9 Tips for Successfully Managing Remote Workers

Due to the circumstances well-known to all of us, more and more workers are switching to home offices and remote work. While this might be very fitting for many employees, managers are facing a whole new set of challenges when it comes to managing teams and ensuring worker productivity and happiness. On the other hand, a team that’s well managed is happy, effective and creative. But managing remote workers is not impossible, especially with these useful tips that follow: 

#1. Understand the challenges of remote work

Remote work is something that many people adore, but it definitely doesn’t come without any cons though. Every manager needs to understand what challenges remote workers need to overcome every day and how to improve their workdays. Most workers struggle with old equipment, lack of appropriate tools, distractions, feelings of isolation, juggling tasks, mastering remote work technology and missing team interactions. Managers need to use some ingenuity to solve these issues, but simple things like providing more flexibility can help in management. 

#2. Provide flexible hours

Managers who work with remote workers need to focus on providing flexible hours to maintain productivity and consistency. It’s very important to have a concrete plan of work, but being open to adjustments and new strategies is also necessary. It doesn’t really matter whether your employees choose to work in the morning or at night when everyone else in the house goes to sleep—what’s important is that they complete their tasks and provide quality products. 

#3. Voice your expectations

When working remotely, communication is one of the main challenges workers need to overcome, especially when it comes to understanding expectations and workload management. For that reason, every worker needs to understand the remote workforce culture and every manager needs to communicate their expectations early on and clearly. Your expectations might include establishing best working practices, how often and long employees need to be online, when to perform general check-ins, and how to perform team meetings. When employees know what you expect from them, their performance will be up to standard. 

#4. Clarify the rules

Remote workers still need to perform under certain rules, but make sure these rules are clear. Avoid using vague terms like quickly, properly, well and often—these can confuse people. Your better tactic is to give concrete terms like “finish during today’s workday” or “report every three days”  or “perform under company guidelines”. 

#5. Provide different communication channels

When employees can communicate with you and each other, you can expect better results. In remote work, it’s easy to feel left out. But, if the manager provides their workers with good communication channels and tools, everyone will feel like they belong to a team. Some of the most useful communication tools your remote workforce can use are conference calls, instant messaging platforms (Slack, Teams, Facebook Workplace, etc.) and emails. Additionally, to improve the communication of your remote workers with clients, you can join Gmail CRM that allows workers to share contacts and address books with the same ease they share Google Docs. Thanks to a clear and easy two-way sync, your company can maintain a clean and organized contact base.

#6. Focus on organization

Keeping everyone on track in remote teams is not easy, but it’s crucial, so the importance of having the best practices in place can ensure your work is organized and all the projects get proper attention. With different collaboration tools, everyone in the team can get better insight into the structures necessary for managing their work. Also, the owner of the business can get more visibility into the operations as well. Some tools that can help collaboration and organization are Asana, Basecamp, Monday.com, Everhour, Jira and Trello. 

#7. Monitor productivity

No matter if working from the office or home, people universally struggle with productivity. A manager needs to motivate workers and ensure their workdays are comfortable. Regularly checking in with them through quick team conference calls or private calls can engage employees and provide a touch of motivation. There are also tools for time tracking that monitor activity levels so managers can easily identify cases and tasks that require more attention and better communication. 

#8. Treat workers as individuals

Mangers forget that people are all individuals and they require different things and settings to be productive. It’s important to encourage remote workforce to create a good balance between their personal and business needs to feel valued and safe. Take time to understand their individual issues by doing surveys and individual chats, so you can identify issues and brainstorm solutions. 

#9. Include physical meetings

Your workers might be working remotely, but it doesn’t mean you can never meet face to face if there’s time and opportunity. Sometimes, physical meetings are necessary for the company’s success. These are not always possible, but you can make an effort to travel to a region where your employees live and set up a meeting (one that respects all the social distancing rules, of course). 

Remote workers are what keep the economy going today, and learning how to manage them better can boost your business even more and get the most out of their potential.