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by Maricar Morga | Business
It is essential to properly manage remote employees so that your business will continue to move forward despite the challenges it is facing these days. Photo by Goran Ivos via Unsplash
One of the most dramatic changes that the pandemic has brought in is in the working environment. The office-based framework where employees have to report to for 8 hours a day, now shifted to a remote working setup. However, because of the abrupt need to move forward in this scenario, many companies and organizations found difficulty finding ways to manage remote employees.
While remote working is not new in every industry, many businesses struggled to cope with the demand. Remote working may be temporary for some, but going back to the normal state is still unclear at bay.
To make this working setup a success, it is vital for employers, team leads, and management to be in charge and navigate employees in these overwhelming times. Even with the onboarding process, things have been different since the pandemic. Correctly managing your team can lead them to be still productive, engaged, and thriving with work. How To Easily Managing Your Employees As remote working setup continue to rise, flourish and become part of every business process, some necessary steps will be needed to help manage remote employees. 1. Have A Systematic Workflow For those who have worked for a long time in an office setup, moving from an office setting to a small working setup changes the working environment and disrupts the workflow. To ensure that your employees will still be guided on their work, provide a systematic workflow that will ensure productivity on your team, and always guarantee efficient teamwork despite the working distance. Encourage your employees to adopt strategies that will help promote interpersonal relationships in the virtual setting. Your remote teams will perform best and produce quality work if they have a high level of trust towards their colleagues despite working together virtually. You can also use workflow automation tools that can help with your organization's operation and processes. A systematic workflow and set of automation tools can keep your administrative tasks running smoothly. That will be possible no matter where your teams are located. 2. Set Expectations Working in different locations can be a challenge to meet expectations. So, you must set guidelines and boundaries early on. It is a must also that you send the message across your employees often. That will take the matter in setting out any project you are working on and creating a significant impact on the desired outcome. Having a timely manner for your up-to-date policy and staffing changes will help your employees work. You can detail what work you expect them to produce during work hours, like the number of emails, contacts, or files finished. Having clear boundaries on the amount of work they have to turn in at the end of the day will let your employees maintain a healthy work and life balance. 3. Provide Technology Support When you move your employees to a remote working setup, you must provide them the best technical support there is. It means that you need virtual resources and technical support to aid your employees. It would be best to adapt quickly to this growing environment by providing virtual collaborations and productivity tools. 4. Be Organized With Tasks When it comes to collaborating with remote teams, the key is to allow flexible hours to retain consistency. While a concrete approach is a must, you should be open to schedule and plan changes if necessary. If the work permits allow, your employees want to spend their morning or evening hours working. It's not meant to matter as long as the job is done correctly, and a good outcome is produced. 5. Make Communication Easy Having an office where your employees get to work every day makes it easy to communicate with your team. You can easily let your employees understand their roles and purposes individually or as part of a team. It can come as a challenge with remote working as communication can often be taken aside. Make sure that your key leaders communicate with your staff. It keeps employees aware of timelines, available tools, job-related problems, and superiors' expectations, including working arrangements. Think which communication method better suits the team's culture. You can work remotely through email, email, phone calls, video chats, intranet. Remember also that the level of contact can vary between employees. 6. Be Available For Your Team One of the problems faced by remote workers is the feeling of isolation. Many all feel disoriented and overwhelmed with the amount of instruction they receive to complete a specific task. That is where the connection with your team members is incredibly important. Good business owners and managers find time to make themselves available for their team members. In this way, your team finds it easy to reach out to you despite the distance in working. Your team should feel that they can count on you to respond to their pressing concerns. 7. Monitor Your Team's Daily Progress Aside from setting expectations often, it is best to establish a daily call-in can with your team. Having an idea of their daily transactions makes it easier for you to manage your remote employees. You can do this through calls or daily task reports that they have to accomplish at the end of the working day. You can also set an ideal time to communicate with them individually or have a team huddle to discuss their daily activities. That makes work more bearable, more comfortable, and efficient even though location differences restrict your team. However, as much as possible, resist the urge to micromanage your team. 8. Provide Security Besides ensuring that your team will still produce results despite being on a remote setup, you have to make sure they are well protected. That will not only protect your employees but also your business as a whole. As the surge for remote working setup continues to surge in different industries regardless of size, many security issues are also coming to light. Cybercriminals are aggressive in finding ways to exploit any vulnerabilities they can find in a system. Many businesses find themselves exposed to any possible attacks as they are new to the remote working framework and does not have any established security measure. To ensure that your company is well protected, find ways to keep your data secure when managing remote workers. Mandate multi-factor authentication to avoid being susceptible to attacks and establish security checkpoints. Provide VPN to add another layer of security as it encrypts data that can be detrimental for attacks. Final Thoughts The business industry is now undergoing a significant transition. Workflows and business processes are far from normal these days. While many find it hard to manage remote employees, it is necessary to ensure employees can be guided as they traverse in the new working environment. Shifting towards a non-familiar working setup can affect their creativity, focus, and sense of responsibility. However, effectively managing your remote employees can help them surpass this ordeal and continue to become assets in your company.
About the author:
Maricar worked as a marketing professional for almost a decade and handled concerts, events and community service-related activities. Leaving her corporate job for good to pursue her dreams, she has now ventured in the path of content writing and currently writes for Softvire Australia - the leading software e-Commerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand. A Harry Potter fan, she loves to watch animated series and movies during her spare time.
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