3 Tips for Transitioning Your Workforce to Remote Work
In the past few years, remote work has become immensely popular among workers, with many businesses shifting their operations outside of the office.
Studies show that 87% of employees are ready to take up the opportunity to work remotely. However, transitioning to remote work can be challenging for many business owners, especially since most office processes are not designed for remote work.
Remote work is here to stay, so if you’re considering switching to remote work, how can you ensure the transition goes smoothly?
Here are some tips to help you make that smooth transition without compromising your team’s productivity.
1. Provide the right working tools
One of the biggest challenges that workers and employers face when moving from in-person to remote work is communication and collaboration. Nothing beats face-to-face communication, but some pretty cool programs come very close.
With a wide range of communication and collaboration tools, your team can easily work from home and keep up with their tasks.
New technologies have video conferencing features, real-time messaging applications, and shared document platforms where teams can collaborate. You can also work with Microsoft-Partner services to provide the right business communication packages.
2. Allow for breaks
Remote work is just like any other in-person job; as such, you must ensure that your workers still get break times as though they were working in an office environment. You can use time-tracking software to ensure they work within the required hours and take breaks.
It’s very easy for remote workers to lose track of time when working from home, which can cause them to stop taking breaks altogether. However, not taking breaks can cause them to make mistakes while working due to stress or fatigue.
Taking regular breaks is a great way for your workers to remain focused throughout the working hours and can improve productivity, especially when they have the chance to break down their work into smaller tasks.
3. Measure success by the results
One of the biggest problems most employers face is knowing how to measure the work performance of a remote team. Since physical presence is no longer a factor, you must measure performance based on the quality of output they produce.
You can ensure that your workers are fairly evaluated by setting up key performance indicators that they can work towards achieving. Whether they meet their goals will determine if they’re working well and keeping the business running.
You can offer incentives or rewards to motivate your employees to meet their goals. These rewards could be in the form of bonuses and other benefits they would appreciate. Ensure that you also set one-on-one meetings to know how well your employees perform on their tasks.
With these tips, you now know that transitioning to remote working isn’t as difficult as it should be. You can still better manage your employees, collaborate, and communicate with them just as you would in person.
If remote work suits the nature of your business, it would be worth giving it a shot. Who knows? It might work for your business in the future.