Buffer’s survey reveals that 98% of respondents expressed a desire to work remotely for the rest of their careers.
This stat highlights the growing prominence of remote work among the talent pool over the past few years. This is mainly due to numerous benefits, such as enhanced flexibility, reduced commute hours, work-life balance, improved well-being, etc.
Despite several advantages, remote work also presents unique challenges like communication barriers, productivity issues, etc. Therefore, to overcome these roadblocks, organizations can implement specific measures to enhance productivity and operational efficiency of remote workforce.
This blog explores seven highly effective ways to maximize remote teams’ productivity and how SAVIOM can help organizations achieve it.
Let’s begin,
2. Challenges of managing remote employees in an organization
Managing remote employees in an organization can be highly effective, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. Here are some common challenges associated with remote team management.
The absence of face-to-face interactions can be a significant roadblock for remote teams, resulting in misinterpretations and communication issues. Moreover, managers often fail to get complete visibility into employees’ daily work, making it difficult to assess and monitor their performance, project progress, and productivity.
Furthermore, if the remote workforce is global, managers struggle to coordinate schedules due to employees operating from varied time zones. Another impediment can be language and cultural barriers that may hamper effective collaboration.
Besides, managers may resort to micromanaging remote employees due to a lack of trust, making them feel undervalued and unappreciated. It results in decreased morale, disengagement, and job dissatisfaction.
Lastly, if the organization doesn’t have appropriate tools and technologies, it may fail to ensure seamless communication, which would result in lowered productivity and project delays.
These are some challenges companies face while managing a remote workforce. Let’s delve into the effective techniques to combat them.
3. 7 ways to improve remote teams’ productivity
For remote employees to stay productive, managers can implement the following strategies that help unlock their potential to boost efficiency and productivity.
3.1 Establish clear guidelines for remote collaboration
Buffer’s survey reveals that 20.5% of remote team members stated that effective communication and collaboration were their biggest struggles.
For effective remote team collaboration, organizations must set company-wide policies. They should formulate clear guidelines on when to use synchronous or asynchronous channels (emails, messaging apps, etc.) Moreover, managers should designate specific time frames for all team members to be available for stand-up meetings or scrums. This will help facilitate effective teamwork and proper collaboration.
3.2 Provide flexibility and autonomy in work
McKinsey’s survey revealed that 40% of global and 26% of US workers would quit their jobs if they did not have flexibility and autonomy over their work arrangements.
Flexible working arrangements help foster better work-life balance among employees, increasing engagement and job satisfaction. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to offer flexible work options, such as compressed workweek, flextime, staggered hours, etc. In addition, resources must be given work that suits their competency and interest to boost autonomy and stay productive. This way, allowing team members to have more control over where and how they work helps enhance their productivity and performance.[PG19] [GA20]
3.3 Define goals at project and organizational levels
When project and organizational goals are clearly defined, it helps ensure remote employees know their role and scope of work at every level. Therefore, managers must define the key responsibility areas (KRAs) of each employee and outline the project’s key performance indicators (KPIs) like timelines, ROI, Cost-to-Benefit Ratio, etc. When resources know their roles and responsibilities clearly, it enhances their commitment to work and encourages them to align their efforts for successful project delivery.
3.4 Ensure uniform workload distribution
Distributing workload equally among remote team members is key to ensuring none of them are under/overutilized. If resources are overloaded with work, managers can implement resource smoothing/leveling techniques based on the project type. Likewise, if employees are underutilized, managers can bring forward project timelines, initiate training, or sell additional capacity. Thus, these resourcing treatments help maintain the resource health index and improve overall productivity.
3.5 Encourage employees to choose projects of their interest
Enabling resources to choose projects or tasks as per their competencies and interests increases engagement and accountability. Additionally, it minimizes the need for frequent check-ins on their progress, thereby saving managers’ time to focus on more high-priority or strategic initiatives. For this, managers can use an advanced tool to publish open positions for interested employees to apply. This improves their performance, enhances job satisfaction, and boosts overall productivity.
3.6 Conduct virtual team-building activities
Firms can conduct virtual team-building activities to promote better collaboration and foster a positive remote work culture. They can organize icebreaker sessions, online lunch dates, etc., to provide employees with an opportunity to communicate and get to know their peers. In addition, organizations can incentivize team-building activities with cash prizes, certificates, or trophies to boost participation. Hence, prioritizing teamwork and collaboration through virtual sessions increases job satisfaction, employee engagement, and productivity.
3.7 Develop an employee reward & recognition program
A Gartner survey reveals that a well-designed recognition and rewards program can drive an 11.1% increase in average employee performance.
Companies must develop effective rewards and recognition programs to acknowledge remote teams’ efforts to keep them motivated. Moreover, appreciating the employees’ hard work makes them feel valued and supported. Organizations can offer bonuses, paid time off, gift vouchers, etc., as rewards. Additionally, social media shout-outs, thank-you emails, etc., are great ways to recognize employees’ good work. This helps boost team members’ morale and productivity.
These are some of the effective ways to boost remote teams’ productivity. Let’s understand how modern resource management can help organizations improve it.
4. How does advanced resource management software help boost remote teams’ productivity?
Organizations must leverage advanced resource management software like SAVIOM to keep their remote workforce engaged and productive.
Here’s how it helps:
- The tool’s 360-degree visibility enables managers to allocate the right resources for suitable projects, regardless of remote employees’ location.
- The color-coded heatmaps and utilization reports allow managers to view the remote team members’ utilization rates and take remedial measures if they are under/ overutilized.
- The collaboration feature helps keep remote employees updated with the project’s progress, enables them to start a conversation with other team members, and answers their queries in real-time.
- The open seat feature allows managers to publish open positions. Employees can apply for projects aligning with their skills and interests, and the right match can be selected.
5. Wrapping up
Organizations that refuse to support a remote workforce risk losing their best people and tomorrow’s top talent- Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork.
Rightly said! Now that the remote work culture is the norm, organizations must think strategically about how to sustain their workforce while improving team collaboration and performance. To achieve it, companies can implement the proven practices discussed above and pair them with a futuristic resource management tool.
