The move to remote work isn’t letting up even as the world learns to live with COVID-19. Most companies who tested the waters of telecommuting during the worst period of the pandemic found many reasons to maintain and even fully adopt the arrangement.
One of those reasons they are increasingly embracing the virtual workspace is improvement in employee productivity.
Does Remote Work Boost Productivity?
Study after study has cited different reasons why productivity is higher than in the traditional office. For example, remote workers are less likely to take time off to solve personal issues since they work from home.
People are more relaxed working in a friendly environment like home. Also, choosing their work schedules is another factor that boosts productivity.
A Flexjobs survey attested that remote work boosts output and efficiency. 65% of respondents reported that they do better work from home than in the office. They mentioned fewer distractions, reduced commuting stress, fewer colleague interruptions, more comfortable clothes, and more personalized workspaces as some of the reasons for increased productivity.
However, while these factors come with remote work by default, other management-related issues can hurt productivity in a virtual work arrangement. This article focuses on how business owners can manage remote workers to increase and maintain productivity.
Avoiding Micromanagement
Remote work comes with the pressure of always confirming that employees are on the job. It’s natural to be concerned whether workers are doing their jobs – and doing it right – without physical supervision. These concerns often spur managers to make regular calls and send disruptive emails in the name of check-ins.
In reality, people hate to feel that they’re always looked upon with suspicion. Instead, they would appreciate a level of trust. No one likes to have someone else constantly watching over their shoulders. According to a survey published in the book My Way or the Highway: The Micromanagement Survival Guide by Harry E Chambers, 85% of respondents admitted that micromanagement negatively impacted their morale.
So, make sure you trust your workers to do their jobs their way and at their pace. Also, resist the urge to check in every five minutes. Instead, you can use a clock in and clock out app to monitor work activities. This way, you can see when your workers are on the job without always reaching out to confirm.
Promoting Communication
Nothing blows up productivity like communication. If your team members cannot collaborate, you’ll hit bumps along the road that will cost you. Statistics show that small businesses with an average of 100 employees lose $420,000 to miscommunication every year.
On the other hand, McKinsey reported in 2012 that companies could boost productivity by 20% to 25% by leveraging social technologies to improve communication.
Since employees work from home, it’s imperative that they communicate. The arrangement of working alone in a remote location could lead to members of staff working in silos. So, encourage communication by providing tools that boost collaboration in a distributed team. For example, you should schedule mandatory weekly or bi-weekly meetings and always remind workers to reach out whenever they face difficulties.
Leveraging the Right Tools
Providing the tools required to smoothen the remote work process is one of your primary responsibilities as a manager. While the virtual workplace removes the need for office maintenance, it still requires adequate digital infrastructure.
Remote work tools don’t start and end with a laptop and internet connection. Instead, your team must be equipped with the proper collaboration, time tracking, and project management tools. For example, they should be able to work on shared documents in real-time, engage in roundtable discussions over teleconferencing, and send and receive large files.
Remember to also provide productivity tools to help them plan better to boost output and efficiency.
Using Dedicated Remote Workspaces
When people work from home, they savor the prospect of working from any corner of the house. While this freedom and flexibility can be fun at first, it can cause problems long-term. That’s because the home tends to be filled with distractions, and having a dedicated workspace is better for focus.
While we don’t always see it, we develop and attach an inherent bias to every physical space we find ourselves in. These spaces are primarily set up to meet specific purposes, and we attach these purposes to them.
Setting up a home office allows you to enter that “Work mode” whenever you step into it. It also blocks distractions from places like the sitting room, especially if you don’t live alone.
So, make sure you encourage your employees – and yourself – to set up dedicated work areas, as this can significantly impact productivity.
Encouraging Regular Breaks to Preventing Burnout
It’s often difficult for remote workers to pump the work brakes. Many of them work for hours non-stop and resist the urge to rest. A Freshly survey conducted by OnePoll found that 29% of WFH respondents forgot to take lunch breaks.
This trend is common among remote workers because the boundary between work and personal life is blurred. Sometimes, they even take up extra work after hours. As an employer, you should discourage this behavior as a burnt-out employee will only hurt your company’s collective productivity.
As it turns out, research by Vouchercloud shows that workers are productive for about three hours each day. Another Stanford study reported that working more than 55 hours a week will make no difference in productivity.
So, develop a company culture that promotes breaks and mandatory work hours. For example, you can use time tracking applications to set lunch breaks and end-of-work reminders. It would also help if you recommended activities, like playing stress-relieving games, to help your workers take the edge off and recharge.
Delegating Tasks Optimally
Assigning specific tasks to the right people boosts productivity and saves time. Developing this policy will prop up your remote team for success in the long run. The problem for most business managers is identifying who’s suitable for what job.
You can solve that issue by using competent time and productivity trackers. These apps will monitor and monitor how long workers complete their tasks. This way, you get to know who is efficient at what. You can then know the right person to assign a task and identify areas of improvement.
Sanitizing the Work Process
Some work activities take up more time than they should, and others are entirely unnecessary. Having these processes in your workflow can significantly hurt productivity and take you many steps back. For example, some meetings are time eaters and do nothing to help employees.
According to a Korn Ferry survey of 1,945 employees, 67% of respondents said too many meetings negatively impacted their work performance.
So, identify those meetings that your team doesn’t need and cut them from your schedule. Better still, have a roundtable discussion or send out a survey asking your team members which activities they consider time-wasting.
Promoting Teamwork
Teamwork is one work aspect that suffers in a virtual workplace. As we mentioned, employees tend to work in silos when they’re not together physically. They are more inclined to face challenges rather than reach out to a colleague for help. Also, workers keep to themselves due to fear of distracting others or overstepping some sort of boundary since everyone works from home.
You can curb this trend by encouraging teamwork and synergy. Let workers know that they don’t always have to place calls whenever they want to contact a co-worker. Sending a slack DM or email is fine. They can also send a mail to request a call if they feel uncomfortable placing unsolicited calls.
You should also schedule team meetings from time to time to encourage team members to share project progress and raise concerns about the process. While meetings should not be organized all the time, they still help teams come together and hash out complex issues.
Wrapping Up
Now you know how to ensure the productivity of employees working from home. You can always enjoy the productivity perks of remote work as long as you adopt these policies. So, remember to dial down the check-ins, communicate often, and cater to your employees’ health and welfare.