Remote Workforce Management
Coronavirus outbreak has created many inconveniences for businesses: travel restrictions, health scares, quarantines. Companies are faced not only to opportunity (as it was before) but also to the necessity of building a culture that allows more work flexibility.
Who works from home?
Not all businesses are lucky enough to allow their employees to work from home: there are a lot of professionals who will never have an option of working from home. But some business jobs could be moved to home – at least during a pandemic.
Working from home is also an attractive option for parents, people with disabilities, people from isolated areas, part-time or freelance employees, etc. Some full-time office employees also would like to have the possibility to work from home for part of their working week.
Remote workers are not only alone working employees. It is possible to collaborate with people from different regions or even parts of the world! A company can achieve more with splitting tasks by staff in different time zones: offer 24-hour services or keep the project going at higher speed – when one team finishes day, another starts.
Remote employees at SPERTON
SPERTON has employees in different countries of the world, and they had been practicing remote workflow long before the coronavirus outbreak. We are using modern digital solutions like Workplace for better internal communications as well as Office365 components like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive for sharing documents and making calls, chats, video-calls.
Though remote workforce management is not only about using technology tools.
Tips for remote workflow
The prominent article “Top 15 Tips To Effectively Manage Remote Employees” from Forbes Coaches Council explains what could help in better managing of a remote workforce.
Communication matters
While local employees can meet in halls or at lunch, remote people don’t have access to others and can feel distant. It’s necessary to give them as much access to managers as possible. Remote workers should be engaged on a daily basis through some kind of communication via multiple channels. Regularly face-to-face and common meetings should also be scheduled. They can be combined with training or coaching and should give regular interaction to remote employees.
Remote workers are frozen out of regular-office human interaction, so they need to be aligned with values that matter to them, as well as the outcomes they love delivering to others and their natural role in any situation. Connect employees’ interests in learning and goals to the company goals. This will keep them motivated and working productively.
Planning and delivering
There should be a set of guidelines for those who work from home, for example, replies to emails must be given in 24 hours, and no urgency should be set between certain hours. These guidelines should ensure that work will be completed at the same level as if employees are in the office, without making employees working around the clock.
Avoid multi-tasking: for example, use video conferences instead of phone ones. Encourage people to stay in working mode.
Show examples of what you expect to be done to your remote workers. Concentrate on what is being accomplished and stay focused on goals.
Tools
Tools for remote workflow should be reliable with clear processes of using them: easy file sharing, nice audio and video quality during conference-calls, timely invitations for meetings, etc. Dedicated spaces for celebrating special days, company milestones, as well as community recognition, should also be created with the help of technology.
How SPERTON can help you, especially in Coronavirus outbreak time
SPERTON team can assist you with recruiting and hiring remote and local staff, as well as HR and business support in different countries of the world, especially in the APAC region. We have Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Bangladeshi and Norwegian speaking people on the ground in APAC and can help you with tasks that require unwanted traveling worldwide for your employees: follow up procurement, production, transportation, recruiting inspectors, consultants and much more.
We are working globally and using remote workflow so our operation is constant and doesn’t stop during quarantines.