Working from home is the ultimate dream. Employees get to work at their own time, their own pace. They’re more accountable for their responsibilities and career growth greatly depends on how hard they work.
However, it’s not always easy for both the employee and the employer. There can be communication issues, lots of procrastination, and constant interruptions. Aside from that, it can feel lonely for an employee to be alone and not be around coworkers.
Thankfully, many organizations have adapted several coping strategies to make this mode of work more manageable. In this article, we’ll share some of the ways ways that you, as an employer, can make your remote employee’s jobs easier.
1. Make Time For Personal Communication
Working remotely often means you don’t have enough face to face communication with your employees. Sure, it may make you more productive but it can affect your employees’ well-being in the long run.
So make sure to create time for personal communication among your team members whether it’s an open chat on Hibox for personal stuff or a Friday afternoon video call where everyone is just getting together.
Conversations don’t have to be all about business. You can talk about personal stuff. Humans thrive on connection and when your employees feel connected with their coworkers’, they collaborate on projects better.
2. Define Tasks Clearly
Because we are not there to watch our employees, we need to have clearly defined tasks for them. To do this, you need to get familiar with the position and realistic timeframes for doing specific tasks. Discuss it with your employee and assign it to them for the day or the week.
Make adjustments along the way. Remember that employees have a different pace. Some work fast but make a lot of errors while some take their time making sure it’s perfect. There needs to be a delicate balance where you’re accomplishing enough for the week without the costly mistakes.
3. Automate Something for Them
Remote employees already deal with enough paperwork to sort their work from home situation from taxes to paychecks to health insurance. As an employer, you can take some load off their shoulders by doing at least one thing for them.
It can be anything whether it’s having accounts payable automated for businesses or hiring an accountant to file their taxes. This gives them one less thing to worry about, and more time to focus on their work.
4. Show Recognition
Behind every avatar is a person that craves recognition for the hard work that they do. It can be easy to get drowned in work. If one of your employees is excelling, make sure to acknowledge them and reward them. It can be as simple as praising them in the team chat. You can even give them more flexi time at work or a gift card to their favorite coffee shop. This makes your employees feel recognized and motivates them to work harder. Everyone loves working for a person who treats their employees well.
5. Learn to Write Clearly
Seems very simple but this can actually make a very big difference to your team. Most of the time, we leaders just assume that what they write in the email or task list is automatically understood by our employees. This is related to point #2 where we not only need to define tasks clearly, we need to be able to communicate clearly with our employees.
If they ask questions, provide them with a clear answer. In fact, it’s the basic rule of copywriting. If you want to be understood by your audience, you need to write like a 5th grader. This will reduce the back and forth you have with your employees, allowing for more productivity.
