Working remotely from home has become a new trend for many businesses since the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. For companies that are new to this setup, learning how to monitor their remote team is crucial.
These businesses must ensure that their geographically scattered employees are always at their best despite having to work outside the four walls of a regular office, and with limited supervision.
People can quickly become demotivated and less proactive when in their comfort zones. As a remote team manager, your duty is to put things in place for your employees to stay motivated and proactive. That’s when you’ll get the best of your remote team in terms of productivity.
There are standard methods to monitor remote employee productivity, from using time tracker with screenshots to holding video conferences, group chats, and more. This article will show you the best ways to keep your remote team motivated and proactive working from home.
Set Well-Defined Goals and Expectations
It’s natural for humans to be motivated when there’s a clear picture of what they want to achieve. Lack of motivation, to a large extent, is proof that a person either does not have a purpose to accomplish or does not have a clear picture of it.
As such, it is important to clarify your company goals to your remote team. Doing so will help them understand why they are working for you and what the company expects from them.
The goals and expectations for your remote team should differ across the board. For instance, your remote SEO team should be accountable for helping the company’s web pages rank high on search engines.
On the other hand, the software development team should be responsible for creating software versions with features that beat those of other competitor software, and so on. It helps a whole lot when your remote team can pinpoint what it is your company pays them for.
Allow Time Flexibility
Allowing a measure of time flexibility can help to motivate your work-from-home employees significantly. Since your remote team may comprise people from different countries with different time zones, you should be considerate.
According to remote work stats on Flexjobs, 85% of businesses agree that greater flexibility is why their productivity has increased, and 90% of company workers admit that a more flexible work arrangement and schedule will boost employee morale.
Some people on your remote team may prefer the lifestyle of a digital nomad. Your business model should support and encourage flexibility of location and work hours. This way, they can work at a time that’s convenient for them based on their current time zones.
Build a Growth Mindset
Having a growth mindset has far-reaching implications on your business in such a time as this, where there are a few giant companies, such as Google, Facebook, Tesla, Amazon, and Microsoft, leading many others in all respects.
If your team members are equipped with a growth mindset, they’ll help you to create impossible solutions to the everyday challenges that businesses face. More importantly, you won’t have to do much to motivate them because they will know how to drive themselves into action.
It would help if you organized online self-development sessions. You can host the event or hire an expert in the field to share their tips and ideas. Making it part of your company culture to read self-help books may also develop a growth mindset in your remote workers. This way, they will build the excellent problem-solving and decision-making skills.
Encourage Results-Oriented Action
Many employers assume that their remote team should be busy and that it’s the only thing that matters to the company.
While being active is necessary to get stuff done, your goal should be for your employees to efficiently use their time to get results that will add value to your business. Don’t be the boss who yells, “You’re not working. Get to work!” The better boss will encourage his team, “Work hard, but more importantly, work smart. I want to see results!”
Making your employees stick to their chairs with their eyes glued to their laptops should not be all that matters to you. Instead, encourage them always to get results that surpass your expectation. Offer to answer any questions they may have about their jobs to help them know where to direct their attention to the most.
Use Remote Work Tools
Using essential work-from-home tools is an effective way of making your remote team stay motivated and proactive. Nobody wants to spend several hours on tasks that can be handled by software in a few minutes.
Subjecting your work-from-home employees to doing such tasks themselves could drain their motivation and generally cause a drop in team morale. Some of the best remote work tools that can help your employees be at their best performance are listed below.
Slack: For Communication
Regardless of the kind of services your business renders, communication is vital. Several communication tools are available for companies to use, but my most recommended software is Slack.
It is commonly used across several organizations for communication in a very practical way. The software features chat support, video and voice call support, integration with other useful work apps, and more.
It also allows users to share files securely even when your team members are scattered all around the world.
Check out this great guide How To Use Slack Like a PRO
Zoom: For Meetings and Presentations
Working remotely does not signify the end of meeting with your remote team. Even though you may not have frequent in-person meetings, keeping in touch as much as possible is still necessary.
One tool that can help you achieve productive meetings without needing to meet one-on-one is Zoom.
This online presentation tool that allows up to 100 users at once. It features HD video conferencing, a live recording of meetings for future reference, ability to share important files over the platform, and lots more.
Trello: For Project Management
It is quite a challenge to organize projects, especially with remote teams. Telling people what to do, how to do it, assigning the necessary files to them, setting deadlines, and keeping tabs on the work’s progress requires tight efforts.
However, the right project management software can make these easier. In this case, we recommend Trello for project management software. The software makes project management and organization quicker with features that help you to identify projects with unique labels, tags, and comments.
It also integrates other useful apps, such as Google Drive and Dropbox for file storage and sharing, and lots of other amazing features.
Traqq: For Time Management
Many people understand the value of time, but unfortunately, not everyone utilize it efficiently. Keep in mind that the time wasted on non-essential activities can never be recovered.
As such, you must use a time management tool to make it easier to monitor remote employee productivity. A good time management software should have features that help users to track their work progress in real-time.
Besides being a time tracker with screenshots, such software should help to monitor and increase remote employee productivity with features including screen sharing, mouse and keyboard tracking, automatic report generation straight from the app, and more. You’ll find all these features in Traqq.
Google Drive: For Sharing Files Securely
While working remotely, you’ll need to send files to your remote team over applications, which may be a little insecure because of intelligent internet fraudsters that can hack into systems to steal sensitive information.
Google Drive is a file-sharing tool that simplifies and secures how you share files with your remote team. It allows you to create links to files stored in the cloud and also customize who can access the links.
There are other amazing ways Google Drive can aid file-sharing among your remote team.
Trust Your Team
Now that you have put the necessary policies, tools, and other requirements in place, you have to rely on your employees to do the work.
Trusting your remote team helps them to feel more confident. It motivates them to give their best to work. An article on Talent Organization Blog showed that employees in high-trust organizations had 50% higher productivity, 106% more energy at work, 13% fewer sick days, and 76% more engagement than employees in low-trust companies.
Conclusion
Motivating your team into action is necessary for them to be productive while working from home.
Follow the guidelines outlined in this article, provide the required tools, and trust your employees to give their best. Then you’ll be good to go.