individual accomplishments.
Top-notch Technologies
Companies with highly effective remote teams invest in the tools that enable their employees to perform their duties. These include laptops or desktops, fast broadband, dependable and user-friendly software products, and other technology to meet company-specific requirements.
Emotional Support and Encouragement
Particularly in the case of a sudden shift to remote work, you must be able to identify stress, pay attention to remote employees’ worries and anxieties, and demonstrate empathy for their struggles.
Inquire about their well-being if the new remote worker has issues but is not expressing any stress or anxiety. Asking “How has your experience been so far in this remote working environment?” or a similar question can elicit important information you might not otherwise get.
When the remote employee responds to your question, listen carefully and quickly replicate what you understood to them to ensure you understood it correctly. Let the remote employee’s stress or issues precede your worries or concerns.
Using Software
Organizations often struggle with a lack of information about remote teams’ productivity and efficiency. Workforce management tools ensure fairness in your employees’ performance evaluation by offering the data and clarity you require along with valuable performance insights.
The following are some areas an effective workforce system can help you monitor and adjust, whether working remotely or in the office.
Well-being
Managers must assess well-being holistically to get an accurate picture. You must be aware of the contributing factors if you’re going to measure and analyze employee well-being proficiently. Several different factors influence an organization’s wellness. Although worded differently, these aspects are the same across numerous business models and consist of the following — physical health and fitness, emotional health, social connectedness, and financial security.
Hybrid Work Policies
By mapping mechanisms and adequately optimizing them, limit workflow friction points and constraints. Find productivity gaps caused by incompatible operational procedures or policies. Utilize data insights to comprehend remote worker engagement and productive collaboration habits.
Productivity
Learn who holds up as a star performer, and view total and adequate time by person and team. Examine peak performance hours to determine when remote teams are at their most attentive and productive. Additionally, you can be aware of any social media or messaging service distractions beyond normal expectations for collaborative efforts and healthy breaks.
To improve productivity, you can modify the work schedules of remote employees using data insights. Assess your daily, weekly and monthly working practices and total time spent on operations to evaluate the productivity level of your team. Determine who is performing well and who is not by leveraging real-time analytics.
Workforce Planning
Ensure that the company always has the human resources necessary to function effectively and profitably now and in the future with workforce planning. Another crucial element is creating a strategy for remote recruitment that is affordable and fills any skill gaps you may have.
Furthermore, if needed, make changes to improve outcomes by incorporating a training strategy using a powerful learning management system, for example.
Primary Benefits
Because remote working has some definite advantages over traditional on-site employment, individuals and businesses frequently opt for some variation of it nowadays, whether that’s fully remote, a hybrid model or occasional work-from-home days.
Let’s look at some benefits of effectively managing remote employees.
Decrease or Eliminate Commutes
If you choose a remote working model, employees typically spend less time traveling to and from their place of employment. A remote worker often rediscovers a significant amount of private time daily.
Someone who generally commutes for 30 minutes each way could save at least five hours per week and the equivalent money spent for personal or public transportation if they work remotely.
Enhance Business Continuity
Since they don’t need to be in the same place to perform their duties, virtual teams are frequently more innately adaptable. This adaptation could be beneficial for business planning processes, especially in unforeseen or emergency circumstances where staff unexpectedly cannot operate on-site.
Limit the Need for Corporate Offices
Companies that hire many remote workers typically need less real estate, resulting in savings and long-term flexibility.
It may even be feasible to do away with a single, centralized workplace when you enable employees to work remotely. Instead, all staff members might be permitted to work from home, and your business might only need to pay to rent conference rooms or co-working areas when necessary.
Refine Recruitment
The advantages of employing a remote workforce include increased hiring options for executives because remote employees don’t necessarily need to be regional or require expensive relocation assistance from their employers. Any business working in a fiercely competitive labor market or experiencing a skills gap for specific roles can benefit significantly from this.
Strengthen Teamwork
If you provide a positive workforce experience, your employees may be happier and more upbeat. A good working environment is necessary to foster teamwork, lessen conflict at work and engage employees in team building. If your business manages several group projects concurrently, this is especially crucial.
Lower Employee Turnover
Another significant advantage for businesses is the potential to lower staff turnover by keeping employees on board for longer. This advantage is important because it can be pricey and risky to find a suitable replacement for departing employees and prepare them to carry out their duties.
For a variety of reasons, remote work aids businesses in keeping employees. Many staff members value flexibility and value the opportunity to work remotely. Stay-at-home parents may be able to return to their jobs if they’re remote when they might otherwise not be able to in an office setting. Physical relocation also becomes less of a problem.
Access a Wider Talent Pool
Eliminating some job constraints typically connected to office-based working arrangements is a frequently overlooked advantage of remote work. Abolishing these obstacles allows businesses to broaden their exploration of talent and hire the best candidates for each position, regardless of where they live.
Recruitment efforts are typically limited to residents or those looking to relocate when attendance at physical work premises is required. However, these limitations become much less critical when the option to manage remote teams is available, and you may be able to hire new employees from any country.
Reduce Employee Absences
Workplace absenteeism can be a severe issue for companies. It goes without saying that if work is required, but the person who is supposed to do it becomes ill, the outcome might not get done, or it might get done by an individual who is less trained or equipped.
It is much simpler to turn on a laptop from the convenience of home than to commute to an office and spend the entire day there if someone is not feeling physically well. Because of this, remote work may help minimize absenteeism. Stress, another significant reason for absences, can also be reduced by remote work.
Increase Flexible Work Culture
One of the most frequently mentioned advantages of remote working for employees is flexibility, which can also be very beneficial for businesses. A flexible work culture allows people to work varying hours from those they might if they must physically report to a workplace.
Asking some individuals to work remotely and cover a late shift may be more practical than retaining a workplace open around the clock due to costs and logistical challenges. This flexibility can assist in making a business run continuously, particularly useful for offering round-the-clock customer support.
Transition to Green Credentials
When employing remote teams, you can improve your green credentials by emphasizing the environmental benefits of cutting back on or doing away with daily work commutes to the office. This can pay off by drawing in the most environmentally conscious clients when blended with a more all-encompassing “green” strategy.
Improve Workforce Health
Although decreasing absenteeism should be a top priority, having remote team members and employees can also improve workforce health. There are many influencing factors at play here. For instance, preparing a proper meal when working from home is frequently more straightforward than depending on something fast and ready-made.
Eliminating the journey to and from work allows for more recovery at home and possibly more time to sleep, improving employees’ quality of lifestyle. Immunity and mental well-being may both benefit from this as well.
Employees in better health are usually happier, more resourceful and less likely to need frequent doctor visits. They’re also more likely to perform their daily tasks at a higher quality level, due to lack of stress, health concerns, etc.
Conclusion
It helps to follow best practices for managing remote employees, regardless of whether you are exploring short-term or long-term remote work. Creating a detailed plan and using workforce software to monitor important data help you ensure success in remote work.
What measures does your company take to manage remote employees? Tell us in the comments section below!