How best to manage remote employees
Since 2020, the way we work has changed dramatically.
Hybrid and remote-working started out as a necessity for many businesses during Covid lockdowns, but it has now become an established part of the modern working world for many.
Those in a hybrid or remote role enjoy a better work/life balance and greater flexibility around family and personal time, however the arrangements only work because they are based on trust. You trust your team and employees to deliver the same quality of work as they would from an office-environment in exchange for this flexibility.
From an HR perspective, it’s essential to have some clear policies and expectations in place to ensure these types of roles continue to work successfully for both your employees and for you.
In this blog post, we’ve put together some advice to help you manage hybrid and remote employees effectively.
Set clear expectations and guidelines
When managing hybrid and remote workers it’s important to be clear about what you expect from your team. Contracted working hours should already be in their employment contract, but it might be an idea to also outline how those hours will be tracked and managed on a remote basis.
You need to make it clear if you expect employees to be online or contactable during certain hours.
Agree on ways of working
A hybrid or remote setup works best when everyone is clear about how they’ll be working. You should take time to agree on how you’ll stay connected as a team, how you’ll share updates and manage workloads.
This could include:
A quick daily check-in via Google Chat, Teams or Slack
A weekly or monthly video meeting with the team to go over anything work related
A project tracker where employees can update work in real time.
Hold regular check-ins or 1-2-1s
A regular 1-2-1 as well as your team meetings can really help maintain connection with employees.
They can also be used to:
Discuss any personal issues or anything they need support with
Talk in more depth on current client projects and workloads
Offer feedback and recognition
Discuss development and training.
Keeping communication open helps your employees to feel valued and heard.
Focus on wellbeing
It’s very easy for the lines of work and personal time to become blurred for someone who works from home, which can easily lead to burnout, so it’s important to encourage healthy boundaries by:
Reminding employees to take proper tea and lunch breaks away from their desks/laptops
Encourage them to take a daily walk outside of the house - treat it as a pretend commute around the block
Avoid unnecessary emails or messages outside of agreed working hours
Ensure they take proper annual leave as this is essential for productivity and wellbeing.
At the end of the day, managing hybrid or remote workers successfully is all about balance. If you can provide flexibility, communication and clear expectations, your team will thrive, wherever they are working from.
It doesn’t need to be hugely complex as long as you remain clear and consistent and address any issues should they arise, and by putting these easy foundations in place, you will hopefully be able to build a strong team and maintain a successful business.
In our experience, just because someone isn’t performing well doesn’t necessarily mean it is because they are working from home. As managers, you should performance manage staff wherever they are working from.
Need support?
This isn’t something you need to do alone either, as HR experts, we can help you put policies and guidance in place for your employees and help you relay these to your team.
We are here to help your business in these types of matters or anything else HR related.
Please contact us – we’d love to hear from you.