If you’ve essentially been forced to run your enterprising operation remotely as a result of the global pandemic affecting us all, firstly, welcome to the world of remote work! Now, with the pleasantries out the way, the question is, what took you so long? Why did you wait for something you didn’t even know was going to happen, in the form of the fallout of the pandemic, to go remote?
After all, if you’re over here reading up about how to maintain your remote workforce in a productive fashion, you’ve long since discovered the benefits of remote work and collaboration. If not, either way, whether it was a strategic decision taken or if it was something forced on you, maintaining a remote workforce doesn’t automatically make it a productive way to work by default. It comes with its own set of challenges, especially if your professional set-up is one which leans a little heavier on monitoring and reporting systems that harbour elements of micro-management. This would then mean your business would be needing all IT systems and technology to be suitable for the tasks at hand while also being reliable and accurate, for this reason, it might actually be beneficial for your business to look at the like of ServiceNow consulting or other technical-system consultants that can specialize in various tech solutions to help your business to excel. Then you can look into the tools available to you as well, such as screen recording software which can help remote work come together and keep everyone in the loop. Then also, the people that cannot attend the meeting or presentation can also catch up on anything they need to! You can check it out here if you’re interested.
Granting more freedom to take initiative
This is a great lesson which I’ve personally learned from reading some of the great Sir Richard Branson’s literature, that being simply that workers should be given more freedom to take initiative. It’s good practice generally, but is perhaps a little more imperative when the opposite of this way of doing things bears the potential to put a strain on your communication and networking infrastructure.
If workers have to clear things with middle-management with each iteration of their tasks, it’ll very quickly overburden the system. Instil a culture of encouraging workers to only try to clear things with management if they can prove that they’ve taken at least one or two steps that demonstrate some kind of initiative, before ultimately going to their immediate manager.
Solidifying your core communications and networking infrastructure
In the midst of the need to work remotely is precisely when your core communications and networking infrastructure has its ultimate importance revealed! Meeting Software and other virtual event management tools are engaged to carry out the daily tasks. The production environment business tech needs to perform optimally, virtually all of the time that you and your team are using it.
It’s a simple matter of making sure it’s a solid system, with the requisite IT support best left to the professionals who specialise in this field. Sure, your in-house IT staff (well, they’ll be working remotely as well) will definitely still have their place, but now is not the time to rely on the typical “IT-guy” operational methodology. It would only make sense if yours was indeed a specialist support business in the IT space.
Get the expert team that will be offering the support to customise the business tech specifically for your operations, if needs be, but the important thing is for them to be specialist experts.
Possibly switching to an incentive-based remuneration system
Lastly, when workers are in remote-working mode is probably the best time to get the best out of them via an operational system that is more incentive-based. Basically remuneration should be structured in such a way that it rewards productivity, not just the passing of time as some employees do when working in-house.