Effective remote working practices

When remote working became the new normal, a new divide opened up – the gap between the businesses that transitioned to remote working with thought, deliberation and planning, and those who took a more reactive, under-fire and “just keep things running at any cost” mentality.  The differentiators are important because they define the companies that employees will want to continue to work for, the ones that employees feel have their back, have been supportive and empathetic, have got them set up right and are taking a flexible approach.  These companies win the loyalty, support and ultimately retention of their employees. If you can’t tick these boxes, you might need

Remote Workers Physical Set-Up

Getting remote workers set up right is critical to their productivity and indeed their health.  Poor posture and desk ergonomics can cause chronic pain and inflammation in addition to repetitive strain injuries.  When employees work in an office environment it’s a basic part of their onboarding at most companies, to ensure they have the right equipment, set-up and tools to make their time in the office comfortable.  When employees work remotely however, the discipline of creating the right set up often gets left behind – not least because it’s not uncommon for remote workers to switch workspaces, between a desk, sofa, kitchen table – even their bed.  It’s good for work energies to move between different workstations – people often find they’re more creative when not confined by the space of their desk, but for ongoing work using a computer it’s important remote employees have the right desktop set up and use it correctly.  We’ll be providing additional resources and information on this soon.

Effective and Empathetic Management of Remote Workers

When you can’t physically see staff working because they’re not in the office with you, the focus becomes much more about output. This is a positive, when handled effectively, but can also be problematic – the reason; different people approach tasks differently and it can take longer to generate output for one than another.  This might lead to Manager’s believing that a member of staff is slacking off, when in fact they might just be more thorough or less able to operate at the same speed as others.  The key to effectively managing distributed workers is clear, consistent communication and effective technologies to enable the monitoring and tracking of workloads and projects.  There is a plethora of monitoring tools which, on the face of it seem like Big Brother spyware but in reality can actually help remote managers identify where problems are because they feedback data around how and when employees are working.  If a monitoring tool gives you the data to show it’s taking an employee double the time to complete similar work to their counterparts, it can help you more quickly identify and therefore solve a problem – it may be that your employee is being more detailed in the work than is needed, or likewise it may be that your speedier employee isn’t being as thorough, either way it’s much easier to work out solutions when the problems are clearly defined through data.

Actively encourage a clear divide between work and home life

The benefit of remote working for many is the ability to work around home and family commitments.  But this flexibility can sometimes make it more difficult for employees to create a clear division between home and work time, which can lead to burn-out.  Lead from the top with this, it’s a key part of your company culture.  If you are  an organisation that wants to look after its employees, get the most out of them, work hard but also play hard and recognise that employees have lives of their own to lead you need to demonstrate your commitment to protecting their work life balance, it needs to be part of your remote work policy.  Some businesses take Friday afternoons off, others have a strict policy of not exceeding a set number of hours, whilst others reflect the peaks and troughs in productivity required by their work – the trick is to make sure everyone is walking the walk not just talking the talk – again, monitoring or time tracking tools can really help give visibility on this.

Encourage your remote workers to lead a healthy lifestyle

Encourage exercise.  Without a daily commute, your remote workers may have reduced their time outside walking to work or to public transport.  Getting outside is important for Vitamin D levels, for mental health and wellbeing and for physical health.  Encourage staff to use the time they might have spent commuting, on daily exercise, to create a daily habit – think about whether gamifying exercise is an appropriate option for your team, for example setting goals and competitions around the number of steps walked.  Encourage healthy eating too.  Many employees who work from home find that they gain weight because the fridge is so close!  Not working alongside colleagues means the natural control of curbing your tendency toward gluttony is removed, since no-one can see you doing it!  Your employees are your best asset so help them to look after themselves.  There are a number of employee benefit schemes available that can help you incentivise healthy living – and we’ll be bringing you more information on these shortly.