Many businesses have had to shift to remote working over the last few years. Many companies desire to return to traditional working environments, but others want to work remotely.
For remote work to be successful, it is important that employees are happy and motivated. With remote workers, there are new HR and management challenges.
Here’s how you can adapt the best solutions for your remote workers to ensure continued success for all.
Make the Right Choices
Management implemented tools as soon as they could to help businesses transition to remote work. These tools may not be suitable for permanent remote work.
You should take the time to review your tech stack and find any weaknesses. Your legacy system may not be optimized to track hours in remote environments. Consider these things: GoCo Solutions PTO managementThese challenges can be solved by HR professionals and others. This will allow you to transition to remote-friendly software.
You should also review the tools you use for communication and project management. A healthy remote team can be created by investing in tools to support team building and employee morale.
Connectivity and teambuilding are priorities
The lack of connection and camaraderie is one of the greatest challenges for remote workers. The employees no longer have the chance to just take a break, grab a coffee or go for a lunch on the spot.
Employees will adapt if leaders allow them to have time for conversation and share non-work related topics. For example, some teams organize a Friday night virtual happy hour. RandomCoffee appTo randomly assign employee pairs for one-on-1 team-building sessions. One of the perks of the pivot to remote work is that everyone has an opportunity to learn more about each other’s roles within the team. This is a great opportunity to foster a team environment.
Think about your work flow and structure.
If your office was a 9-5 hours-based workspace, it’s time to reconsider your approach. If the pandemic and remote work has taught us anything, it’s that the traditional workweek is archaic and doesn’t encourage a healthy work-life balance.
You might consider switching to task-based or project-based work structures, which allow for flexibility. There might be some deadlines and meetings, but it will allow people to adapt their work hours to their home-based lifestyle. This will increase engagement and improve morale. Instead of focusing on a set time, track progress with projects and tasks.
Clear communications and expectations
It is difficult to communicate even within a workplace environment. Having everyone work from separate locations adds complexity that’s hard to overcome. It is easy to misunderstand text-only communication, since it eliminates body language and tone.
Be sure that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, and empower your people to communicate their boundaries— just because you choose to check your emails after hours doesn’t mean everyone should.
You should establish clear guidelines regarding how to manage your online presence. This will also help you determine the best way for people to connect with each other.
Get involved in meetings
While it’s important to have face-to-face time when working remotely, every meeting should have clear intentions. Create more structure around meetings, ensuring there’s an agenda, time limits, and clarity around action items and responsibilities. You might want to schedule meetings using Slack messages or emails, before scheduling.
Remember Security
Finally, Re-evaluate your cybersecurityPolicies and tools. Many businesses are at high risk of data breaches and loss due to the overnight shift. If you haven’t already revisited your cybersecurity systems and best practices, it’s time.
You can make it easy for your workers to work remotely with these solutions. The new normal can be made possible by having the best tools and practice.
Enterprise Podcast Network (EPN) published How to Adapt the Best Solutions for Your Remote Workers.
