What are the best tips for remote work

23 of February, 2021

Remote working with the Covid-19 pandemic is the new norm for employers across the countries concerned. As an employer you need to know the best tips for remote work, to boost your employees’ productivity. Businesses and employers also want to be able to offer working conditions that maintain good morale. Even in normal times, you may be thinking as a manager about how to implement a remote work situation in the work place. One of the best tips for remote work? Research your options. And we are here to give you some of those to

Through this article and our blog we offer you the best tips for remote work. Your employees working from home during Covid-19 or in a normal situation no longer has to be an issue. You can also rely on technology such as a time management app that works remotely. With a combination of these work practices you will have everything you need to be able to run your virtual office as effectively as it operated before. You will also understand what is required to make this set-up more permanent.

What are some work from home tips for managers?

The first thing to remember is that working from home can actually boost efficiency if executed effectively, as some studies are already showing. By having your employees work part of their scheduled hours from home you can help reduce costs. You can also increase morale across the workforce, as they achieve a more serene work-life balance.

As a manager though you may feel you are losing your personal touch to managing your employees. You may also be afraid that they are slacking off or simply losing motivation due to the lack of social relations they are developing. So here are some tips to manage well in a remote setting :

• More than ever, as a manager you can set short term goals for your employees so that you are in constant oversight of their progress. Whilst giving them a long term project outlook is important, you must break this up into smaller, achievable goals. When remote working this allows you
• Have the employees use a clocking and time management device to time their work spent on a specific project. This will not only help them manage their time better, but also help you analyse the efficiency of their work on specific projects and re-orientate them
• Keep planning remote one-to-one’s with employees even if they are working from home. This should go over any issues they have and their core goals. Start the conversation asking how things are going so that they feel relaxed about bringing up any core issues. Maintain their interesting in their personal development goals.
• Encourage regular informal staff meetings where employees catch up with the team and ask how work is performing. This also helps them stay loyal to the company and feel a sense of ownership over the projects they lead, not wanting to let fellow employees down.
• Have project management software on hand to help you track how projects are coming along effectively, and where the blockages in processes are happening.

Remote working strategies for companies

As a company you must set out guidelines for remote working so employees are clear what is expected of them, what their schedules are and what kind of expenses they can expect from their employer. Some countries will have clear legal guidelines for businesses to follow. Your HR team should take charge of the company wide remote working strategy. There should be clear guidelines available in a document manager available to all the employees.

Your HR team should also help address any issues your employees are having remote working or working from home. Providing them with information about what sort of expenses they can claim for computer hardware is a strong start.

Maintaining communication : tips for remote work

One of the key challenges of any business where remote working has become the norm is the ability to communicate with employees effectively. Digital communications have come across leaps and bounds, but this then requires its own form of adaptation. Managers needs strong communication tools. A separation between the personal chat and the professional information sharing is also wise. Furthermore you want to make sure your employees are following the correct cybersecurity guidelines. 

For digital communication, have your employees all on the same Operating System and using the same office suite. Office suites such as Microsoft Office and the G-suite by Google are developing more and more tools to help you communicate in several ways, whether it is e-mail, chat, project based chats or other such tools. You could also use independent apps such as Slack to communicate on specific projects effectively.

As a security measure, you should also ask your employees to log in from a private WiFi connection as opposed to the local café’s WiFi. You could lose sensitive documents if you are not extremely careful when  logging in to a public wifi, especially in large cities where hackers make a living out of such irresponsibility.