The new reality, in which remote work and online connections are a full part of the workflow, has long been here. Many articles have already been written and words spoken about the fact that remote work opens new opportunities, but also brings new problems of information security. But this is not the only problem! Also, one of the problems of remote work is the productivity of employees.
Remote work, as surveys show, is a welcome option for many employees. For example, remember how much time you spent (or are spending now) on the road to work? And this time is a part of your working day, because you can’t do anything else. Even partial work from home allows you to create a flexible work schedule that allows you to balance between work and family life and keep up with everything.
However, despite the great desire of employees to have this opportunity, it is also important that they are ready for it – alas, we cannot always get the same productivity as in the office. Is there anything we can do about it? Of course, even now we will try to briefly describe the threats and their solutions. After all, the more flexible the workflow is, the more effective the results you will get.
The first problem is home care and problems. And they affect both office and remote work in the same way. The problem itself is that the employee, who is under the pressure of problems, is ineffective. This is where dialogue is important; you must determine the scale of the problems your subordinate has faced. And propose solutions. What will they be like? It already depends on your own flexibility, and the question is only to what extent you are willing to help the person.
The second problem is distractions. And here the work from both sides is important. First, the employee himself should be aware of how much time he spends on things that do not affect the work. Second, the manager must provide the tools to identify these distractions and to limit or at least demonstrate to the employee that he or she can eliminate them.
The third problem is endless loopholes. Given that modern technology allows for online meetings, their number can be huge. But the famous rule “80/20” tells us that 20% of all the tapes give us 80% of the result. It is necessary to clearly determine the need for a meeting, who will attend it and how many meetings the employee participated in.
So how can we ensure that all these problems are solved, besides what we have already described? Very simply. First, these are software for timekeeping and control of employees. This way you will be aware of distractions, employee’s dissatisfaction with their work or conflicts with colleagues. The main thing is that monitoring should not be intrusive. Employee monitoring software such as Monitask allow you to get analytics by working hours and monitor deviations in the work of your employees.
The employee’s evaluation is also important. After all, when an employee understands that he or she is valuable to the company, when he or she sees where he or she is growing up, when he or she sees a common goal that the whole team is working on, he or she is much more effective at doing the job. And these are not unsubstantiated statements – a happy employee will be effective.
So, flexible work schedule and remote work are important and, most importantly, effective tools that can improve productivity, help solve problems of employees, ensuring their stable participation in business processes, and thus ensure the stability of the business processes themselves. The main thing here is a two-way dialogue and the use of special software solutions, such as Monitask, which will allow to control and regulate work processes.
