A remote worker is any individual who can work at the comfort of their home, but they have to deliver the required results. A remote worker does not just wake up, run through the activities to cover throughout the day, relax somewhere and start watching their favourite movies or series. Remote working is a full-time job that requires concentration. Now, as a boss, it is your responsibility to ensure your virtual teams work effectively and are productive.
However, in some cases, a leader may have little knowledge of how to handle his or her virtual teams to produce quality work. For example, some employees may prefer to work from their home, but as a boss, you hesitate to give them the opportunity because you assume your work won’t be done as per your standards.
Are you experiencing troubles of letting your workers do their work from home? Are you worried that no quality work will be delivered if your employees work from home? Well, worry no more. Below are the proven tips to help you overcome the worry.
Encourage open Communication.
The most advantageous employees are the ones working adjacent to one another because they can borrow ideas from one another or even pass a message with ease. However, on the side of virtual employees, communication is a bit tricky because the employees are based on different localities. So, as their leader, it is your duty to put in place means of communication among your virtual teams to ensure maximum communication is achieved. Open communication among employees is what leads to increased productivity within your organization.
HipChat is an excellent example of a messaging application that many companies have put in place to ensure communication is effective. Another social intranet known as MangoApps helps to bring together virtual teams to keep communication moving. When an emergency arises, the two applications enables each employee to reach out to one another at ease despite where they are located.
Although, any good thing must have its critics. For example, some workers may think that the two applications will reduce the company’s performance because some people may take advantage and misuse the resource for their own personal gains. To avoid such issues, it is your responsibility as the boss to put in place measures on how to use such resources like encouraging openness among your virtual teams. Also, it will be necessary if you put up schemes to measure the performance of your workers. With this, the employees will focus on the company’s goals since they know if they under perfume, they will be caught up.
Messaging apps also makes the employees feel connected as works of the big company when they talk to each other freely. They actually feel like they are in the same office.
Embrace Transparency.
Dealing with remote teams requires a high level of transparency especially when it comes to the goals of the company, needs of individual workers, and projects to be handled. To embrace transparency as a manager, it is vital that you put in place systems for projects management that every worker can be accessed despite their location. The system you choose should allow all the virtual teams to understand what others are doing.
With such systems put in place, as a manager, you can monitor each and every activity of your employees. This will increase productivity because every employee will be held responsible for any action they take. They will be cautious about what they do.
Basecamp is a perfect example used by many companies to manage many projects at the same time. The application is highly trusted because of its level of transparency. Any document uploaded to Basecamp can be accessible to all the connected devices as long as there is internet connectivity.
Focus on the outcome.
Apparently, any serious leader should know what outcome will be useful if a given action takes place. There will always be challenges in working with virtual teams. Good news is that there are proven tips that will help you as a leader to handle the challenges to get the required outcome.
For example, only employees who have a stable internet connection should be given an opportunity to work from their home. Bad internet will lead to poor results. However, if the same employees experience some technical problems, they should be able to access another Wi-Fi hotspot and continue with their work. This point means that no employee should take a day off without working in the name of some bad experiences.
Another problem to watch out for is lack of communication. For every company to achieve its objectives, open and easy communication is a must consideration. For instance, in cases of emergency, a direct phone call should be put in place. In other cases, services such as Skype calls, e-mails, or Google Hangout should be put in place to pass information quickly as required.
Lightshot is a technique that helps a person who cannot virtualize what is being communicated. It captures a screenshot which can be viewed by another worker in a different computer.
So, if your workers request to work from home, think twice. It might help your organization a big deal.
