The global pandemic is on the rise, we still don’t have any permanent solution in our hands to stop this being spread, we are still locking us down in our places, avoiding meeting in person, depending on the technology and internet to keep the essential things going on. This current situation has prompted the business and offices to shift to the remote working and working from home options. For the must filled job vacancies, the employers are even hiring remote employees to conduct their works from a remote place. Though the lockdown has been lightened up, for the sake of the safety of the employees’ lives, the employers are still asking their existing office employees to continue working from their homes. But, where we all know that working from home is challenging, and everything is not possible to be done from home, how should employers keep their working team engaged? Before looking into this, let’s see what is the effect of this working from home on the business.
The tremendous rise of remote work and working from home has clearly given us the primary reason to call the year 2020 as the year of remote works. Sounds funny? But research shows that the employees are being more productive in their job roles when they are in their homes and conducting work directly from home. They are showing that avoiding long traffic in the way of commuting towards the workplaces to reach by time and balancing both of their personal and professional lives are making them more relaxed and focussed towards their goals, which on the other hand increases their productivity. Also, fewer break times make them work more on the tasks and complete the tasks prior to the deadline, but despite these, there are some difficulties that the telecommuting team may face, and that affects their productivity. To overcome these, employers should follow some strategies to manage and collaborate with every telecommuting employee to enable more ways for them to be engaged and productive. So let’s discuss some strategies that the employers and the HR team can implement to their working from home team to keep them more engaged and boost their productivity.
Where all the companies around the world are encouraging all of their existing employees to continue to telecommuting, the following are some strategies that the employers should consider,
Providing Essential Technologies and Tools.
First of all, to keep all the team members engaged and productive while telecommuting, it is essential to provide them a tool to stay connected and updated about every task status, and projects. As an employer, you can use some project management tools such as Slack, Trello, Heyspace, Asana, etc. There are some live tracking project management platforms that actually let you stay updated regarding the real-time status of the employees’ daily productivities and activities. In workplaces, the team members used to communicate in person regarding any work, but while telecommuting, it gets impossible. But you can implement some online video conference platforms like Google Hangouts, or Skype, to let the team members communicate with each other face to face.
Scheduling Online Meetups and Communicating Daily.
In the previous way of working, you used to schedule a meeting with all of your employees or project team members in your meeting room, and show a presentation or any documents regarding the project. But while telecommuting, it is not possible to meet up and discuss a project. Rather than following up with everyone via phone calls, and sending the documents via email, you can invest in some virtual video conference tools. There are so many virtual meetups tools available on the internet, among them Zoom, Google team, and Microsoft Team are being widely used. Through these virtual meetups, you will also be able to communicate with your team members on a daily basis like the way you used to do in the office and share the screens. On the other hand, this will let your employees think that you value them like pre-pandemic times.
Appreciation is the Least way to Show You Care.
In this global pandemic, many of the businesses are running out of the track and facing a serious loss. These things result in sudden unemployment to many of the employees, and your employees may think about the same thing, but you can show that you care about them, appreciate them for the work they are doing to keep your business running. Appreciating someone for their hard work is the least way to show that you actually care. And when it comes to telecommuting, if an employee can complete a task successfully by avoiding all the difficulties, then s/he deserves an appreciation. It will boost up their morale and productivity.
Spread Positivity and Be Supportive.
In this situation, many people are facing some unalterable problems, among which system inability and slow internet connection are the commonest. And it can hamper someone’s productivity. Be supportive of them. As an employer, you should support your employees if they face these kinds of situations. Also, if you have the working moms in your team, then you should support them as they are working for you along with handling their infants. Your today’s support may result in tomorrow’s increased productivity.
Engage Fun to Your Daily Communication.
It is not always necessary to communicate regarding the work and tasks. Sometimes a small non-work interaction can help your employees to get rid of their daily workloads and free up their minds. Everyone is stuck in the lockdown, being socially isolated. At this time, as an employer, if you can’t understand the situation of your employees, then no one can. They are dedicated to keeping your organization running in this hard time, as a return gift, you can do this to them. Ask them about their day, their plan after the lockdown, plan a post-quarantine trip with them, share your funniest moment in the office. It will help them to be less stressed and more relaxed, and we all know that a relaxed employee is more productive than a stressed one.
These above-mentioned passages are showing you the ways you can keep your telecommuting team more engaged and productive with their work. We know that it is not possible to work on everything while telecommuting, but also we don’t have any alternative option in our hands. In this situation, we have to support each other, together we will win.
Thank you for reading the article. If you find this helpful then share it with your friends and colleagues and make a comment below. And if you think that something is missing here, or you have anything to add up here, then please let us know in the comment box. For more strategies and remote working tools and technologies please contact us! Team SyaRose, is always ready to help you. Thank you again!
