With the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the ongoing fuel situation fluctuations in Sri Lanka, it is fast becoming normal for employees to prefer working from home either full time, or at least on a hybrid basis, where they go into office only a few days of the week. In such situations, it is extremely important to ensure that integrity is maintained among employees while they work from home. Here are a few ways in which this can be facilitated.
Emphasize transparency always
Researchers have identified numerous benefits of transparency in the workplace, and that list of positives is likely to grow. But where technology has made remote work both possible and profitable, it also tends to make transparency harder to come by. Even if you can’t see others in the same way you can in a shared office space, there are plenty of software services that allow you to monitor and track employee activity and production, and you can choose to make as much data as you want available across your organization. When productivity, communication and transparency are all points of emphasis in your work culture, integrity takes care of itself.
Maintaining regular and open communications
Do your best to be in regular communication with your team. If they feel like they always have to track you down, that can make them feel stressed and anxious about work. Instead of waiting for them to write to you about your projects, take the initiative to provide them with an update and let them know about any possible roadblocks to work being done by the due date. Ask your team how they would prefer to receive updates from you: daily, weekly, something else? If you don’t already have a group chat with your team for projects you are working on, create one on a platform that your organization uses. This may take a little more effort, but it’s well worth it.
Weigh in on your work culture with new recruits
In many cases, great skills can’t make up for a personality that clashes with existing team members, and that applies just as much to remote workers as it does to onsite employees. Bringing a poor cultural fit onto your team can have a substantially greater impact than having multiple super-star employees. It’s not worth the risk and could have an overall negative effect on your team’s integrity. So when you hire fresh, always make sure that they are a cultural fit with your existing team, and the norms that are currently in practice in your workplace. This way, your team will get on well together and the dynamics will not be impacted negatively.
Make sure your team knows one another well
When there’s little-to-no face time among team members, it’s extremely easy for your team to become isolated, which does the opposite of creating trust. Thanks to modern technology, being separated by distance and time doesn’t preclude introductions, meetings and conversations that create a sense of team bonding and unity. This will also lead to more efficiency within the (virtual) workplace, which is good for your bottom line.
These are a few of the ways in which you can ensure that the integrity of your workplace is ensured even if the employees are working from home.
