With 16% of companies now fully remote and the number only growing, many businesses have made the shift into remote employees. There are many advantages to this and, as a whole, people seem to prefer it. Sometimes it’s even necessary if everyone is super spread out.
However, there are some unique challenges that come with managing remote employees. It can often seem like an impossible task.
Fortunately, there are some ways you can avoid this becoming a problem. Here are some tips for managing remote employees to ensure they feel valued but productivity stays high.
1. Hire Great Employees
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Managing your employees and avoiding the challenge of remote work becoming an issue starts at the very beginning. Hire great employees (and use a trusted site like bradfordjacobs.com to do it) to make sure that the people you hire are motivated and have the skillsets necessary to do a great job.
If you hire people who are already good at what they do, then there’s no need to worry too much about having the ability to monitor them.
2. Communicate Frequently
One of the challenges of remote work for both domestic and international employees is that they will often feel isolated. Because they’re not joining an office every day and being part of an in-person work culture, it can start to get lonely which can lead to them becoming unmotivated.
That’s why you should always make sure to communicate frequently. Send a message to check in every day but also, make sure you set up regular meetings where you do meet face to face — so to speak. Google Meets and Zoom are great for getting everyone together.
It’s a good idea to make this a weekly meeting so people always have the chance to bring up anything that’s bothering them and update you on their progress. Asking for regular progress updates is essential.
3. Time Tracking
More and more companies have begun to utilize time tracking software where an employee can fill out a timesheet at the end of each workday pointing out what tasks they were working on and the progress they’ve made. This only takes five minutes to do, but can be a huge benefit for management.
You can quickly identify what’s taking people a long time to do and what isn’t, as well as the progress being made by individuals. It will also help to keep employees accountable if they know they have to report back at the end of each day.
This is especially important for people being paid hourly, but it works well for salary too.
4. Provide the Right Software and Equipment
Never make the mistake of hiring employees and forgetting to give them the right tools to do the job. This is a surefire way for nothing to get done, as they don’t have the means to.
Make sure you understand what’s necessary, from physical equipment to software. Check in with your employees periodically and ask if there’s anything they need to do their job better. That doesn’t mean you need to grant every request — only that it gives you something to think about and if you think it will help their wellbeing and productivity, you can get it to them.
Don’t forget about things like a comfortable chair to work at as well as a work computer. Employees shouldn’t be expected to use their own computer for work, unlike contractors.
5. Set Clear Standards
Things can get confusing for employees if you don’t set clear standards at the start. The more you fail to manage people and let things go on and on, the more the standards might become very lax and productivity might slip. You also don’t need to micromanage if you make standards very clear at the beginning.
For example, communicate how long you expect it to take to complete certain tasks. If you work in marketing, suggest how long a website landing page should take a copywriter or an infographic should take a designer, on average.
It also means setting simpler standards too though. For example, emails should be responded to within one business day and phone calls returned within two hours.
By setting up the simple stuff, you’re putting everyone on the same page and setting employees up for success.
6. Trust Your Employees
At the end of the day, you also have to trust your employees. Taking care of employees means giving them a certain amount of control and freedom over their projects and not checking in every ten minutes to ensure they’re actually working. Trust that if they aren’t, you’ll spot it very quickly.
This will also help employees to feel valued and will give them more time to get their work done without their boss emailing them every ten minutes.
This might take a while to get comfortable with if you’re new to managing remote employees, but it’s worth it to cultivate a great team culture.
Managing Remote Employees Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult
It can sound like an impossible task. How do you go about managing remote employees when they aren’t in the same building as you and you can’t even see what they’re doing?
All you need to do is set them up for success and trust them. Set clear standards and hold people accountable who fail to meet them but, ultimately, trust the employees you hire. It’ll pay off in the long run.
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