Remote work has a lot of advantages for both employers and employees. Employers are sometimes able to downsize their real estate requirements, and employees enjoy their commute being lessened or eliminated entirely.
But with remote workers, there are notable downsides. Not everyone finds it easy to stay on task while working out of their home. Distractions with home maintenance responsibilities, small children, or the overall impression of no oversight can cause output and quality to suffer.
If you’ve seen issues with remote employees struggling to stay on task, it might be tempting to scrap the remote work option entirely. However, there are ways to help your remote workers keep their preferred working environment while keeping their performance up to par. Here are four tips and processes that can help.
1. Keep Calendars Transparent
Just because an employee works remotely, it doesn’t mean that their working hours should not be subject to outside oversight. Supervisors, coworkers, and business owners need to know remote workers’ availability to ensure efficient, reliable communication channels.
Requiring employees to share their work calendar allows businesses to view their workers’ availability and also see when they have scheduled client meetings and other work events. Most of the time, no additional software is required in order to share calendars. Simple instructions for how to share Outlook calendar information or other preferred calendar systems can be a standard component of the onboarding process.
Keeping calendars transparent also encourages remote workers to keep their calendars up to date. If a portion of their overall productivity is measured by how well they manage their time, it makes sense for them to note which blocks of time they plan to use for which tasks.
2. Track Individual Tasks
There’s nothing quite like hard data when it comes to tracking productivity. When a multi-step project requires the involvement of many individuals, it can sometimes be difficult to ascertain exactly where breakdowns in the project occur.
CRM systems are great for providing the necessary information regarding how a project progresses from inception to completion. Most CRMs track who has been assigned what task and how long it took to complete the task and pass it on to the next individual.
For remote workers, these task tracking features are especially important. Without physically being around coworkers and managers, remote workers don’t get the verbal and visual reminders that come with being in a group office. Nobody is swinging by those workers’ offices on the way to the bathroom and casually asking how a certain project aspect is going and whether there’s a delay that needs to be addressed.
Remote workers can usually set their CRM to send reminders, including a daily summary of all tasks assigned to them, due dates, and any updates regarding those items. By having those automations available to remote workers, you’re decreasing the risk of having assignments fall through the cracks.
It also protects remote workers from having blame unfairly placed on them for project difficulties. If their participation is ever unfairly called into question, they can reference unchangeable data regarding assignment timelines and notes along the way.
3. Encourage Team Building When Possible
When employees work remotely, it’s very easy for them to feel disconnected from the business and coworkers. They could very well have a closer relationship with their washing machine than their teammates. After all, the washing machine is closer and makes swirly noises to alert them that it’s almost time to switch the clothes over to the dryer. Other than the occasional instant message, other people from the office probably aren’t making their presence known.
Unfortunately, that sense of disconnection can cause low productivity and motivation. That can cause employees to miss deadlines and generally be unproductive. So whenever opportunities arise to bring your remote employees in on group projects or activities, take advantage.
If your office does maintain a physical location, you can invite remote employees to come in for check ins or social events. Now, obviously it wouldn’t be reasonable to pull in a remote employee once a week if they live in Wyoming and the business office is in Alabama. But if the worker is a two hour drive away, it’s not unreasonable to request one day per month in the office.
If physically coming in just isn’t an option, you can try to ensure that the worker is regularly involved in group projects rather than only performing solitary tasks. That typically necessitates regular communication with team members and therefore helps a person feel like they are accountable to other people rather than just a sterile, faceless supervisor or business entity.
4. Don’t Forget Regular Reviews
Sometimes it’s easy to forget about remote workers and keeping up with regular reviews and feedback. As long as the work is getting done, or mostly done, they must be doing fine, right?
Reviews serve multiple purposes, and all those functions are important. It allows supervisors and employers to let workers know areas they need to improve, areas where they are meeting or excelling expectations, and — especially important for remote workers — that they are an important part of the team who hasn’t been forgotten.
Skipping reviews for your remote workers can be demotivating and give the impression that if the worker isn’t important enough to warrant feedback, then the actual work they perform isn’t terribly important either.
Increase Remote Employees’ Chances of Success
Remote work isn’t appropriate for everyone. Some just don’t have the temperament or desire to work from their home and avoid the distractions that can easily arise when away from a staffed business office.
But for those who want to or have to work from home, keeping on task is imperative. If a business puts the tools and processes in place to help their remote workers perform at or beyond expectations, that will benefit both workers and the bottom line.
