In today’s era of increasing technological advancement, Remote working is becoming more and more common. The ability to work from home is incredibly attractive to many employees, but it has potential pitfalls, like anything. Make sure your team of remote workers remains productive, maintains high morale, and never grows bored or weary of work by facilitating communication amongst your team, acknowledging their accomplishments, providing opportunities for professional growth, and letting them maintain a healthy work/life balance. Follow these guidelines, and your remote workers will be just as happy and productive as if they worked in your office building.
There are many benefits to operating a remote team of workers in your business. If the work you require can be completed entirely over the Internet, it’s often far more efficient to simply hire people online rather than require local employees to come to an office space. While the benefits of remote workers far outweigh the negatives, there is a concern with many companies about maintaining the productivity levels of the work team. The lack of face to face communication can sometimes leave remote employees feeling isolated and unmotivated, but there are ways to prevent this from happening.
Use these five tips to keep your remote workers happy, engaged, and productive.
1. Encourage Professional Growth
Stagnation is the death of progress. If you allow your remote workers to fall into the same old routine day after day without giving them opportunities to expand their skills and advance in their field, they might become bored or unmotivated. Provide them with opportunities for professional growth to prevent this.
Learn what their goals are, and give them the tools to advance themselves by making room in your budget for conference attendance, certifications, and tuition reimbursement. Everyone wants to get better and make progress in their life and career. If you give your remote workers the ability to do this while working for you, they will stay by your side and continue being as productive as they were when you first hired them.
“I surround myself with successful people, go-getters, people who want to be as successful. People who care as much. People who care about our customers… We build a culture of people we liked to work with… I need to hire people with that right personal skills and I will train them to master construction administration.” says Patrick Christensen, President at Horizon Retail Construction
2. Foster a Friendly Environment Among Your Team
We as humans tend to make friends with those who have things in common in with us, as such you should make it easy for your team members to communicate with each other and build connections amongst each other. Provide channels for real-time communication about anything your team wants to talk about, and it will lead to collaboration on work related issues as well. Find out if any of your remote employees share common interests, and link them up.
3. Combat Isolation
One problem with utilizing a remote workforce is the inability to have them individually report back with their progress. As social creatures, we need face to face communication in real life to remain completely healthy. Facilitate this by hosting annual in-person events where your employees can meet new people and exchange ideas, or create a co-working area in the local area of your employees.
4. Acknowledge Accomplishments
Let your employees know that they matter and are valuable to you by recognizing their accomplishments, both in one on one meetings and in front of the whole team. When projects are completed successfully, or things are gelling along smoothly, let your team know that you are pleased with their accomplishments and that each of them adds his or her own individual value to your team.
5. Keep a Healthy Balance Between Work and Life
At the end of the day, most people work to support the life they have outside of work. While they may love their job, if the workload becomes too heavy for your remote workers they might become weary and suffer from reduced productivity. It is possible for your employees to become workaholics without even realizing it. Let them know that they are encouraged to take their paid time off (PTO), and make their work schedules as flexible as you can.
Having a team of remote workers is a blessing if maintained properly. Avoid isolation and stagnation amongst your team with the tips in this article, and you will never have to worry about your workers leaving or becoming lethargic.