.jpeg)
Picture yourself in the morning. Sipping coffee, waking up housemates, answering a message in a neighborhood chat… Making sandwiches, making a phone call, walking the dog, another phone call, checking email... If you instantly see this image, you are familiar with all the pros and cons of working remotely.
Multitasking, poor work-life balance, crowded chats, and stuff like this add more pressure to modern living. This guide addresses the major difficulties in managing remote teams. You will find two dozen best practices for managing remote workforce and tools to organize the process. It will be useful for managers who want to work the new way, embracing all the opportunities of the digital world. Let’s dive in!
People like remote work for the numerous advantages it offers. Remote employment is mutually beneficial for both employers and workers, and here are the three best reasons why.
Remote workforce management offers cost savings as compared to maintaining traditional offices. According to various estimations, by organizing remote work, US companies can essentially reduce overhead costs associated with physical office spaces. This allows them to save a couple of thousand dollars per employee.
With virtual offices and coworking, companies spend less on office facilities. This frees up money for investing more into business growth.
Additionally, the rise of virtual collaboration tools is enhancing the efficiency of remote work environments. It makes it easier for teams to communicate and manage projects more effectively. Sounds good for employers, doesn’t it? And how about workers?
First of all, with fewer commuting and work-related expenses, workers save a lot of time and money. More and more employees are choosing hybrid work models over traditional or fully remote. Instead of wasting hours on traveling to work, employees enjoy more time with their families. Or invest more resources in out-of-work activities, and who would mind it?
Another advantage that remote workers often cite is the possibility to work on flexible working hours. People tend to live more balanced lives when they can plan their own schedule and perform tasks at their convenience, not from nine till five. Additionally, people become more focused on the results instead of just sitting their work hours.
Remote hiring allows employees to work from anywhere. Likewise, companies enjoy the possibility to hire employees with more diverse skills and knowledge. Besides, employers can have access to a cheaper workforce while retaining control over production workflow.
Remote work opens new possibilities for going global. According to the recent white paper by the World Economic Forum, 218 job types out of 5,400 have the potential to become global jobs, thanks to the possibilities of working remotely.
Roughly half of these jobs are accounting, legal, and finance roles. The other half goes to customer service, IT, marketing, advertising, and communication, each taking approximately 10%.
Image source: World Economic Forum
However, the rise of remote jobs and new advanced technologies brings not only opportunities but also challenges, such as:
The adoption of virtual offices and hybrid working models makes an impact on the market of office rent. Also, a change in the hiring paradigm may also lead to job losses, workforce migration, and a shift in an employee mindset.
For example, in 2021, the Great Resignation occurred when workers resigned on a large scale because of the pandemic. Workers gave preference to remote and hybrid work models. Businesses reacted by investing more in automation and AI. And today, 30% of workers worldwide express concerns that AI might replace them at jobs within the next three years.
People and the market struggle to adapt to changes happening so fast within only three years.
Both employers and workers may face obstacles from outdated tax and labor regulations. A lot of companies still lack laws and mechanisms that enable the worker infrastructure to access global digital jobs.
Additional challenges occur with payment transfers, tax payouts, and meeting the labor law requirements. Altogether, it is a question of how to manage remote workers without getting tangled up in complex requirements.
Among the negative trends in managing remote workforce, isolation and burnout are becoming increasingly prominent. Lack of face-to-face social interaction results in more conflicts. It may potentially contribute to the rise of mental health issues, including depression.
Besides, managers often name having too many video calls as #1 time drainage that also leads to emotional exhaustion.
And the last but not least serious challenge of remote workforce management is the lack of cohesion and transparency in remote teams.
Employees from different departments do not see the assigned roles and tasks clearly. As a result, tasks take longer to complete. Besides, employees may not see the results of their activities and lack the feeling of belonging.
All of the above boils down to the issue of effectiveness: how to organize remote teams and how to monitor work from home employees without damaging productivity? That’s where company leaders need to think about the best practices for remote workers management.
