Managing workers in the office is hard enough, but what happens when a pandemic hits and most of the people in your workplace have to start working from home?
Plenty of workers are now working from home, and this trend is likely going to remain strong in the years to come. Upwork’s study projects that by 2028, 73% of working teams will have members who work from home.
With this in mind, managing remote workers well is becoming an important factor to achieving success as a company. This article will provide you with some tips on how to manage remote workers successfully.
- Set Expectations
People work a lot better when they know what they need to do. This is usually a lot easier when people are in the offices, and their managers can set expectations regarding the work that they do. Working alone at home can mean that some employees are uncertain about what to finish when, and about the expectations of how they will use their working hours.
To prevent issues arising from a lack of focus or discipline, managers can mention explicitly what is expected of their workers. This includes deadlines, quality of work, and how employees should proceed with their projects. You can also keep them accountable by reminding them regularly, or by asking for reports showing their progress.
- Accept That Employees Are All Different
Every employee works in a different way, and these differences are emphasized when working from home. Some will enjoy working alone, while others may suffer from not having colleagues or managers to help them find their direction.
These differences mean that employees need different degrees of assistance, and they will need a personalized management approach. By accepting this and being more attuned to how your employees work, you can improve their productivity.
- Maintain Contact Throughout the Day
One of the biggest difficulties of having to work from home is that you won’t be able to easily communicate with your employees, and they in turn will have a harder time reaching you to ask questions.
To prevent this from becoming an issue and hindering anyone’s quality of work, make sure you are frequently available for them to call and ask questions. You can also use managed mobility services to aid this process.
Maintaining contact is also a good way to keep your employees accountable to doing their work. Otherwise, they may find it more difficult to stick to deadlines and accomplish their work well.
You can also communicate more often as a way of checking whether they are feeling overwhelmed or mentally unable to complete tasks. This promotes a sense of awareness for you when managing them, but also allows them to feel listened to by the company.
The pandemic will be hard on everyone, including your workers, but communicating and understanding one another is key to getting through the season.
- Use Video Communications Often
The pandemic has severely restricted the amount of social interaction people receive, and this can impact a person’s mental wellbeing. This can also impact team collaborations, because the employees may feel disconnected and isolated from others and therefore have less of a motivation to remain accountable to each other.
To help matters, you can utilize video communications more often. This provides a sense that you are talking to actual people that you can see, and employees are more likely to feel comfortable sharing ideas and collaborating in this way.
- Make Sure Your Employees Have the Right Tools
How can your employees work well if they don’t have a supportive Internet connection, a place to work that’s separate from noise and distraction, or a suitable home office?
The answer is, they probably can’t. Not having a suitable working environment can reduce productivity levels and prevent people from focusing well enough to deliver high-quality work.
Making sure your employees have the right tools is instrumental in getting them to work well from home. While this may be difficult in some cases, providing for the material needs – such as a working computer and WiFi – can be easily done and should be prioritized by the management team.
When communicating with employees, ask them openly if there is anything you can do to make their working environment more conducive, and listen to their responses.
- Trust Your Employees
It may be difficult to trust your employees when they’re all working somewhere beyond your supervision. What if they are slacking off instead of doing the required work? What if they are not making full use of their working hours?
As hard as it is, though, at the end of the day, you will have to make the decision to trust your employees. You may be frustrated at the whole arrangement, but if you resort to micromanaging, your employees may feel even more demotivated and stressed out than before.
Instead, go through progress reports and provide suggestions and support for employees so they can do better in the future.
Managing Remote Workers in a Pandemic
Managing remote workers is one of the hardest tasks that a manager will have to face. The lack of ongoing interactions, the inability to fully understand what the home environment is like for each employee, and the frustration of being unable to oversee your employees can pile up and hinder a company’s progress.
This is why it’s important to consider the impact of the pandemic on people’s stress levels, and to adjust your management style with that in mind.
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