Smart strategies to improve your company’s remote working this winter
Remote working, we’re told, is looking like the new normal for quite some time. Even when the coronavirus crisis is officially put to bed — and there is no set end date for that eventuality — it’s likely that many businesses will embrace remote working for the future. And, if not, staff members will demand it. As such, it’s likely that the firms with the best remote working strategies are likely to be the big winners from the pandemic, having employees working better, faster, and harder from home. Here’s how you can compete in this new key area of business.
Daily Meetings
Most companies have set up daily meetings with their staff members to check they’re working at 9am each day. Without the oversight of their staff, it’s unsurprising that managers and executives are concerned that their workers are getting up late and logging off early when working from home. But daily meetings shouldn’t just be about surveillance; they’re also a change to keep your team motivated, to offer a little social time to your staff each day, and to transmit important updates to your workers via video conferencing, instead of over oft-ignored emails.
Better Software
Thousands of companies have met a steep learning curve in their attempts to build out a better digital infrastructure to take into the ongoing global pandemic. With lockdown rather sudden and immediate back in March, companies had to patch together systems that they felt would be most effective in the short term, at the expense of long-term investments in new technology and software.
Now is the time to change this, starting with remote hosted desktops. The benefits of remote hosted desktops are myriad, but one of the key boons is the centralised system that hosted desktops provide, as they enable administrators and managers to set restrictions, monitor activity, and respond to queries and issues as quickly as possible.
Cybersecurity
In case you haven’t heard, take it from us: this year has been a field day for cybercriminals. With businesses rushing to base more of their activity online, and with staff scrambling to get to know new programmes and software, it’s no wonder that hundreds of beaches and hacks have taken place in the last few months.
Investing in cybersecurity isn’t just one of your responsibilities as a company. It’s now the difference between your company continuing to work remotely or suffering costly and damaging breaches as a result of poor security provisions. Invest, learn from consultants, and train your staff to keep your cybersecurity top-notch during the pandemic.
Morale Boosting
It’s unlikely that your staff are as happy and fulfilled in their jobs at the present moment as they were at the very beginning of 2020. This is no fault of your firm; it’s circumstantial. Job security is one of the key concerns amongst workers, but so is the stress of working from home in the presence of young children, and the anxiety of the pandemic as a whole. As a manager or business leader, you can help to soothe these concerns by building in morale-boosting activities for your workers as a weekly remedy to the lockdown blues.
Targets and Organisation
Targets help to motivate workers. They also place deadlines on pieces of work, which means that your employees will have to work diligently in order for their work to be handed in on time. Organising targets for your workers will boost their productivity and their engagement in their job, preventing them from feeling lethargic and without much to do when they’re working from home this year. Deliver your targets, both short-term and long-term, to your workers each week or month to keep the spirits up in your firm.
Financial Planning
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that remote working could actually be saving your company cash if you organise and plan it correctly. For instance, those firms that rented seats in a co-working space will be saving on those places where their employees are working from home. Much of the business software and conferencing tools used during lockdown are free and can save you high subscription costs on your tech. There are material and financial benefits to the new normal of working from home, but only those firms with an eye on their budget will be able to maximise these benefits for the sustainability of their business.
With remote working looking like the future as well as the foreseeable present, this piece has been about investing in the long-term solutions that’ll help your staff work better from home into 2021 and beyond.
