It may have exploded in prevalence due to recent circumstances, but remote work is here to stay. There are various reasons why this is the case, with the main ones revolving around convenience and employee happiness.
Yet, a remote workforce can only be effective if your business has the right approach. For example, if there’s a lack of communication, this could lead to productivity and morale issues that will be detrimental to your entire organization. On the other hand, get it right, and you could benefit from greater engagement levels and loyalty.
To help successfully manage a remote workforce and get the most from this area of your business, this guide will list some important tips and tricks to keep in mind.
Video communication is a must.
There are several communication methods you should utilize for remote work. While there’s a place for chat tools such as Slack and even email, there is one form of communication that should take precedence over the rest: video conferencing.
When it comes to remote work, it is easy to lose face-to-face communication. If this face-to-face conversation is lost, however, you’re going to miss out on inflections, intonations, and verbal cues from your employees—key aspects required for knowing exactly how they feel and how you should react.
By using video conferencing, you can sustain strong personal relationships among your team.
Maintain a structured meeting schedule
The structure can quickly disappear for employees who are based from home. Many distractions can take their attention away from their work tasks, and they also don’t have anyone else looking over their shoulder.
As a result, you must attempt to maintain a regular meeting schedule. This doesn’t have to be a time-consuming affair, either. It could just be a ten-minute check-in each morning to ensure everyone knows what they’re doing, then another quick update after lunch for progress reports.
Keep secure
Obviously, security should be one of the main priorities for your company. Even though it isn’t easy, even when everything is done in-house, keeping your precious business data safe becomes more complicated when your employees are away from the office.
Fortunately, there is one approach to take to protect both you and your employees from the constant danger of cyber threats: endpoint detection and response (EDR). With the right EDR security approach in place, you have the necessary tools to identify threats proactively and protect your company.
Limit the notifications
Yes, communication is an essential element for any business that is working with remote employees. That said, it is just as essential that you do not go overboard with messages and video calls.
The reason for this is simple: notifications can quickly kill off the productivity of your employees. It is said that, for someone to enter a “flow state” of productivity, they require at least 20 minutes, and one quick distraction can remove them completely out of that state. This means that one simple notification could cause one of your employees to lose 40 minutes of optimum productivity.
