Are you looking to improve the performance of your remote workers? In the post-COVID-19 work environments, many managers find themselves managing a remote team, whether this is part of a hybrid work model or a completely remote team.
While there are undeniable benefits to remote work for both parties, it can be challenging for managers. It’s hard to monitor your employees and keep them happy, engaged, and motivated. This post will look at a few managerial strategies you can use to improve remote worker performance and keep your team engaged. Interested? Keep reading to find out more.
Establish Rules & Expectations
First, you need to outline the rules and expectations of your remote workers. Remote work can only succeed when employees know what’s expected of them and what they can and can’t do. For example, you need to establish core working hours and what the rules are around leaving their desks during the working day.
You’ll want your team to take advantage of the benefits of remote work, but you also need to make sure you can easily contact them during the working day.
Establish Communication Channels
Following this, you need to establish clear communication channels. Communication can be the biggest issue with remote work, but you can overcome this as a manager when you establish rules and have clear communication channels.
Obviously, you need to use video conferencing platforms as a way to host meetings, but you should also have tools that allow for instant messaging. People don’t constantly want to be on video calls during the working day, which can also take up a lot of time, so you need to have alternatives available.
Create Goals
It can be difficult to keep employees motivated when they’re not in an office environment. Therefore, you want to rely on the trusted strategy of goal setting to keep your remote workers motivated. You should set short-, medium-, and long-term goals that are challenging yet achievable.
Be sure to recognize and celebrate as a team when these goals have been achieved to keep everyone motivated and for team building.
Avoid Micromanaging
Perhaps the biggest mistake that managers make with remote work is micromanaging. When you can’t see your employees, it’s easy to assume that they’re slacking off. It’s important that you place trust in your team and avoid micromanaging them. Micromanaging can cause frustration, damage professional relationships, and waste time for both you and your team members.
You should also try to understand each team member’s preferred way of working—some will prefer regular contact throughout the day, while others will be happy to work by themselves and only check in when required.
Make Yourself Available For Support
It’s important to avoid micromanaging, but you also need to make yourself available for support. It can be easy for remote workers to feel unsupported when they’re not sharing an office space, which can be problematic if they have an issue or feel isolated.
By making yourself available for support, whether this is via video call or instant message, you can keep your team engaged and address any issues they’re facing before they become larger problems. It’s also a smart idea to arrange regular check-ins to check on the well-being of your remote workers and if they need anything.
Use A Digital Workplace Solution
It’s hard to manage a team of employees when they’re distributed, particularly when it comes to communication and collaboration. Fortunately, there are lots of excellent tools that can be used to overcome this problem. The difficulty is that it can be challenging and time-consuming to use multiple different tools, which is why it’s best to use a digital workplace solution.
Digital workplace solutions like Claromentis can replace standalone tools with an integrated platform with numerous built-in business applications that will help your remote team stay connected, collaborate, and work to a high level each day. Platforms like this can also automate repetitive tasks, which is helpful for increasing efficiency, saving time, and preventing human error.
Engage In Virtual Team Building
As mentioned previously, isolation can be an issue with remote work. It’s easy for staff to feel disconnected and disengaged from work, which can impact both their performance and well-being. As a manager, you’ll want to avoid this at all costs, as this can cause a host of issues. This is why you should hold regular virtual team-building sessions, which will unite your employees and strengthen relationships. There are many good options for virtual team building, such as:
- Informal video calls
- Virtual games
- Book clubs
- Fitness challenges
- Skill-sharing sessions
- Virtual lunches
- Employee recognition
Promote A Healthy Work-Life Balance
It’s also important to promote a healthy work-life balance. You’ll want your team to be able to reap the benefits of remote work, as this can lead to an increase in morale, engagement, and even productivity. Therefore, you want to make sure that there’s flexibility with the role and that your team members are able to run errands and get out of the house during the day.
Establishing core hours is one of the best ways to do this while ensuring that you can get in touch with team members when required. Additionally, make sure that your team has a manageable workload so they don’t have to work beyond their set hours and can make the most out of their free time.
The information in this article should be useful for remote managers who are looking to get the most out of their team. In the modern era of work, many managers find themselves managing entirely remote teams. This can bring a range of benefits to employers and employees, but it can create challenges for managers.
You’ll want to get the most out of your employees and overcome the communication and collaboration difficulties, but you’ll also want to make sure that your team can get the most out of remote work and avoid feelings of isolation that can be an issue with this way of working.
