How you manage a remote workforce who are working from home, will have long-term implications for your business and its growth potential. If you do a poor job, morale and productivity will suffer; if you’re successful, a remote workforce can build loyalty and boost engagement. Here is a brief guide to help you tackle the challenges of managing remote employees.
Set expectations about working from home early and regularly
Providing guidelines, setting boundaries and reviewing the basics are among the most important steps to take when setting out on your project. There will be questions, so be accessible and provide clarity on priorities, milestones, performance goals and more. Outline each team member’s availability and ensure you can reach them when needed. And just as in the workplace, managers should keep workers up-to-date on policy and staffing changes, company successes and tips for working at home. They also should model behavior around the hours employees work, such as establishing expectations around responding to any after-hours work email and texts. This helps employees maintain a healthy work/life balance, and prevents them from burning out which, without the physical separation between home and the office, can be more common when working from home.
Build more trust in your staff
You won’t be able to watch over your employees when they work remotely as you could if they were in the office, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t getting the job done. If you can’t trust them, ask yourself why you hired them in the first place or what happened that caused you to lose trust in them. If you do not trust your staff, then you start to become a remote micromanager. It’s challenging to manage a remote workforce, but identifying individual needs, increasing communication and trusting your employees can help.
Treat your employees as individuals
Successful managers can identify the strengths, weaknesses and needs of the individuals who work for them. They can then leverage that information to nurture and motivate each individual employee. That same insight and management style must be applied to how they work remotely. For instance, if you’ve got 12 team members, that’s 12 different sets of needs you have to meet.That goes for the hours they work, as well. If one employee prefers to work in the early hours of the day, encourage it; if another is more of a night owl, allow that, he said. If the work is getting done, treat employees as the individuals they are. This will get you better results.
These are three of the key fundamentals that you can follow when you start managing your employees who work from home. Remember that the process is a challenging one but that with the right implementation and planning you will be able to enjoy many benefits.
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