7-minute read
With the global pandemic still forcing large sections of the country to either remain shut down or only operate at partial capacity, there are still many people who are working from home. But even before this pandemic hit, it was estimated that nearly a quarter of the American workforce was working remotely for at least part of their job.
Therefore, while the number of remote employees will eventually start to decrease as COVID-19 cases subside, there will still likely be a significant number of employees who are going to make the permanent shift to remote work. But whether or not your company is expected to eventually go back to the office, you’ll still need to know how to better facilitate a remote workforce in the meantime. So make sure that you follow our handy tips to make managing your remote team significantly easier.
Set Up a Cloud Service
The very first thing that you will need to do is set up a company account with one of the many available cloud-based services. These helpful services allow you to set up an online database containing all of the important information your company could ever need.
When your team is in the office together, sharing files isn’t such a big deal since you can literally pick up whatever documents you want and walk them over to the other person’s desk if needed. However, this isn’t possible when the entire team is working remotely, which means that you’ll need to find a reliable solution to this problem.
One of the best ways to do this is to start using one of the major cloud computing services since they incorporate proven methods of logging, orchestrating, and analyzing documents and data while also allowing room for scalability. This will allow you to upload a document and then put them into folders or just outright share them with specific individuals. Therefore, you can ensure that the only people accessing these documents are the people who need to be. It makes remote collaboration significantly easier than it is by trying to work over email or any other method.
Find Ways to Motivate Employees
A lack of employee motivation is a common problem when dealing with a remote team. This is especially true right now since the vast majority of the people working from home have little or no previous experience working remotely. Therefore, they are thrust into this position without having the time needed to develop their own systems and methods of keeping themselves focused and motivated on their work while at home.
When an employee is forced to work remotely, they will suddenly lose at least 17 percent of their motivation, which can be devastating to their bottom line. Therefore, as their employer, you need to find ways of keeping your remote workforce motivated.
A good way is to regularly check in with them to see how everything is going. This doesn’t just mean communicating about work-related issues either. A lot of companies find success in hosting regular video conferences or sending out email campaigns to the employees in order to help create an open space for them to bring up any fun, interesting, or challenging things going on in their personal lives as well as their work lives.
This will allow them to feel more connected with one another even while they are physically separated. And once you begin to see motivation levels rise within your remote employees, it should make your job of managing them much easier.
Use Secure Real-Time Communications Apps
Speaking of being connected to your employees, it is crucial that you set up a real-time communication app for your team to use while working remotely. Relying on emails or phone calls simply isn’t going to cut it since these are very limited methods of communication that can often have you waiting several hours for a response. However, the same cannot be said for major real-time messaging apps like Slack or HipChat.
When a remote employee receives a message through these apps, it resembles a text message rather than an email, which benefits you as the employer. This is because 82 percent of text messages are read within five minutes of being received.
This means you should be receiving much faster responses from your employees, which is extremely handy when you’re looking for updates on a project or are needing to request or share time-sensitive information like payroll or accounting information. So make sure you pick a real-time communication app that is not only easily accessible on any platform but also offers superior security measures to ensure that your private company chats stay private.
Outsource to a Digital Back-Office Service
When you have no prior experience managing your company’s back office completely digitally, it can be quite a steep learning curve. And this is not an area where you want to make a mistake. Otherwise, you could very easily have an issue on your hands that results in dissatisfied employees or even legal troubles. Rather than trying to navigate this minefield of challenges, most remote businesses can make their lives a lot easier by enlisting the services of a virtual back-office company.
Unlike your relatively short experience managing a completely remote business, these professional services have helped manage the back-office tasks using completely remote methods for many years. Therefore, they know exactly what the possible threats and challenges of this process are and will also know how to handle them. Trusting these back-office solutions is a lot easier than attempting to handle it yourself and then causing a massive pileup of issues that not only hurt you, but everyone else at the company as well.
By following these helpful tips, you should find it much easier to facilitate your remote workforce. And if you’re interested in finding a reliable back-office solution to help you get through this pandemic, then don’t hesitate to contact our team of professionals at AdminAssist today.