You’ve probably heard stories of how employers track remote teams to make sure that people actually do their jobs. Tracking keystrokes, taking screenshots of employees’ screens, recording phone calls, and whatnot. Unfortunately, all those ideas are more likely to increase employees’ discontent rather than enhance their productivity.
Instead, let’s focus on improving the management of remote teams. What matters most is delivering feasible results. For this, we need to simplify workflows. And here goes our first tip for managing a remote workforce.
Remote workforce management has so many complexities and nuances.
For example, it often happens that, a couple of weeks after hiring, workers reveal that their roles had not been accurately described in the vacancy. More food for thought: a stunning 50% of hourly employees quit within three months.
Here is a tip: to find the best remote talents faster and retain them, HR managers should
This refers to any part of employees’ lifecycle in a company: measuring performance, boosting productivity, or undergoing assessment. All these phases require a tried-and-tested process that works the most effectively for your team.
Let’s emphasize one point: you don’t need complicated processes; for every convoluted work scenario, there is a way to make it as simple as that.
Here, we’ve come up with the second tip for managing remote workers.
Remote work tools are software and platforms that allow teams to collaborate effectively when working remotely. Such tools allow doing tons of tasks remotely, such as video conferencing, project management, collaboration over shared tasks, and more.
Managing a remote workforce requires HR professionals to consider a lot of factors. These include the employee location, the legal employment requirements, taxes, insurance, and a lot more stuff. With regards to remote workforce management, you can consider Juggl as a platform for tracking remote workflows and forming employees’ payroll.
Juggl collects all information from HR, the legal department, and accountants into one system. This tool would be particularly useful for managers and HR staff who are in charge of hiring and paying remote workers.
Usually, employee data is scattered across different departments. It takes a lot of hassle to pass on the information about time off, sick leaves, or holidays from one department to another.
Juggl eliminates all the manual hassle and automates tracking timesheets for remote workers. But most importantly, it supports correct calculation of work hours, rates, time off, and various perks. This ensures that the payroll for each remote employee is correct and transparent. We will talk about the importance of transparency further below.
Now, let's have a look at some of the best practices for working from home that proved their effectiveness over time.
First and foremost, set clear expectations for establishing roles and responsibilities. It is highly important for remote employees to understand performance expectations, what they are paid for, and where they can excel.
Best practices:
For remote workers, it is useful to understand the whole organizational structure and the importance of their roles. It’s not only about responsibilities and reporting to the upper management. Remote work easily makes teams disjoined, and it takes extra effort to promote team cohesion.
Best practices:
Since remote team members are often distributed around the globe, it is useful to implement guidelines for asynchronous communication. When teammates work from home in different time zones and stick to their own work schedule, adopt work styles that allow delayed responses.
Best practices:
Image source: Buffer
Remote teams are often hired under different jurisdictions and may be subject to different laws and tax regulations. It is a nice idea to get ready with the legal part of remote employment. You should maintain clear documentation of processes and procedures accessible to all team members.
Best practices:
It’s not easy to find fresh ideas of how to manage and motivate remote workforce. Working from home, employees miss the pleasures of social interaction and corporate parties. Luckily, there are plenty of virtual activities that help build team spirit and combat employees’ feelings of disintegration.
Best practices:
Even the best employees may end up with a burnout and be off to a staycation and finally quit. In fact, some employers never leave the hiring market, looking for new employees all the time. However, you shouldn't rush after new workers again and again. Instead, promote a positive company culture and retain employees for longer.
Best practices:
Remote employment is here to stay for long. These best practices for remote work management allow companies to create global digital teams that can successfully work without borders. I hope you’ve found them helpful and put them to work immediately.
Are you thinking of building a remote team?
The Juggl platform has everything you need for managing workforce and payments. You can book a personal demo, and we’ll show what it does.
