Turning your own space into your workplace is not a newly introduced practice. Remote workforce or employees working from home has not been a very old tradition for businesses.
The only difference is that remote working, a decade ago, was considered as a perk or facility given to the employees.
But now it has become an absolute need for the organizations to keep floating during the ongoing global crisis of COVID 19.
As soon as the World Health Organization declared it as a pandemic, governments responded proactively and imposed partial or complete lockdown in their countries.
And the survival of industries turned out to be a major challenge.
Studies prove WFH productive and reliable working model
In the present scenario, work-from-home emerged as the greatest survivor that has kept companies operational, even during the time of emergency.
According to performance-based remote work statistics, 85% of businesses confirm that productivity has increased due to remote working and 77% have experienced a remarkable decrease in operational costs.
Moreover, according to a global poll in 2018 conducted by Kantar, a data and insights firm, among 33000 respondents, 32% valued a job where they could work from home.
Global tech giants and experts support WFH
Social media platform Twitter has recently urged its employees to work from home, in a bid to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Similarly, one of the world’s largest IT company’s Indian subsidiary IBM India has made work from home a reality for 99% of its employees, amid the outbreak of this pandemic.
But being a novel concept, many are struggling in communicating and keeping their remote workforce engaged and productive.
And thus, here we are today discussing those 8 key ways to deal with challenges you face to manage your work-from-home employees and make them efficient and productive.
To-do list for management to make their remote teams efficient
Create digital meetups:
Employees must be surely missing their lunch breaks and munching snacks with their buddies and besties.
A study reveals that 19% of people feel loneliness as an important challenge faced while working remotely.
To deal with this and counter their loneliness, managers can keep the teams connected and arrange some innovative sessions to keep their workforce engaged.
The discussion may include sharing ideas, setting new goals and ways to achieve them. The discussions should be kept casual so that employees can collaborate more.
Apart from work, fun activities can also be a part of your remote working sessions.
This will help managers boost their teams’ morale and keep them engaged in their work.
Short video calls during lunch and tea breaks could make employees feel more connected to their teammates.
Setting up effective communication
It has been found that a lack of proper and uninterrupted communication is a major hurdle in a way to execute the work-from-home concept better.
Thus, keep your remote teams updated with advanced communication tools.
Believing a statistic, 83% of respondents use technology to collaborate in real-time.
So whether it is sharing ideas or their work, the delayed response may lead to making your workforce unenthusiastic and less productive
Optimizing non-working staff:
As discussed earlier, few sectors that can’t be assigned with remote working, viz. on-field sales team, manufacturing department, etc.
Thus to utilize them during such times, becomes the biggest challenge for managers.
Hence, training and development sessions can be arranged for them to nourish their skills and keep them updated with the on-going developments in the company.
Generate health advisory
Amid this outbreak of coronavirus, through e-mails or during on-call meetings & conferences safety precautions and health tips should be issued and discussed within the organization.
Also, advice related to maintain workplace hygiene must be passed during daily meetups.
Moreover, employees must be engaged in suggesting vital health precautions.
Forums or discussions should be organized regularly to make your teams active and collaborate more.
Keep information & help at fingertips
Employees may face some difficulties in setting a remote workplace at their home.
Thus, HR managers should keep the concerned departments connected and on their toes to deal with any technical glitches that occurred, in real-time.
Adding to this, an advanced and digital platform needs to be introduced to keep the important and relevant information accessible to the employees.
Thus, quick information flow and immediate solution to the queries avoid wasting time in unproductive tasks.
Track performance & appreciate the talent
Monitoring performance and calculating the productivity of remotely activated employees can be a daunting task for managers.
But the inclusion of advanced technology in your organizational structure can ease out such tasks.
Through tools like daily time-sheets, project records, managers can monitor the team’s performance.
While it has been experienced that creating a healthy competitive environment fosters innovation and boosts productivity.
Thus rewarding the top performers will not just increase employee engagement, but will motivate under-performers to become competitive by leveraging their efficiency.
Sense of belonging: creating a loyal & motivated workforce
Developing a sense of responsibility and belonging in your employees is closely related to their motivation and commitment towards their work.
Including your taskforce in important discussions, and making them a part of critical decision making, create a more loyal and productive team.
Managers should have clear and shared vision along with mentoring sessions to boost their involvement and engagement.
Maintain payroll cycles
Companies are dealing with disturbed finances and incurred losses due to this lockdown. Moreover, the future of the economy seems to be in dark.
Amid such situations, releasing timely salaries is a big challenge for management.
Thus, an innovative approach should be opted by the companies of clearing partial payments, which will keep them motivated to work without giving the extra burden on finances.
Shifting the focus on productivity and efficiency
Above mentioned were some of the key ways to keep your employees engaged in their work while working remotely.
But along with keeping employees motivated and giving freedom, seriousness and dedication should equally be checked.
Now we will highlight some vital tips for management to maintain the productivity and efficiency of an organization –
It should be clear with your staff that work from home is not any holiday to be enjoyed.
Thus, freedom and relaxation given should be used to concentrate more on your tasks, rather than utilizing them for your personal works.
Thus, a strict check should be kept on employees through timely follow-ups on their tasks. Daily worksheets should be submitted by all employees as a record of their work done.
Digital attendance punches can help keep track of their accurate working hours and justify their accomplishments.
Partnering with the latest technological HR management system, along with attendance leave management can also be done in a fun way, even when employees are working remotely.
Study of improved efficiency with a modern HR management system
The chart of companies’ efficiency and productivity using existing HR management software is shown below as per the deployment model –
Concluding thoughts
The extended lockdown may result in taming the spread of this coronavirus.
But on the other hand, precautions should be taken and companies should continue work from home, strictly following the above-mentioned tips and ways to maintain the productivity of their remote teams.
But to avail all these benefits and execute the above mentioned tips, having a robust HR management system is the primary need. One such trusted name is BatchMaster HeRd, which is empowered with the latest tools and features, providing a digital and effective platform to manage your teams.
HeRd provides both web-based and cloud solutions, making it easier for even remote implementations.
So turn your remote workforce into a result-oriented and productive team, and bravely face this global pandemic with BatchMaster HeRd.
