While working from home was already relatively common in many industries, many Thankfully, most organizations are equipping and have equipped themselves to continue business as usual by suddenly shifting gears and adopting work-from-home practices.
“This is unprecedented. It may change the workplace forever. Everyone will need to embrace a different sort of workplace behavior.
– Ann Francke, head of Chartered Management Institute
Having the right tech tools in place for your now-remote team is essential, but you also need a plan for keeping everyone engaged and focused on their work. Most families are now quarantined in their homes together, so employees are now facing more distractions than there might typically be. On top of that, your team may be feeling anxious about their health and safety, so employers must be mindful of how those fears may impact productivity in the coming weeks and months.
Glitches during remote work-
Communication
“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Communication is considered to be one of the biggest challenges for remote teams. Where mix-ups and errors can occur even with systematic face-to-face communication, yet cutting-edge technology doesn’t promise that something won’t be lost in translation.
Productivity
For some, remote work improves performance thanks to the lack of distractions like background noise, chatty colleagues, a strict schedule, and commuting. The others stand on the opposite foot – lack of office environment makes it harder to concentrate, lack of accountability disrupts daily working routines, and there are even more distractions at home.
Lack of involvement
Remote employees can sometimes feel isolated and disconnected from the rest of the company. Not being able to connect personally with team members may cause remote employees to feel like they are not a part of the company’s culture and essential company moments.
Lack of Accountability
With remote work comes less control. It is not easy to manage and track everything that a remote employee does especially if their work is not highly measurable
Security Challenges
If your business deals with sensitive data, remote work can bring risks and challenges. When you put something online, especially when it goes public, it’s almost impossible to take it all back.
Why is it important to keep your team engaged while they are working remotely?
Employee engagement is an integral part of company principles and provides long-term benefits for the ones who have chosen to make an effort in it. Commitment is based on the indication of trust between the employees and the organization, where promises and obligations are understood and fulfilled from both sides.
Being and feeling that you are a part of a team with clear goals, secure and authentic values, and a supportive environment helps employees know that they are valued and have a positive impact on business growth. Companies that understand that their employees are the most valuable asset to their business and make sure they support the development of new skills recognize achievements, give and ask for regular feedback, and empower their employees’ growth. And it is relatively more natural when you have employees by your side in the office.
Remote employees often feel left out because they are located outside of the company’s physical office and hence, find it hard to align with company culture. So, for remote team management, there’s an additional necessity to ensure that the remote colleagues are treated as equal members of the team and are involved in the company’s decisions.
Here’s what you can do
Create a virtual workplace
To keep the workflows moving, create a virtual office for employees. Invest in the best video conferencing and collaboration tools. Create a forum for employees to share personal as well as professional updates. Try to assign collaborative tasks weekly, encouraging team members to work together, and stay connected. Further, to keep up their morale and boost their moods, you can create virtual team activities like online multiplayer games, and quizzes. Or you can even encourage them to learn new things and share them with their colleagues.
Keep your team updated
The key to success as a fully remote team is consistent, transparent communication. This is especially important as the coronavirus situation unfolds and changes. You’ll want to ensure that you have multiple ways to reach employees, including chat software and email, and err on the side of overcommunication. Prepare compelling presentations to keep them engaged and inspired and provide them with all possible updates through communication channels.
Dodge Micromanagement
For companies that are used to a traditional office environment, it can be tempting for leaders to check in regularly to make sure employees are on task while they’re working from home. However, micromanaging your team will only make them feel like you don’t trust them; engaging your remote workers starts with a high-trust culture. Keep your communication channels open for them and let your team work autonomously.
“When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”
Stephen R. Covey
Lead by examples
If your organization isn’t used to working from home, they may still be adjusting to their new home office, whatever that might look like. As a leader, you can model what a good remote work setup looks like, especially during your video conferences. Avoid or remove any disorder in the background that can distract others in a meeting.
Build a feedback mechanism
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
Bill Gates
Your team is going to take some time to adjust to the change that the pandemic has rendered upon us. We recommend setting up an employee engagement survey if you don’t have one in place already, to understand the general mood within your remote workforce. Ask them how the whole process of “work from home” can be improved for them, and what you as a manager can do to keep them on their toes. Upon receiving feedback, you can act accordingly.
