While one of the most contemporary methods to make employees happier is remote working, everyone seems to have an opinion on whether it’s a good or bad idea for each individual business. But, let’s face facts, our workers are demanding more flexibility, and this means that we need to give them the option to work from home if necessary. But if you have a pool of remote workers that never come into the office, it can be difficult to keep them, as well as your in-house employees, engaged on the same level. Therefore, you need to work a bit harder at engaging your remote workers a little bit more.
Ensuring Adequate Technology
One of the biggest issues many remote workers have is getting logged on, especially if there’s a problem with the network, or the fault lies with their own internet connection. Technology problems are annoying in an office environment; at home, it can be stressful, especially when it comes to various deadlines. Overcoming this is about preparing your technology to cope with demands. This means you may need to allocate a little bit more, budget-wise, to your technology. But there are other ways to do it, especially when it comes to ensuring your remote workers are as clued up as humanly possible. The Global AGM Trends Whitepaper highlights a few methods relating to specific countries, and you can download the Global AGM Trends Whitepaper here. As far as technology is concerned, we need to get this right before we allow the majority of our employees to work from home.
Encourage Self Responsibility
Micromanaging remote employees isn’t just frustrating to the worker, it adds unnecessary tasks to your day. As far as productivity is concerned, it is essential you choose the right staff to work from home. Choose people you can trust to get on with their work, and are able to motivate themselves. By all accounts, you can impose deadlines and structures, but the actual work done by themselves has to be completed by them, and them alone.
Engage With Them Personally
Working from a remote location can be beneficial as far as life duties are concerned, but we must not neglect the fact that it can be incredibly isolating. Someone working from a remote location does not benefit from the social aspects of working with colleagues. Rather, they are on the receiving end of an email, which is not the most human method of contact. To counteract this, you should encourage, not just personal, offline meetings, but work at the culture of the organization as one. When employees are working from home, and they don’t have contact with their team, but only a line manager, they can begin to wonder where they are in the grand scheme of the business. And this is where those fundamental aspects are essential, communication, the transparency, and the culture will improve the relationships you have with your employees, and they with you and their contemporaries.
It’s down to you whether you believe remote working to be beneficial, but if you find it’s a great way to cut back on expenses, you can overcompensate in other ways, namely the personal approach, if you want to stand any chance of keeping them engaged and productive.
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