It is hard to find an employee unaware of virtual meeting platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The use of these virtual office tools skyrocketed in the first few months of 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many saw this as a new dawn in the workplace, it was not the first time companies tried remote work. Technology giant Cisco launched remote work operations 30 years ago and reported reduced expenses and improved productivity. In a survey conducted in April 2020 by the Gartner group, 74 percent of 317 companies reported plans to adopt remote work indefinitely after COVID-19 pandemic. This evidence shows that remote work is unavoidable and must be included in a company’s strategy. Addressed here are key issues and solutions concerning remote work.
Challenges of Managing Remote Employees
Managing remote employees can be quite hard, especially for the managers who lack such skills and those who want to remain casual. The biggest challenge in managing remote employees is preserving company culture. More than a third of the executives polled in Deloitte’s 2021 Return to Workplaces survey said the biggest concern about hybrid or remote work was preserving company culture. When every employee works in a separate remote environment, the shared values, motivations, and attitudes common in an office setting are lost. Dress culture is one the challenges that managers have to deal with regularly. Employees are known to dress for the office in the upper body, and the house in the lower body as only shirts and ties are captured in Zoom meetings but not Slippers.
Another big challenge managers face is to maintain performance and collaboration. Without close monitoring, some individuals may not work to the specified standard. It is thus a challenge for managers to know when and how to motivate and guide such employees in a remote work environment. The leaders also experience the difficult of tracing work and productivity, especially if the nature of the work does not have specific, measurable goals. For big organizations, those with employees in different time regions face scheduling difficulties, and the appropriate time to make the calls that will fit all the parties is not there.
Key Factors Managers Should Consider in a Remote Work Company
There are three main factors that managers should consider when working in a remote environment. One is employee burnout and how they are to spot it. While working in a traditional office setting, employee burnout is easy to spot, but managers should be prudent in their calculations in a remote work environment. The second is if the remote work may make them lose employees or get a chance to hire more. KPIs have to be calculated in knowing the best recruitment strategy. Lastly, managers should set up software that will help them monitor the employees’ level of dedication.
How to Maintain Company Culture in a Remote Environment
Maintaining company culture in a remote environment needs improvisation. One of these improvisations would allow employees to come together in person for key experiences and moments. This improvisation should be a priority, and those who miss such functions should have a good enough reason not to attend. The come together should be regular, fun and useful to all members. They should also be regular video meetings, some set up for official activities and some just for fun and socializing. The culture should be incorporated in different social media platforms of the organization and websites. Regular emails, texts, audio clips, and snaps of what the company stands for should be circulated for all employees.
Things That Should be Included in Remote Work Strategy
Five things should be included in a remote work strategy. One is how to create a conducive work environment that will ensure the optimal utility of the distant employees. The productivity of remote workers can be increased by ensuring that the workers are healthy and secure. The management should ensure that employees have access to health and fitness resources new to the place they work from. The work environment should also be good, and staffs who work from less than conducive environment should be encouraged to work from the office. Employees should be given the freedom to choose where they wish to work.
The second element that should be included in the strategy is developing and leveraging remote work infrastructure. Remote workers find it hard to operate well without the appropriate technology. It is the organizations’ role to ensure that the appropriate systems to work are available for all their remote employees. Firms need to ensure that their employees’ platforms are secure to prevent data phishing. It should help all workers to have remote access to technology tools like VPNs. Without the proper technology, remote work is almost impossible. The management also needs to ensure other infrastructure tools that enhance performance are available.
The third part that should be incorporated in a remote work strategy is how legal compliance to the set rules and regulations is met. Each state, region, and locality will have different health, safety, and financial regulations. It is easy for an organization to neglect these legal jurisdictions and find itself in trouble. When putting up the strategy for remote work, the managers have to ensure all the staff’s current location of work is always well monitored and recorded for decision making. When the firm does not meet the requirements for a person to work from a certain place, it needs to inform them of the challenge and let the employee choose the next most preferable state.
Fourthly, the company culture should be considered in formulating the remote work strategy. The organizational values are of utmost impotence to its success or failure. It is more difficult to nurture and maintain the organizations’ culture in remote work situations. A remote work environment does not have the magical thrill people get of a certain company feel when they work from the office. Due to the limited communication between staff, some talk that promotes team spirit is limited. Managers should ensure communication that promotes the company culture is done.
Finally, the most important element that has to be included in the company’s strategy is its structure. Remote work tends to put the organizational structure in the shadows as employees focus on other matters like flexibility. Most workers love the flexibility, but an organization has to ensure it does not come at the expense of performance. The structure of how to do things has to be well laid. Every employee has to know who to report to and the people who should report to them. Time schedules on when to wake up, go for a lunch break, and close work have also to be considered. However, this time structure can be overlooked if an individual is meeting all their required targets.
References
Florentine, S. (2020). The keys to a successful remote work strategy. CIO. Web.
Neeley, T. (2021). Remote work revolution: Succeeding from anywhere (Illustrated ed.) [E-book]. Harper Business.
Telford, T. (2022). Corporate America is coming around to remote work. but more big changes lie ahead. The Washington Post. Web.