Last year everyone had to lock themselves in their homes when the pandemic broke out, and still, there are a lot of companies opting for working from home to avoid catching the virus. Remote working for almost 18 months has become a serious challenge for both employers as well as employees.
Even though you have invested in software to track every minute of your employees, it may not be sufficient to boost their productivity or ensure that they are making most of their time.
At the time of the pandemic, when you all are facing economic recession, it becomes more challenging and essential to increase your productivity.
Now may not be the ideal time to hire new employees, so you will have to ensure that your current employees are productive.
Productivity is a huge concern when it comes to remote working. While some find it hard to work in a place other than the office, others will have problems with distractions like pets, children, and the like.
If you want to avoid issues down the line, you will have to keep your employees productive. Here are some of the tips you can use to make your employees productive.
Ways to increase the productivity of remote employees
It can seem to be very challenging to improve the productivity of your staff while working remotely, but the following suggestions can help you.
Be in touch with your remote employees
When your employees are working at the office, you can easily be in touch with them. You can walk over to their desk or call them in for a meeting in your cabin. You can closely monitor what they are doing, what problems they are having and what you can do to resolve their issues.
However, this is not possible when your employees are working remotely. Though you cannot meet your employees in person, you can at least talk to them on the phone to know to get a line on what they are doing.
You do not need to stay limited to work-related conversations. You should also ask if any other problems affect their productivity so that you can offer them the right solution to their problems. This kind of approach will be appreciated and boost the morale of your employees.
Be a manager, not a micromanager
Numerous managers love to check in their team’s progress every time and give them an ultimatum when there are any problems, and they are failing to handle them. Of course, this kind of approach is not possible with remote employees.
You may not be able to keep an eye on their performance every moment. However, some managers love micromanaging. They generally have doubts that employees will not be working hard as they are at their homes.
They must be watching Netflix or doing their household chores. This is why they keep sending them a message as they suspect that the window screen has got idle. This kind of behaviour will irk your employees. You should trust them.
There are various other ways to evaluate their performance. As a manager, you should find out the cause of their poor productivity and suggest to them how they can improve it.
Schedule outings as a team
Employees get frustrated with work from home overtime. Social interaction is necessary to break the monotony. Though you have allowed them to work from home, it does not mean that you cannot meet with them.
You should schedule a meeting with them at least once a month. You can discuss all your work priorities, new strategies with them in the meeting. You do not have to keep it limited to work as the purpose is to break the monotony. You can have some fun.
This also gives employees a chance to communicate with each other. They will likely learn a lot of things, especially if they discuss work.
Reduce zoom meetings
Video conferencing is a great way to communicate with your employees when they are working from home. When you are to discuss a project and give feedback, you will have to conduct a zoom meeting.
However, note that you do not need to conduct this meeting every time you have something to tell them. Video conferences can be mentally taxing if they are frequent. Further, you do not need them if you have to give feedback that you can do on the phone or by Skype.
People will feel tiring with such meetings, and this will affect their productivity. Video conferencing is usually an ideal option for discussing a project’s guidelines with your team members.
Invest in the right tool
Of course, you will have to track your employees whether they are productive or not. You are not supposed to micromanaging, but you are not supposed to avoid the importance of tracking them either.
Trusting your employees is crucial, but it does not mean that you do not need to invest in tools that help you gain an insight into what your employees are doing at a particular moment. You may consider monitoring software for employees, but make sure that you purchase the one that meets your purpose.
In case of lack of money, you can fund them with 3000 pound loans. With these tools, you can analyse how long they are productive and idle. However, at the same time, you need to invest in other tools that help you assign and manage projects, communicate, share documents, and the like.
Although there are some free tools, they may not come with all features. If you do not have enough money to invest in these tools, you can seek installment loans for bad credit and no guarantor.
The final word
If you are looking to increase the productivity of your remote team, you will have to follow the tips mentioned above. You do not have to invest in tools but also find out how you can encourage them to be more productive.