How to Ensure Optimal Workforce Productivity in Uncertain Times
The COVID-19 outbreak may have forced many businesses to adopt remote work policies that they were unfamiliar with earlier. However, with the right productivity apps and collaboration tools at their disposal, such organizations found managing their remote teams much easier than they initially thought. As the world embraced work-from-home practices, a lot of new productivity tools also entered the marketplace. Nonetheless, where this made managing the remote workforce simpler for some, it created further confusion for others when it came to choosing the right remote work tool for their business.
For instance, InfinCE team management software offers all the essential remote work applications and productivity tools you need to make remote work seamless. In addition, InfinCE allows you to pick additional productivity apps and third-party tools from its curated app marketplace and integrate them quickly. All these features of InfinCE simplify team management. With InfinCE, you can improve operational efficiency and employee engagement by ensuring that your teams have all the tools needed to perform their jobs.
Read more: 5 Common Remote Work Challenges Solved by InfinCE Digital Workplace Solution
Remote work challenges
Remote workplace culture brings many benefits to the company in the form of cost savings, while it benefits employees by letting them work from the comfort of their homes. But, yet again, the work-from-home approach is not devoid of challenges either. For example, managers find it very difficult to establish a personal connection with their employees and build trust without direct contact. Likewise, they do not have much insight into the daily work of their teams and are required to experiment with different practices to keep the processes going.
Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce
1. No face-to-face supervision
The lack of in-person interaction between managers and employees makes leaders presume that their teams are not working efficiently, especially when they do not achieve the expected results. Though the deficit could be because of many other metrics, managers are likely to think that employees did not meet their targets and failed to perform to their potential due to no face-to-face supervision.
2. Limited access to information
Often, remote teams have to put extra effort into finding the information they need to perform their jobs. Getting even simple answers from their colleagues can take an entire day if they are located in different time zones. At the same time, interpersonal issues and low motivation to collaborate can also create a significant obstacle to keep the teams functional.
3. Lack of office culture
Social isolation, loneliness, and remote working can be stressful and lead to operational inefficiencies in many different ways. For example, without the usual interactions in office settings, employees can feel disconnected and lose their sense of belonging. On the contrary, home distractions and personal responsibilities can also affect remote working practices and impact overall productivity.
Read more: 5 Tips To Effectively Manage Remote Teams During Challenging Times
Five practical ways to manage remote workforce better
Different enterprises have come up with distinct methods to manage their remote teams and overcome the related challenges. While that is a great way to explore the potential of remote working for your company, there are a few ways to simplify the approach. Here are some tips that will help you to manage your remote workforce in these uncertain times.
1. Set out with a proper plan
Everything should start with a proper plan when it comes to business management. It is significant for creating a healthy remote work culture as well. Therefore, you need to determine the best approach for running the day-to-day operations and communicate effectively with your team.
2. Define the expectations
Clearly define the expectations to your teams, set the targets, and communicate the respective timelines for each target with your employees before the start of the project. This will avoid confusion and allow you to track the performance of your teams.
3. Monitor project progress
Tracking the project’s progress periodically will help you update your teams about what they need to do next. This will also help you ensure that everyone is playing their part as they are supposed to.
4. Keep your team motivated
Do not let social isolation or lack of face-to-face interaction sneak in to affect your team’s productivity and the company’s overall operational efficiency. Instead, use different communication channels to interact with your teams and keep them motivated to ensure that they work to their best potential.
5. Ensure seamless access to data
You should make sure that your teams have all the data and information accessible at all times to perform their duties efficiently. This will ensure that all employees can complete the tasks without waiting for someone to share the files.
Employ the right productivity apps
This is the golden ticket to seeing success with remote working policies. From planning the process using project management software to providing access to files via cloud-sharing tools, you can tackle all the challenges in adopting a remote workplace culture with the right productivity solutions. With an all-in-one platform like InfinCE, you can combine all the productivity tools for effective communication, collaboration, and performance tracking in a single suite.
Read more: How InfinCE Simplifies Multi-app Management for IT Managers
Here are some of the most critical productivity apps that you should have to manage remote teams efficiently.
- Project management software helps you plan and sync the different tasks assigned to your remote workforce.
- Instant messenger app ensures that you can communicate important information to your teams in real-time.
- Documents sharing tool facilitates seamless information exchange among your employees so that they can work anytime.
- Video conferencing solution resolves the gap of face-to-face meetings to some extent while allowing effective communication.
- Time tracking app allows you to monitor the performance of your teams and keep everyone motivated to get the job done.
InfinCE gives you all these productivity apps and collaboration tools in a single platform to make remote team management much simpler. Besides, when you have multiple remote desktop tools for different purposes, it can quickly become chaotic to stay on top of everything, not to mention having to bear considerable subscription costs. With all the productivity tools in one platform, InfinCE also helps you avoid juggling different apps to manage your remote teams. Contact us to learn more about InfinCE.
