Many companies started letting their employees work remotely. Telecommuting allows you to lower business costs without sacrificing productivity. You can also access the best talent in the industry from all around the world. Aside from these, you can also help your employees achieve better work-life balance. This means that you get to improve your employee retention rate.
Of course, a remote workforce also has their challenges. In reality, it is easier to manage people inside the office than those who work from home. Do you plan on allowing your team to work remotely? Then the following are some challenges that you may face during the transition:
Ensuring effective communication and collaboration
People who work inside the office can have problems communicating and collaborating. What more if you don’t get to keep an eye on your team since they are now working remotely? To ensure effective communication, you can take advantage of the different technology present. Many apps allow you to communicate and collaborate easily. It is also a must to establish core hours so that everyone knows when they need to be online and present for meetings.
File synchronization
It can be easy to edit, save, store, and share files with your team in a fast and secure way. You may be relying on different free tools and applications. But since business data is one thing no company should take for granted, make sure that all these can only be accessed by authorized team members. To do this, you can take advantage of file server solutions. This way, you don’t need to worry about file synchronization.
Keeping remote workers engaged
Engagement is the best way to keep productive, loyal, and effective manpower. But this can be difficult when managing a remote team. The good news is that there are many ways you can keep remote workers engaged. For one, make sure that each team member has real responsibilities and make sure to appreciate their efforts. Aside from an attractive salary, provide them with benefits tailored according to each of your employees’ needs.
Monitoring remote staff productivity
In ordinary office setups, you can easily check if an employee is productive or not. For remote workers, it can be tricky to evaluate their performance. In business, it is not enough that employees get to meet deadlines. You also need to maintain productivity and efficiency. Use the kind of metrics you use in gauging the work and results of your regular employees. Having the same KPI will help your remote workers understand that you also have clear expectations with regard to their work.
Building trust
It can be hard to trust employees when you can’t physically see them working. Likewise, employees find it hard to trust their employers enough to raise issues and ask questions. To make sure that you get to build trust between your team, it would be best for everyone to be transparent. Set clear expectations on your remote worker’s working hours, timelines, workload, pay, and benefits. In turn, be willing to negotiate, answer their questions, and find ways to help them address their issues.
Managing a virtual team is nowhere easy. But the good news is that it is also not impossible. Know that in every problem, there are two or more solutions. If you are having the same issues as above, then you can consider this list as your guide.
