The Pandemic changed both our work and our professional lives. Even with everyone getting their vaccines, people will still keep the beneficial life changes they acquired as a part of their daily lives. One of the things that are probably going to be with us for a long time is working remotely. The flexibility of being able to finish your work without having to go to an office is highly enticing to a lot of people, as it makes the possibility of being able to balance work life and personal life more reachable. However, for managers, this might pose some difficulties in management, especially if this is your first time managing people who are working remotely. Below are six tips that can help you manage your employees wherever they are working from.
Check out Best Remote Administration Tools
1. Set Expectations From The Beginning
Make sure you let your employees know what you expect from them as early as possible. Be very clear about your expectations to avoid any future confusion. Doing so will also leave no room for misunderstandings, saves you a lot of time, money, and effort.
2. Use Technology For Your Benefit
There are plenty of technological solutions that can help you make your work easier. You may be inclined to use the most popular amongst companies although you should choose the most beneficial for your management tasks. Nowadays, you can use employee monitoring software to help you evaluate your employees’ working time and the effort they have exerted. What always bothers managers about their staff working from home is the manager’s feeling of inability to have the control they used to have when their employees were working from the office. A solution in the form of employee monitoring software will help you feel that you are on top of things and not always concerned about what might be going on without having to ask every now and then and make your employees feel stressed.
3. Meet With Your Team
It is important to make constant meetings with your team and discuss work progress. However, you have to be aware not to set meetings in times that would make it hard for your employees to attend. You need to understand that zoom meetings require different skills than those you use to run a face-to-face meeting. Avoid making meetings late at night or in times that you would not have usually asked for if you were working from the office. Many managers fall into the trap of setting meetings at inappropriate times thinking that employees can attend since they are at home. On the contrary, that usually makes employees reluctant to attend or to focus if they had to. Giving them the feeling that you understand and respect their boundaries and their social lives would have a positive impact on their overall performance in the long run.
4. Recognize Those Who Need Recognition
When people are around you in the office, you easily remember to thank them for everything they do. Working remotely might make you forget to do that more often. Make sure all your employees feel seen and appreciated because this is what makes employees stay and work harder. Even if you have to do meetings only to congratulate a team member on a recent success, do that. People are more likely to do much more than they are asked to do if they are always seen and celebrated.
5. Be Available
Make sure your employees know how to reach you if they need anything. Keep the communication channels open the same way you would adopt an open door policy. If your employees feel lost and unable to contact you, this will make them more frustrated and more inclined to leave.
6. Encourage Working Hours System
If there is something that employees complain about when it comes to working from home, it is that the workday seems to never end. Encourage your employees to have working hours that they stick to since this will be helpful for both you and them. That way, you would know when to contact your employees and expect your work to be done. Stick to these working hours and make your staff feel that their personal time is appreciated and respected.
Working remotely has many benefits and a lot of people benefit from it, not being able to make the best of this experience would be such a loss. Your employees would benefit from spending much time with their families and will feel much rested from commuting less. At the same time, running a business remotely saves you a lot of money. That being said, what is left now is for you to deal with this situation in the best manner possible and to manage your employees in a way that makes them more willing to work and be productive. It might seem like a challenging thing at first but over time, things will be easier.