Create a Work-from-Home Policy
Clarity is crucial for remote workers to be productive. Therefore, if you do have remote employees, you should also have a work-from-home policy. Even if you support flexibility, some rules should be applied, as this helps employees feel like they are a part of your organizational culture. This will show your team how serious you are about keeping things going.
Delegate responsibilities
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Showing trust to the employees by delegating them some of the duties that affirm their position in the company is an efficient way to show them what role they play in the team. By considering their ideas, giving them the lead in the meeting, and including them in activities that are outside of their scope of responsibilities, you remind them that they are part of the whole team just as much as their other colleagues are.
Conclusion
As we are trying to accept the forced work-from-home culture, it is becoming more and more thorny for teams to perform to their fullest and deliver to their superiors. At the same time, managers are finding it inconvenient to keep their teams on their toes while they are working from home. These problems will keep on existing as long as we let them; the best we can do is take the situation at its face value and get a grip on things we can. Most importantly, always think in terms of solutions because focusing on the problems gives us more of them.
The previous editions of this selection were quite a hit, so feel free to check them out, as well :
WAYS TO MANAGE FREELANCE STRESS AND INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
Hello, i feel that i saw you visited my website so i came to go
back the want?.I am attempting to to find things to improve my site!I
assume its adequate to use some of your ideas!!
You made some nice points there. I looked on the internet for the subject and found most people will approve with your blog.
Deciding how and where traveling can present a few hard inquiries and issues, even to the most experienced worldwide visitor. This article describes a few certain-blaze approaches to reserve hotels, plan outings, carry out business meetings on the highway, and customarily make the most of your sojourns outside of the nation. When traveling worldwide, do not always keep all your possessions in one location. Separate your passport, discovering information and cash and travellers assessments from the other person. Unfortunately, travelers tend to maintain these materials jointly, and when they misplace a travelling bag or are the target of thievery, they lose all of their important files. When you are traveling by atmosphere, in the event that you have to look at the hand bags, ensure you that keep at the very least a change of apparel together with you within your carry-on handbag. Then should your baggage inadvertently will get misplaced as well as the airline must monitor it straight down you’ll at the very least have a clean transform of clothes. Even when it will require a day or two to find your travel luggage and have it for yourself, you may probably wash your clothes in your hotel. Package some plastic material zip bags. You already know you need them to obtain your liquids and toiletries via safety, but additional features can still come in handy. You might need a couple of additional for treats on the streets, as being a trash travelling bag, or as an an ice pack load up in desperate situations. Primarily, these come in convenient when you are preparing to return home and have a soaking damp swimsuit to put within your handbag. Should you be consuming your vehicle towards the international airport and leaving behind it there, generally come up with a note of in which you left it. You should create it on a sheet of papers or input it inside your telephone. Most likely when you give back from your journey, your recollection will not be sufficient to discover it. As stated at the beginning of the content, packing for the getaway could be a stressful time. The last thing you wish to stress out about is failing to remember a tooth brush while getting prepared for your vacation. Reading this informative article, you have to have some very nice ideas to help make loading to your journey simpler and even a little enjoyable.
My brother recommended I might like this web site. He used to be entirely right. This put up truly made my day. You can not believe simply how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
The subject of this message is something that I have an individual rate of interest in. I never ever imagined I would certainly find an article that matched so well with my ideas and point of views. I value the time that you have actually put into developing this post. When I claim that it was delightful and really helpful to check out, I am sure that others will certainly concur. I wish to see more topics similar to this from your blog site.
We would love to hear from you. Pls mail us at info@designkiki.com
Write even more; that’s all I include to say. It looks as though you counted on the video in order to make your point. An individual know what you’re discussing, why waste your brains on just posting movies to your blog whenever you might be giving people something enlightening to study?
I like the helpful info you provide in your articles. I will bookmark your weblog and check again here regularly. I am quite certain I will learn many new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next!
Spot on with this write-up, I actually suppose this web site needs rather more consideration. I’ll probably be once more to learn way more, thanks for that info.
Aw, this was an exceptionally nice post. Taking a few minutes and actual effort to produce a superb article… but what can I say… I hesitate a whole lot and never seem to get anything done.