Remote working will become more and more standard as the U.S. rolls ahead into the 21st century. Managing remote workers can be a challenge, as few of the standard management tactics employers are used to for dealing with in-house employees relate for an employee who is working on their own schedule at their own location. Here are nine ways smart managers oversee the work of their remote employees.
Hire Someone Who Wants To Work For Your Company – Rather than bringing someone onboard who is just looking for any company that will let them work from home, make sure your remote workers are employees with genuine interest in working for your company, in-office or otherwise – just like what you look for in any other hire.
Make Sure to Build a Personal Relationship – It’s particularly important that a manager work at fostering a real personal relationship with remote workers. The temptation for both manager and worker will be to communicate only at the assignment and completion of duties, but that’s going to only exacerbate the issues that arise from an employee being remote and not a daily part of the office. As manager of a remote employee, you’ll have to go slightly above and beyond to forge the kind of genuine connection necessary for a healthy working relationship.
Study: Work-Life Balance in the Modern Workplace
Encourage Them to Use Video Chat– So much is communicated by our own human faces, rather than by words, that it’s easy for remote workers to feel unappreciated or unseen, even if you respond to their every e-mail. Make sure that, perhaps once a week, you set up a FaceTime or Skype chat to strengthen your bond and instill a sense of humanity into proceedings that simple words on a computer screen cannot always do.
Accommodate Their Time Zone Occasionally– Lots of things can make a remote worker feel removed from the rest of the company, none more literally than being in a drastically different time zone. It’s enough they they never get to see anyone, but often they’re not even working at the same moment as the rest of their peers. So once in a while, so as to remind all parties of your remote worker’s importance (not to mention their existence), arrange for a phone conference at that employee’s convenenience instead of at the rest of your office’s. It may put a few of your own employees out to get on a call late or early, but these are the realities of the new remote working standard – if healthy, respectful work cultures are to be maintained.
Do an In-Person Meeting at Least Once a Year– Reel those remote employees back in at least once a year for an in-person meeting. E-mails are good, FaceTime can be better, but an actual sit down across the table from your employee can be incredibly valuable to a remote worker’s sense of belonging at your company.
Don’t Let Yourself Stress Over How Much They’re Getting Done – Studies show that remote workers actually get more done than in-office employees, besting their more traditional peers’ productivity by as much as 13%. Despite this, it’s understandable that management will fret over just how much is getting done by their remote workers. This is due to the standard – and, frankly, flawed – idea that the your employee’s output is directly tied to how many hours he or she is sitting in their desk at the office in front of their computers. Instead of just hours clocked, set up a schedule of deliverable goals that will satisfy you that you’re getting the company’s money’s worth out of your remote worker.
Use The Buddy System – You wouldn’t want to be an astronaut alone on a space mission if you could help it, and the same is true for many remote workers. The concept of remote working is still new enough that it can be a disconcerting and shapeless for the worker, so specifically pairing them with another remote worker (in the same time zone, for practicality’s sake) gives both employees a more immediate help line if they get in a fix. It also gives them a more immediate teammate they can relate to.
Make Sure The Onboarding is Robust – Since your remote worker won’t be in the office more than a few times, he or she won’t have the ability to pull another worker aside a week after onboarding and ask, “How does the shipping process work here?” or “Do we get paid on the 30th or the 31st?” So make sure the employee in question has the basic facts they will need to proceed with their remote work, and give them a chance to explicitly ask any questions they may have, as even the best onboarding allows a few bits of relevant info to slip through the cracks.
