1. Make clear guidelines and policies for working remotely
It is essential to have crisp and clear policies concerning working remotely. These would act as a guiding light for remote working employees of your business whenever they are in doubt. Creating tailor-made policies as per the requirements of the organization is important so that these can be incorporated easily. These could include simple and ordinary things such as remote working setup, device security, regular video conferencing with the team members, or decorum to be maintained on chat or email, etc.
It is also important to have a follow-up on these policies and check if they are good and match the goals of the organization. The basic characteristics of sound policies are that they should be consistent, easy to follow and should make sense to the employees. It should become the habit of the employees to follow these policies, instead of an obligation to do so.
2. Pay attention to who you are hiring for the remote work
Hiring the right employee for the work is essential, especially in remote working since you won’t be able to meet the employees in person. As a prerequisite for remote working, your employees would only be coming in contact with each other and with you through video conferencing. Assisting them with all the understanding of the essence of your business and having them familiarized with all the technological know-how forms part of the remote hiring process.
Make sure that they are aware of what is expected from them, right at the beginning of the job. This will allow them to know if they are suited for the role or not. Hiring the employees on probation for a short while and then allowing them to be permanent employees of the organization. This could be one way of being sure of their skills and talents. Periodically checking with them if they are aware of their duties and responsibilities would make them feel important when their queries would be addressed.
It is also incredibly important to make your new employees feel welcomed in the remote working environment. Have a virtual welcome for the new hires or maybe a personal interaction with them, to make them feel that their presence is appreciated. Helping the new hires in the onboarding process is the first step of making them familiar with the organizational goals.
3. Define the purpose of the team
It is necessary to establish the what and why of a business at the beginning. Defining the purpose of the business at the very start would help as a guide to achieving the organizational goals. This would let the organization and its employees know the road of action to follow to reach where the business wishes to be. Also, this process is important to make the new hires aware of what they are expected to achieve and familiarize them with the mission of the organization as a whole. You will hence be aware of the type of employees you would need to hire for the same. Therefore, clarity concerning the purpose of the remote working team is necessary for the organization and also for its employees.
4. Look for a suitable team manager
A team manager or a project manager plays the most important role in an organization. The guide, help and assist all the employees towards achieving the group goals alongside the organizational goals as a whole. All communications reach the employees through the project manager and hence he is one of the most important persons in an organization. He would be the one who would be reporting to you and would be assigned the responsibility of leading the employees under his guidance. Someone with so many responsibilities and accountability should be hired or assigned with utmost care to make sure that the mission of the organization is being achieved on a priority basis.
5. The right technology goes a long way
The remote business has been going on since the pandemic hit us. The main reason why the work is being done without much hassle is due to the availability of cloud sharing and other remote technologies that are widely available at affordable prices. These help in communication between the employees and aids in operating the business remotely. All the required files and documents are available to all the stakeholders at the click of a button. Due to these technological advances, communication takes place flawlessly. Be it chat messages, calls over the internet or even video conferences, everything can be done through the web. This is why it is necessary to equip yourself with the right technology and make it available to the employees to allow them to have a good remote working culture even in the current pandemic time.
Equip yourself with a good unified communications provider (UC) to give the remotely working employees an easy way of collaborating with their teammates and the various stakeholders of the organization, despite the physical barriers.
6. Define the responsibilities of the remote working employees
Frameworks help to give a standard frame for the work to be done in a stabilized format. All the roles and responsibilities must be defined and the job must be allocated accordingly to the employees. This information should be brought to everyone’s notice through flow charts or diagrams
7. Define the suitable workflows
A workflow is a systematic way of moving ahead in the operational flow. It helps to give the work a higher level of efficiency by defining the process and giving each area in the line of action, its requisite importance. To formulate an effective workflow, sit with your employees and teammates and establish a channel of communication, project management and ways of meeting the needs and demands of the customers and clients. The most important thing here is being on the same page with the remotely working employees to design an outline plan which would consist of all necessary details. Guidelines with regards to the mode of communication amongst the employees and with the various stakeholders of the company should be decided, which could be Teams, Zoom or Slack, etc. How the upcoming projects are to be planned and other necessary items which would contribute to achieving the organizational goals must be considered. It is also to be noted here that merely building the workflows isn’t enough. You also need to make sure that it is being followed with full obedience, and consistent work is being put into updating these as per the requirements and goals.
