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, a lack of communication 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.
This guide will list some important tips and tricks to remember to help manage a remote workforce and get the most from this area of your business.
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, one form of communication should take precedence over the rest: video conferencing.
Regarding remote work, it is easy to lose face-to-face communication. If this face-to-face conversation is lost, however, you’ll miss out on your employees’ inflections, intonations, and verbal cues—key aspects required for knowing exactly how they feel and how you should react.
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 distract their attention from their work tasks, and they 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
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, one approach to protect you and your employees from the constant danger of cyber threats is endpoint detection and response (EDR). With the right EDR security approach, you have the tools to identify hazards and protect your company proactively.
Limit the notifications
Yes, communication is an essential element for any business that is working with remote employees. That said, it is crucial not to 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 completely remove them from that state. One simple notification could cause one of your employees to lose 40 minutes of optimum productivity.
