Tips and tricks to manage employees remotely!

Home Office
Forefront

Since the recent outbreak of Coronavirus across the world, business leaders have had to adjust the way they operate in the midst of the pandemic. Employees are now tasked with working remotely while embracing this as the ‘new normal’.

Companies meanwhile have the responsibility of devising the best strategies and technique for communicating with employees while ensuring productivity is optimal. Some companies have adopted remote work process easily while others struggle at it. Take a look at excerpts from their conversation.

What Are The Levels Of Working Remotely?

Here are insights on the levels of working from home which employers and employees need to look at to understand where they are and what works for their organization. They include the:

Non-Deliberate Action: This is a stage where employees can’t come to work due to certain circumstances such as traffic, health etc.., Employees get to do one or two tasks but they will put off most things until they’re back in the office. Level 1 is where the majority of organizations were prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Recreate The Office Online: This is not very effective, however, it is where most organizations are now. It’s where employees have access to video conferencing software (ex. zoom), instant messaging software (ex. WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams) and email, but instead of redesigning work to take advantage of the new medium, they ultimately end up recreating online, how they work in the office. At Level 2, people are still expected to be online from 9 am to 5 pm.

Adapt The Medium: At this stage, organizations start to adapt and take advantage of the medium. Employers begin to facilitate their staff with the required tools or resources they need to work effectively from home. As an example we at Forefront started working on shared documents (such as Microsoft Sharepoint), that is visible to all and updated in real-time during a discussion so that there is a shared understanding of what is discussed and decided.

Asynchronous Communication: This is the point at which organizations are very effective. They move from being time-driven organizations to task-driven organizations. Those elements that make asynchronous communication possible in an organization, which include:

  • Discipline on both sides.
  • Trust/Reliability.
  • Access to the right tools.

In order to avoid duplication of effort, we advise that for organizations at the level of asynchronous communication, messages between teams should:

  • Provide sufficient background detail, where necessary. provide clear action item(s) and outcome(s) required.
  • Provide a due date
  • Provide a path of recourse if the recipient is unable to meet your requirements.

Other Key Insights:

Other key things employers and employees should take note of are on how the pandemic would affect individuals and organizations include the following: The average time it takes for Job seekers to find a job out of school is two and a half years. That will likely increase due to the impact of COVID- 19

  • Jobs we considered as undignified will become dignified. For instance, working mums will need the assistance of an educated nanny. This will provide more job opportunities for nannies.
  • Foreclosure business, debt recovery, health, and food production are sectors that might experience a boom Post COVID-19.
  • Loss of Job and pay cuts will hit almost every sector
  • Individuals should merge digital skills with the soft skills they have in order to connect to a large value scaley.
  • Some organizations will adopt the commission-based salary scale, as an example: Individuals will get a percentage of whatever they bring into the business.