Remote Working has become a common practice over the last handful of years with the rise of the gig economy, organisations implementing flexible working policy & professionals moving towards digital nomad lifestyle. With attractive employee benefits & a perfect platform to maintain work life balance, remote working has become the new normal now.
Remote working & work from home has become all the more important during the COVID-19 outbreak. However remote working has its own share of challenges. Equally important is to effectively manage & motivate a remotely distributed team which does have a physical presence in office. Besides, some traditional, not so tech savvy & owner driven organisations still lag behind in understanding the remote working/ work from home model & would expect employees to be available 24/7 when working from home/remote location. As a result, such organisations are not able to embrace the concept of flexible working & defeat the whole purpose of remote working.
As a career coach & digital nomad, I am detailing below some suggestions to make remote working/work from home a win-win situation for both organisation & employees.
- Keep clear expectations: It is important to set & communicate clear expectations from the outset. When do you expect your employees/remote team to be available & reachable? What results /objectives they need to work upon? What timelines have you established? Remote Teams are built on the foundation of trust. If everyone is clear what is expected of them, they can kick start doing their jobs/tasks. Remember remote working is a top down approach. If the top management is geared towards guiding & motivating employees towards building cohesive & collaborative work culture, remote working becomes much more efficient & productive.
- Video calling & collaboration: Video calling & conference becomes main stay of effective remote working. Allowing your team to communicate & collaborate anytime anywhere is a necessity if you have to effectively manage distributed teams which are stationed far away from each other. This mode of communication gives organisation physical & verbal cues that mitigates risk of wrong information being construed. Video aided communication also facilitates human connection which enhances mental well being, prevents employees from being isolated & promotes social bonding. Prior to each video conference, employees gets an opportunity to chat & catch up. This is the most vital part of remote working models since the culture is built on people & makes them feel valued & part of the group.
- Keep in constant touch: To make sure that your team is on track, you keep in touch/check on them regularly to evaluate how they are progressing in meeting their deliverables & provide them regular support & guidance. Besides, this is a great way to promote a sense of accountability. If they know that you will be checking on them, they would be ready to show what they have progressed/completed till now.
- Use of technology: In today’s digital world, we all are virtually connected through technology. Organisations can use this to their advantage. There are multiple platforms such as google docs, Slack, & notion( All in work space) to stay connected & track the progress of tasks. Make sure that you have these tools in your arsenal. This allows you to communicate anywhere, anytime.
- Maintain work-life balance: Although with the use of technology, remote/distributed teams & organisations are constantly connected, it is important to appreciate that employees have a life beyond work. They are reachable but they should be contactable only during working hours you have defined together. Respect this boundary, be a responsible leader to strike a work-life balance & encourage their employees not to overextend themselves. Their work time should not step into their personal/family time just because they are working from home/remote location.
- Do not micromanage & have faith in the team: The most important part is to develop a trust in the remote/distributed team to deliver. You cannot micro manage a team to track each & every activity of theirs but you need to have that trust in them to perform. If you have clearly set expectations at the beginning, work delivery should not be a problem.You have to clearly spell out the line between checking them regularly versus micro managing. There is a need for a radical shift in mindset of the organisations that only employees who are glued to their work station can deliver. If your distributed /remote team is provided autonomy, they can deliver work whether they are stationed at home or any remote location.
