Remote working tips are rolling in thick and fast these days, and with good reason.
If your business is one of the South African enterprises that has had to adapt to operating with a newly dispersed team during the COVID-19 lockdown, you’ll understand the mild panic that lies behind those frantic ‘how to motivate employees working from home’ searches.
Let’s not mince words. It’s been an India Venster-level, steep learning curve.
However, much like the return of the scrunchy and the revival of Birkenstocks, it turns out that working with remote teams is not the end of the world. Like a scrunchie, dispersed teams are versatile, and like Birkenstocks, employees working from home can provide great support and stability when things get shaky.
In short, it’s time to get used to managing and motivating folks who are out of line of sight, because this way of working is here to stay.
The remote workforce has increased by 140% since 2005, with companies like Mozilla and GitLab employing 2000+ and 1000+ dispersed workers respectively. Even before COVID-19 was a thing, 3.2% of the entire global workforce was already plying their trade from home at least 50% of the time.
And now it seems like big South African companies have cottoned on to the benefits of allowing people to Zoom in as well. As such, remote teams are more than likely going to become a part of our everyday lives sooner than we think, and we need to figure out how to keep these multifaceted operational powerhouses motivated.
Here are 9 top remote working tips to get you started:
1. Measure sentiment
One of the biggest challenges of working with a dispersed team is keeping track of the emotional temperature of the group. When people are sitting in an office, it’s much easier to pick up on a vibe.
As such, it’s helpful to use tools like pulse surveys to keep tabs on how everyone’s doing and if there is something that needs to be addressed. This is a good way of keeping little issues from becoming insurmountable hurdles.
The bountiXP platform offers additional applications that include surveys, gaming and e-learning. Take a gander, and sign up for a FREE trial here.
2. Give recognition frequently and timeously
Celebrate the small wins on a daily basis. Using a SaaS-based employee recognition and reward platform is a simple way to provide your managers and team members with a way of giving props to their colleagues where everyone can see.
While a thank you email is all good and well, providing good feedback on a public forum has a much larger impact in the long run. After all, compliments are like mini-orgasms for the brain!
3. Schedule daily check-ins with each team member individually
Managers should check in with their team members daily. Whether that takes the form of a quick IM, a Zoom chat, or a good, old-fashioned phone call will all depend on the needs of the employees in question.
Gen X’ers may prefer a call, while Millennials and Gen Y would probably prefer a rapid-fire emoji exchange over WhatsApp. Find out what works for whom, and use that platform to your advantage.
4. Tailor a rich tech experience
When employees work from home, communicating via email alone can get a bit stale. Tailor a richer tech experience by leveraging video conferencing, as well as mobile-enabled individual messaging so there are different modes of interacting as a team.
No downloads and no software to install. An easy to use employee recognition platform to boost staff performance no matter where they are. Click here to start a FREE 14-day trial with bountiXP today.
5. Lay out the rules of engagement
Your team should be aware of which communication platform to use when, and these rules need to be defined clearly. E.g. The understanding could be that email is for briefing, Zoom is for daily check-ins, and WhatsApp is for urgent messages only.
If your team has a flexi-time arrangement when they work from home, there also needs to be a firm understanding of when they need to be reachable and available, especially if there are dependencies among co-workers.
6. Create channels for social interaction
Everyone needs to let off some steam (or share a very funny meme) every now and again. Provide your team with spaces where they can enjoy some non-work-related interaction, e.g. a Slack channel where they can shoot the breeze without getting into trouble for disrupting essential workflow.
7. Be a safe place to land
Research shows that employees look to their managers for cues on reacting to change and dealing with difficult situations. When times are tough (e.g. when employees were working from home for the first time during lockdown) it’s important to dial up the empathy level as far as it can go, and to offer encouragement and emotional support rather than communicating stress and helplessness.
8. Offer opportunities for personal development
Use one-on-one sessions with your remote employees to find out how they see themselves growing in the company and what they need to get there. If there is an opportunity to facilitate peer-to-peer mentoring, use it. Alternatively, offer on-going learning options or other means of building out their existing skill set. Just because they’re not taking up a seat at the office doesn’t mean that they don’t want a seat at the table.
9. Get the gang together every now and again
If half your team works on a different continent, it’s pretty difficult to get everyone together for a pizza night, we understand. However, if you have 25 people scattered throughout Cape Town, and another few hidden behind the Boerewors Gordyn, make a point of getting together in a social setting every now and again.
Go for a hike, trek out to a wine farm, do some good in your community, or simply meet up for a cup of coffee somewhere cool – whatever floats your collective boat. The point is to get some actual, IRL facetime to boost co-worker bonds.
Putting these 9 remote working tips into practice will make all the difference in managing and motivating your dispersed team. Godspeed, and check back soon for more of the good stuff!
Are you looking for an easy to use platform that’s effective at motivating a remote workforce?
Click here to start your FREE 14-day trial with bountiXP now.