There has been a significant shift to remote work with many employees in the US looking for greater work-life balance following the Covid-19 pandemic. In relation to this, there are several challenges to managing remote employees and ensuring organizational goals get met each quarter. Managers have a great need to address people, structure, processes, and technology to create an efficient working model.

A leading business law firm with experience in workforce management and labor laws can help you realize your strengths and address all scopes of improvement in managing remote employees.

Challenges in Remote Workforce Management 

These are the more prominent challenges in managing work-from-home employees:

People

Managers don’t just need to set direction and help employees work in a more effective fashion – they are also required to focus on energizing the team and keeping them motivated. Managers are burdened with providing psychological safety by reiterating a shared purpose and encouraging levity. Remote work can provide successful results by letting different employees get in touch with each other through informal videoconferences.

Structure

Remote working tends to amplify any existing difficulty in navigating the different organizational tiers and a lack of clarity. The solution to this leading problem is to shift from siloed and large teams to smaller teams with cross-functionality. Teams can have 5 – 9 people with clear and results-oriented objectives.

Process

It’s crucial to establish a clear cadence of weekly meetings. In fact, many organizations in Alabama prefer scheduling daily meetings for remote workers. This approach needs to be matched with flexibility in managers to deal with more ambiguity related to work tasks and performance.

Technology

Managers need to make sure that all their employees have the basics required for completing their tasks. For instance, they should have enough bandwidth for the entire family to be online all day.

Workers should be provided with software tools for completing their job responsibilities as well. This can be for content creation, file sharing, video conferencing, backlog management, channel-based communication, and others.

You may want to consult with a reputable business law firm in your area to understand more about remote working and its legal implications.

Leading Your Workforce from Afar

The most difficult element of remote working is managing the numerous workers and ensuring they are all on the same page. It’s fundamental to understand that from a cultural and psychological viewpoint, your workers will respond differently to the challenges of a home-working environment.

Leaders should energize the whole organization. This can be done by communicating effectively and setting a clear direction. You can offer a strong vision and provide a more realistic outlook to motivate all workers across the organization. It’s also important that you foster a results-oriented culture for empowering and holding the teams accountable to get various things done.

Don’t forget that empowering a team can pay dividends in various ways. Pertaining to this, you need to make sure that you encourage open, productive, and honest communication.

Allow Your Workers to Find a New Routine

There is a disruption to office-based rhythms and flows when employees move to remote working. Managers need to give their teams some leeway. It can be easy to miss important virtual meetings or hit the wrong notes because of packed schedules. Managers should spend time with their team to address the details of working together remotely.

You may have an added job of covering individual constraints and anticipating things that can go wrong. The way companies plan, review, and tweak their workflows needs to reflect this. By creating a digitally facilitated cadence of meetings, you can overcome the challenges of not being in the room together.

Embracing New Supercharged Ways of Communicating

The key to any successful business is enhanced communication. This needs to be embraced and adopted more consciously in remote offices. You need to choose the right channels. Video conferences are better than tele-meetings where complicated topics need to be discussed. You can have real-time meetings for developing a sense of community.

Use Technology to Your Benefit

Effective remote working requires a fast, secure, and stable internet connection. It also needs an ergonomic home office environment. One of the many steps you can ask your workers to take towards setting up an ergonomic home-based office environment is to get a fast, stable, and secure internet connection.

You can also use a suite of SaaS (Software as a Service) technology to empower your remote working needs. These tools allow teams to communicate, co-create, manage processes, and share documents more effectively. A digitally accessible single point of source of information can keep everyone aligned in the organization.

Choose a Dedicated Business Lawyer in Alabama to Improve Your Efficiency

The experienced business law attorneys at the BHM Law Group can help you design an effective structure to allow whole business units and teams to work remotely. Our seasoned attorneys have the skills, resources, and clarity to offer sound legal advice that helps you achieve all your organizational goals and growth. To schedule your consultation, call us at (205) 964-9764 or fill out this online contact form.