For many people, having the ability to work from home provides an opportunity to work more efficiently. Working where and when best suits your schedule can create an environment much more conducive to productivity than an office might. While working remotely works well for many people, it can still have its challenges. If you’re a business owner with remote employees, keep these 5 tips in mind for effectively managing remote workers.
1. Set clear expectations
First and foremost, set clear expectations with your remote team members. What do you expect in terms of communication, project management, and meeting deadlines? It can be difficult to stay updated on current projects when you aren’t working from the same office every day. Clearly stating expectations and having measurable goals in place can be helpful for your remote employees to have as a framework.
2. Keep open lines of communication
Communication between you and your team members should be readily accessible. Have a strategy in place for how often you’ll communicate and which avenues of communication are appropriate and when. You might use project management tools like Slack to stay up-to-date on progress, while quick questions might be reserved for the chat feature within your email.
In addition to having open communication, it’s also important to state what you expect as far as timeliness is concerned. How long does it typically take for you to respond to an email, and how quickly do you expect your employees to respond?
3. Utilize tools for project management
One of the challenges of remote work is that there are no opportunities for quick chats at your desk about how projects are going. There are many tools to help teams collaborate and manage their projects remotely. Collaboration software like Slack, Monday, or Asana can be particularly helpful, not only for you as the person in charge of a remote team but also for your remote workers.
Instead of constantly checking your email or other various avenues of communication, you can track the progress of tasks and projects simply by looking at the Slack channel. Any communication needed regarding a specific task can be done entirely through Slack—ultimately saving you time from having to go back and forth via email. This is also a great way to keep communication organized by topic—something much more difficult to do when you have massive email threads to sift through.
4. Work with a headhunter agency
To help ensure you find the perfect fit right away, hiring remote workers through a headhunter agency is a great option. Because the individuals work directly with the agency itself, the recruitment company handles everything.
While job listings may not be seen by all of the possible candidates who are right for the position, recruitment agencies have a large pool of people to choose from. They’ll do the vetting for you to help make sure only the strongest candidates are chosen for the interview process. From there, they’ll hire the person best suited for the job.
Headhunter agencies not only do the initial work up-front for you, but they also maintain a relationship with their remote workers. If an issue arises, your remote staffing agency can step in to help resolve it.
5. Have set meetings or check-ins each week
Without those typical desk chats, it’s crucial to specify a day and time each week to check in with your remote workers. These meetings don’t necessarily need to be long—just a quick opportunity to touch base and see how everything is going. This can also be a great opportunity to create space for feedback from your employees.
Keep these 5 things in mind for effectively managing your remote workers and helping to ensure their effective and efficient performance while at work.
