If we recap the year 2019, no one ever thought that working from home will be the new industrial trend from 2020. From managing daily official tasks to education, training, and everything else has taken a detour from the normal operations, and staying at home is appreciated. In a Gartner poll, 90% of the leading HR experts laid down a fact that even after the availability of abundant COVID-19 vaccines, employees would be allowed to work remotely. It is because all the organizations have worked for months to get their remote-work experience better and workable for the employees in order to keep them productive and engaged. Many assumed that it would be a temporary setup, but judging by the current situation, this setup is to stay for quite some time. Thereby, maintaining a proper setup to manage remote employees is imperative, and here is how you can achieve it:
Establishing Structured Daily Check-Ins
Over the course of last year, many successful remote managers realized that establishing a daily check-in call with their remote employees can help a great deal. This interaction could vary from a series of one-on-one calls or daily attendance. You can call a team in a collaborative manner and interact with individuals on separate calls just to see if they are updated with their tasks and doing well. These days, Code CheckIn on Github is a measurable and reliable way to monitor progress for team development. Like any other organization, Esipick also established a daily check-in system for their employees in order to keep them engaged with the office tasks. These daily calls and check-in are done on a designated forum so that the employees can consult and get their concerns and queries answered.
Providing Different Technological Communication Options
In the current circumstances, email alone is not sufficient anymore. Managing remote employees on just one communicational platform is not adequate and a combination of technological communication options is required. Richer technology like video conferencing on Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, is widely used by organizations for their remote employees that gives the participants the visual cues as if they were face-to-face with their co-workers. This way, the mutual knowledge among team members gets properly communicated and it also has helped to reduce the sense of isolation among them. Esipick highly encourages the use of video conferencing among team members, via zoom or Google Meets, in order to keep them motivated and aware of their responsibilities. Moreover, this method of communication makes the employees feel more personal than written notes. Audio conversations and audio notes also help a great deal.
Establishing Proper Rules of Engagement
Establishing rules of engagement for daily stand up has provenly helped maintain discipline among the remote employees as they are aware of what is expected from them while working from home. Not only this method has improved the work ethic among employees, but they are now more conscious of their standing and have a direction to meet their daily tasks. Therefore, remote work becomes more efficient and productive when managers set expectations for the task frequency. Esipick has been using Appigo’s Todo Cloud in order to keep all the daily tasks aligned and it also helps the employees to organize the priority level of their respective tasks. Other tools are Slack, Trello, Click-up, Jira, and many more. Likewise, agile scrum methodology is another great tool to manage incremental development among remote employees and it ha sprovenly increased work efficiency.
Time and Expectation Management
Companies spent a lot of time building values among their employees and it is relatively easy when the employees come to the offices daily. However, to manage remote employees, it is imperative that these organizational values get reinforced among them. Moreover, they must also model the right behaviors and any sort of misconduct should be reported and action must be taken. It will promote work well-being and has a huge impact on feelings of psychological safety. Likewise, time and expectation management plays key role in organizing remote employees to yield better outcomes.
Focusing More on Outcome Rather than Processes
In an isolated environment, everyone wants to be at ease and keep their sanity intact. Thereby, if employees found quicker and easier ways to do their tasks and generate productive results, then the managers should appreciate it. The processes should not matter in remote work as long as the outcomes are generated as expected. Esipick encourages employees to be empowered in their work and generate productive outcomes as per their ease. This promotes self-confidence among the remote employees and gives them the work satisfaction they need.
Encouraging Innovative Ideas and Increasing Recognition
All innovative ideas must be encouraged that come from remote employees as it has provenly boosted morale among them. As businesses are sheltering in place amid a high level of uncertainty, managers and employees become naturally more risk-averse. However, if an employee gives an innovative idea that might be fruitful in the future, then it must be appreciated by the managers and if the idea yields better results, then the employee who introduced it should be widely recognized among his/her peers. It is so, this increases work satisfaction among them and promotes a good mindset.
Providing Mental Health Support to All Employees
In these hard times, any kind of support is highly essential for the survival of mankind. Thus, all managers should keep a check on remote employees and if they see that there are few who suffer from mental health problems, then a proper support system and encouragement should be put together in order to help them and keep them motivated.
These are the key points that will help you successfully manage your remote employees. Esipick implements these key points to make their work ethic excel among the remote employees.
