Remote work is the future. Think about it: This business model doesn’t only let your employees work from home – it allows you to hire competent people from anywhere around the world, at competitive rates. The advantage that this would offer your business is immense.
The global work-from-home policy that took root at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic has now opened businesses up to infinite possibilities. It’s no wonder that you’re looking for ways to strategize and set up remote work in your company.
Today’s feature should help you achieve this goal. We’ve compiled a list of 5 effective remote work strategies for your business.
Ensure your customers are in a position to work remotely
When the pandemic struck, many people who had never worked remotely before we’re forced to adopt this model. Therefore, they had to contend with suboptimal workspaces, which hampered productivity, impaired posture, and sometimes caused back pain.
For your employees to work effectively from home, they will need to have a comfortable workspace. They will also require fast and reliable internet. If possible, provide these things yourself; it’s more than a worthwhile investment.
Check in with your employees daily
One of the many disadvantages of remote work is it tends to make people feel disconnected from the company they work for. Since they are unable to participate in workplace culture and office banter, they may stop feeling like part of the team. This is why it’s important to check in on them daily – or at least on a regular basis.
Have a structured check-in session during which you can go over the day’s objectives with your staff. You could also use this moment to ask about the challenges they’re facing as far as working remotely goes.
Provide reliable and effective communication options
Email worked well a few years ago when you used it to communicate with people in the same building. Today, when there is a need to communicate quickly and effectively, email may not be the best option.
Instead, go for platforms with video functionality to enable you and your employees to have face-to-face conversations. Other than making it easy to complicate complex ideas, video conferencing will help you make your teammates feel less isolated from each other.
Choose a reliable collaboration and monitoring platform
In the traditional office workspace, employees can easily share information with each other, ask questions and even offer direction and feedback. If you plan on switching to this model in the long run, it’s important to make sure that this remains the case. Your team requires a reliable platform where they can collaborate with each other on work projects.
As a manager, you will also need a platform where you can monitor their progress, track their productivity and provide supervisory feedback. One such is SoftActivity, a reliable activity monitor that does all the heavy lifting for you.
It monitors employee idle and productive time, the websites they visit while on the company network and more. This tool is a gem all company managers will find extremely useful!
Schedule non-work-related phone calls and conference meetings
As we’ve already mentioned, working remotely often makes people feel isolated and lonely. To be effective as a manager, you must make sure this is addressed properly, lest it affects your employees’ morale, or worse, their mental health.
One of the simplest ways to avoid this is scheduling regular meetings where all your team members can interact and talk about matters not related to work. You could, for example, schedule pizza to be delivered to each of your teammates and host a virtual pizza party. These kinds of interactions will make them feel connected to their workmates and the company.
Maximize your team members’ productivity using the remote work model
Working from home has been shown to come with numerous benefits. For starters, it makes it easier to balance work and social life. Besides, it saves people from having to commute to and from work.
The average American spends so much time stuck in traffic, and a work from the home model will allow them to spend this time more productively.
Time to scale your business with remote work!
One of the challenges facing remote work is monitoring and supervising your team members. People get distracted, and without proper supervision, they may end up spending time on non-work-related activities. Luckily, you can implement a monitoring software like SoftActivity to help track their progress on tasks and keep them working on the set objectives. And just like that, your team’s productivity just grew several folds!
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