8. Establish a full remote-hiring process
Due to the lack of personal touch, the hiring process might suffer. Hence a proper process for recruiting the employees and onboarding the hired employees must be established. This would make the transition process seamless and avoid any confusion. Having video interviews and induction sessions with the employees would be a great idea as it would help you get familiar with the employees and allow them the chance to get to know you better.
9. Build and familiarize the employees with organizational culture
Especially when you are managing a remote team, a company culture that is positive and promotes a good work environment must be evident to the employees. Staying positive is a task amidst all that’s going on, and thus, making the employees feel like they are in a hostile environment would make the situation worse. Creating a safe space for the employees and allowing them to admit their mistakes, without the fear of their seniors is very important. It is only after admitting to their mistakes that they would be able to proceed to rectify them. Allow them the freedom to ask questions and seek feedback.
An important thing to keep in mind during the remote working scenario is to have a watch on the differential time zones if any. Allot a time for a group meeting, which suits all the employees. This would make them feel valued and motivated to perform their best.
10. Make good infrastructure available to the employees
The two things that are required to make one’s remote working journey successful is- one, their workstation and the second, the kind of infrastructural hardware and software that is available to the employees. Invest in good quality, durable but pocket-friendly furniture. A comfortable chair and table are a must, but at the same time, should not burn a hole in your pocket. Reliable IT hardware is another important thing, which solely depends upon your wish and the amount you want to spend on it. For example, if one does not like wires lying all-around their workstation, opt for a wireless printer and scanner. The most important thing, when it comes to remote working, is good internet services. The Internet forms the base of everything, from communication, to calls, to sending documents. Hence, this comes under your ‘must-have-no-matter-what’ list!
11. Try to form a good culture
Before you even enlist your first worker, ponder how you will need the group to work, how you would need them to relate to the organizational goals, and the workplace structure. You will have difficulties propelling a team in such a work environment that doesn’t have a culture making the work environment dull and demotivating. Hence, there is a need to set the organization culture such that each representative can easily know it.
12. Give importance to Project plans and KPIs
You’ll have to realize how to quantify achievement. Your telecommuters need the right gauge to evaluate their work. They likewise need to realize how to evaluate their companion’s presentation when working with teammates. Every one of the groups in your association ought to have the option to survey the group’s advancement towards a foreordained objective. This can be done by adding simple things to your daily routine, like having an organized and well-structured plan of action in advance, ascertaining the project benchmarks or producing each team with a set of targets to achieve, etc. Remote employees need proper mediums to contact and collaborate and access the company policies. Email isn’t sufficient in today’s time. You’ll need to guarantee that you give your telecommuters a storehouse to store the above information, and access to a glitch-free communication tool like Slack, Skype, Zoom, etc. to trade thoughts and examine the requisites seamlessly.
13. Invest in a secure storage platform
Your files are the whole of your organization, stored online. It is quintessential to have your files and records secure and their safety should be considered as a vital component against the various risk elements, acting as a threat to your business. The various third-party storage services available to the users, like LastPass Enterprise and JumpCloud, etc. helps to solve this issue by aiding the requirement of companies and teams to handle their files, data, networks, with full safety and privacy.
14. Consider colocation data centers for your remote office
With regards to setting up the framework for a far-off office, colocation data servers give an amazingly adaptable establishment to the IT division of your organization. Apart from being more energy effective and dependable than the normal on-premises data solutions, colocation offices likewise make it workable for organizations to go far off with remote working. This mix of administrations permits the IT workforce to deal with each part of their colocation while never entering the server. That implies they can keep up with social removing necessities and save important chances to zero in on other important business requisites with regards to organizing administrations.
Let us face the fact that we would be working online for a while, so make it worthwhile! Keeping these points in mind would help you to set up your remote organization with ease.
