5 Ways To Run A Successful Business With Remote Employees
Gone are the days when a key measure for success in business was the number of hours their employees spent within the four walls of the office. Today, what matters is how well the job gets done irrespective of whether the employee works 8 hours or so inside the office or from anywhere in the world at his or her convenience.
Flexible and remote working options have become one of the most sought benefits among today’s workforce and at times, people prefer this over higher salary as well.
In fact, studies have shown that nearly 90% of all employees would love to work remotely at some point in their career either as full time or even part-time when situations demand so. It is the duty of employers to ensure that such flexibility and remote work options are made available for their resources. This will help retain talent and reduce turnaround costs significantly for every position.
But now comes the question of how to achieve this? Well, here are 5 tips to run your business efficiently with a remote workforce.
Before going ahead with investing in the tools and infrastructure needed to facilitate remote working for your employees, there is a basic cultural shift needed in your organization. Age-old customs such as micromanaging every single activity of an employee will be a huge roadblock in offering flexible and remote working options. Even though the company may promote it, managers would find ways to forcibly bring employees to the office somehow.
The first thing to do here is to create a holistic awareness for all employees irrespective of their job roles and seniority. Explain to them the benefits of having a healthy work-life balance, improvements in productivity while working remotely and how to incorporate best practices in remote work. Make remote working a normal routine in your work culture and not a special privilege. This will help improve sentiments of employees and avoid biased favors and other negative impressions that may arise in your core employee vision.
Related Reading: Top 5 Productivity Tools Every Small Business Needs Today
2. Empower the Workforce with Technology
One of the biggest issues that companies face while offering remote work options is access and connectivity for remote employees to the core office environment. This is where technology can be a lifesaver. From offering secure connectivity to internal office networks and file storage archives to empowering teamwork in real-time using virtual workspaces, the options are limitless.
There are powerful cloud-based platforms that facilitate real-time communication and collaboration on work tasks. Employees can access and work together in these virtual workspaces from anywhere in the world and securely exchange confidential files and information. They can stay connected with the events happening in the office through intranets that have social media-inspired interfaces for engaging interactions. Such platforms enable transparent sharing of workloads and ensure that everyone is aware of how their work can impact the service delivery of the whole team.
Related Reading: 5 Tips To Foster Team Collaboration In A Small Business Environment
3. Encourage Autonomous Decision Making
Today, businesses must seek to inculcate leadership quality in employees and for this to happen, the first thing to do is allow employees to work autonomously with minimal supervision.
Using technology solutions, it is possible to easily measure the value they are contributing autonomously and how well their defined job responsibilities are managed. Hence, there is minimal need for manual supervision and employees can be trained to make decisions on critical scenarios that have a direct impact on customer experience. This is yet another step to encourage a responsible remote work culture.
When remote working employees have a clear understanding of how their decisions and pace of work can impact overall business objectives, they leave very little room for errors and mistakes. This will greatly improve team dynamics and also set the tone for a highly productive remote work culture.
4. Dedicated Communication
Communication is a key pillar in empowering the workforce of any kind within an organization. When you want to have a successful business with remote working employees, then communication becomes even more important. All employees working from anywhere in the world need to have constant sync with their peers in the office and have an idea of what is happening i
In addition to standard email communication, companies must on-board a wide variety of engaging conversational channels for employees to stay connected with the organization. It could be periodic newsletters having company-wide information, instant messengers for people to converse with each other or in groups as part of team projects or it could even be a fully-fledged intranet. Irrespective of the channel you choose to implement, the core purpose of communication here is to make employees aware of what happens in the organization, what is to be expected as return from their job roles and how their performance drives value for end customers.
5. Measure Results and Provide Feedback
Offering flexible remote working policies is one side of making a successful workforce environment. You need to ensure that such policies and flexibility do not come at the cost of missed business output. Here is where ample measurement of performance and productivity needs to be maintained. Through modern project management tools, it is easy for managers to assign responsibilities and tasks to remote employees and monitor the progress through periodic sessions. These sessions may be a video or audio conferencing and don’t require the person to be physically present in the office. These sessions can also be used to identify roadblocks and challenges that remote employees face and provide them with support and advisory needed to tackle them easily.
As more and more companies shift their work culture to a flexible and fully remote operational model, you need to be looking at ways to replicate it to remain competitive. This is where platforms like INFINCE can be the game-changer in facilitating the best environment for remote teams. From collaboration tools to powerful project management and cloud storage, our range of solutions empowers your workforce to drive more value every day from the comfort of their homes. Get in touch with us to know more.
