How to Keep Your Remote Employees Highly Productive
A common misconception is that remote work became a thing only after the pandemic started. As many as 4.7 million people in the United States already worked remotely before COVID-19.
And with 88% of companies encouraging or outright demanding that employees work remotely, that number has exploded in the past couple of years.
In many cases, working remotely has resulted in new opportunities that drive growth and expand the talent pool for companies looking to fill critical roles. Employer of record (EOR) service providers have allowed organisations to grow their teams worldwide, overcoming previous barriers to global employee management.
But at the same time, managing remote employees comes with unique challenges that managers need to be aware of to have a productive and engaged workforce.
To help you improve the productivity of your remote employees, let's look at a few practical strategies you should consider.
Implement Time Tracking Solutions
Keeping tabs on your remote employees isn't as easy as in the office.
Even if most employees are motivated and doing their best, they sometimes end up not spending their time on the most important activities or approaching tasks using inherently inefficient processes.
Because of that, employee tracking software can be incredibly useful in ensuring that your remote workers remain productive and engaged during work hours.
You can see precisely what each remote employee is working on, how quickly they move through tasks, and understand the larger picture of employee productivity, enabling you to make effective changes based on insights you gain from data.
At the same time, keeping track of how your employees spend their time will provide you with more information for giving productive feedback that employees can use to improve.
You can pinpoint specific parts of their work approach that could become more efficient and help them avoid bottlenecks hurting productivity.
Utilise Virtual Meetings
Just because your team is working remotely doesn't mean you shouldn't have a way to get together and discuss updates and essential information regarding the company's projects, goals, and next steps.
Today, tools like Zoom and Google Meet have made holding virtual meetings almost as effective as in-person ones, allowing you to simulate the benefits of getting together no matter where each person might be.
Whether you need to hold a brainstorming session to develop new ideas, share important information about a project or a new company policy, or even figure out how to approach a new challenge, a virtual meeting is the most effective way to quickly convey and share information without the process turning into an endless chain of emails.
Listen to Your Remote Employees
As a leader, it's your job to understand your employees' challenges and help them overcome them more effectively.
But when managing remote workers, you may not always be aware of the most significant issues they face, which can sometimes result in you being unable to determine how to help your employees succeed accurately.
The only way to avoid forming misconceptions about your employees is to be proactive in communicating with them about the unique challenges of remote employees.
By engaging the remote workers, you can see their work environment from a different perspective, enabling you to make more informed decisions about how to make their jobs easier.
You may discover that you can dramatically improve efficiency, work satisfaction, and engagement with simple changes.
As a result, you can implement company-wide changes that put your remote employees in a position to succeed while ensuring that the entire team is entirely behind your changes.
Reward Your Best Performers
Employees want to be recognised for their hard work and their results. But when managing remote teams, ensuring they feel valued and rewarded for their efforts isn't easy.
It's not as simple as popping by someone's workspace to congratulate or praise them. You have to make an effort to maintain communication with each remote team member, and even then, you need to know how to get them to feel appreciated and heard.
To ensure your employees feel heard, make it a habit to reach out to them in some way to show appreciation for their work.
You could even consider offering incentives or rewards for their hard work to motivate them further to continue performing at a high level.
Bottom Line
Keeping remote teams productive isn't an easy task. But with millions of employees working remotely for successful companies, it's also clear that it's very doable.
With the strategies listed above, you will be well on your way to recognising the needs of your remote workers and addressing them more effectively to put them in a position to succeed.
