Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote workers were quickly gaining traction. As a result, many companies allowed their staff to work at the convenience of their own homes. But, after the pandemic, working from home has become the new normal due to the need to observe social distancing. This new trend doesn’t have any downside to the business as long as employees are happy and productive.
It can happen, though, that employees feel less connected to the business and their teams. As a business owner, this is a great concern as it increases employees’ chances of leaving your company due to lack of motivation. To ensure this doesn’t happen, here’s a guide on ways to engage your remote workers, keeping them more motivated and productive.
1. Keep The Communication Lines Open
Remote workers tend to be self-reliant and can go ahead with their daily tasks until they experience an issue. But, as a good business owner or manager, you need to constantly get in touch with them to hear how they’re going about with their duties and anything else they might be looking to share. Doing this is more than necessary because your remote worker is highly likely to feel isolated and sometimes require emotional support.
Therefore, you should consider investing in a commutation channel, such as a virtual phone number, that easily allows your staff to get in touch. If you’re unconvinced of the need for such systems, first read through a virtual phone number guide, and you’ll understand the advantages of such a system. Thanks to this platform, you get to offer your employees support when in need and collect any crucial information.
2. Show Appreciation
Constantly motivating your employee’s work and effort is vital for the success of your company. This is especially advisable as remote working is very challenging. But setting aside time to personally thank your remote workers for their time and effort makes them extra motivated. As a result, your employees will put more effort and better adapt to this new working arrangement, ensuring the company’s productivity remains unaffected.
Even though appreciating your employees does look like a simple gesture, it helps boost their engagement as they feel valued and cared for. Because of this, they’re willing to go the extra mile toward achieving the set company goals. Appreciation can be shown with little tokens and doesn’t always have to be monetary.
3. Create A Communication Platform
Employees can always learn from one another, and this helps create greater cohesion among the whole team. Therefore, you need to promote this by creating a space where your staff can share fascinating ideas or inspiration relating to your industry, product, or market. Doing this helps maintain the natural flow of conversation, and this reinvigorates all your employees and boosts their engagement.
Having such a platform is incredibly beneficial in the remote working space, where it’s very hard for your employees to have time to discuss exciting topics. By creating such a space, your employees can now discuss any new trends in the external markets and always be up-to-date on your competitors’ steps. This ensures your business is always ahead of the curve as its competitiveness gets a greater boost.
4. Show You Care
Another way of ensuring your remote workers remain engaged and motivated is by showing them you care. This means not solely asking them about work-related matters but seeking to develop a deeper relationship than that. You should do this by asking them questions relating to:
- Their emotional health and stress levels
- Their personal life and family
- Their desired workload to prevent burnout
- Their hobbies
Also, give them the freedom to create a work-life balance and set reasonable performance expectations, assignments, and schedules. This will help them not give way to exhaustion.
5. Set Goals And Expectations
Streamlined communication is a lot harder when working remotely, and it’s easy for information to be misinterpreted. The only way you can avoid this as a manager is to set clear goals on what’s expected from each of the remote workers. This means clearly outlining each of their goals and responsibilities right from the start. You should also explain how each of their efforts affects the entries’ team performance. Likewise, it shows the link between the goals and the company’s values, each employee, and the team’s contribution.
6. Promote Health And Wellness
If your employee is unwell, they undoubtedly won’t be able to work at their best or even to work altogether. Therefore, you should prioritize the health of each of your remote workers. You can do this by encouraging your staff to partake in different forms of wellness activities. This could be going for yoga, exercising, or cooking a healthy meal.
Caring for your employees’ health and well-being proves that you also are concerned about their well-being and not only their productivity. This strengthens your bond with your employees as well as makes them closer to the entire team.
7. Ensure Your Remotes Workers Are Always Up-To-Date
For in-house employees, a lot of the information gets shared either through chats across desks or water cooler conversations. But for remote workers, this isn’t a pleasure they can enjoy. As a result, they’re more likely to feel as though they aren’t part of the entire team. You need to prevent such a situation from happening by ensuring your remote employees are always updated on company news, goals, projects, and team progress.
You should ensure every remote worker gets such useful details by regularly checking in with them to update them on any changes. Likewise, implement a user-friendly system that sets goals and tracks your remote workers to grant everyone access to new projects, company goals, and any other pertinent information.
Takeaway
Is keeping your remote workers engaged something you struggle with? If so, this shouldn’t be the case ever again after reading this guide on how you can boost your remote workers’ engagement. As a result, they’ll become your company’s biggest asset, which is integral to achieving the set goals.
