4 Ways to Improve the Productivity of Your Remote Employees

More people are working remotely nowadays. A study from IWG, which surveyed 18,000 people working at 96 companies found that 70% of employees work remotely at least once a week. While 53% of them work remotely half or more than half the week.

This surge in remote workers isn’t really surprising as it benefits both the employee and the company.

Employees prefer it as they will spend less time commuting (it saves both money and time) and they get to spend more time at home with their family. And companies prefer it because it saves them money and makes it easy to attract top talent from all over the world.

The only big drawback of remote work is decreased productivity. When workers are home there are so many distractions that could prevent them from working. But fortunately, you can use several powerful tactics to boost the productivity of your remote employees. Here are 4 of them…

Create and manage the schedule for the remote employees:

Working directly at an office place, forces employees to have routines. After they know their work timings, they build their life around it. These routines make them more productive. But when they begin working remotely, the absence of a routine destroys their work ethic.

This is why if you find that some of them are slacking, you might want to use a scheduling software to manage your employees better, like the one Deputy offers.

It lets you create schedules for both onsite and remote workers. You can create their schedule while you make one for the rest of the team. They can view it on their mobile apps no matter where they are located. Other employees will be able to view their schedule too, so it might add extra pressure to work harder.

This will also improve communication as they will work at the same time as the rest of the employees.

Communicate regularly:

When employees begin working remotely, they don’t communicate as much as they used to with their colleagues. This lack in communication will slow down projects and lead to a lot of mistakes.

This is why while working with remote employees, you should make it easy for them to communicate with you and the rest of the team members.

So, use tools like Asana to help them collaborate on projects.

At the end of each day you can also have some face time with your remote workers using a tool like Zoom. This will help a lot as a study from Workplace Trends found that 43% of remote workers feel that more face time helps them build better relationships with their team.

Increase engagement:

The above study from Workplace Trends also found two thirds of remote workers aren’t engaged and only 5% see themselves working at the same company for their entire career. These low levels in engagement are a result of managers not being able to differentiate between employee satisfaction and engagement.

What remote workers feel from all the benefits that remote work offers is satisfaction because it is all about themselves. A remote worker will only feel more engaged when they care about the company and their colleagues. They won’t just see their job as a means to earn money by putting in the least effort, but as a way to help the company and their colleagues prosper too.

This is why managers should take steps to not just improve employee satisfaction, but employee engagement as well. As mentioned in the previous point, one way to do this is by having regular face to face conversations online with both individuals and the entire team.

Another way is by having employee meet ups several times a year in a more social setting. This will help them have more fun conversations and bond.

Track their productivity:

You won’t be able to monitor your remote employees’ routines and work ethic in person. Therefore, you should use a tool like RescueTime to virtually keep an eye on them.

It will give you insights like the software they used most, the amount of time they spent surfing the internet and their most productive time.

This data will help you create a better schedule for them in the future.

Use these tips to boost productivity now:

These are the 4 ways to improve the productivity of your remote employees. Try them out today and watch their productivity rise. If it has no effect on an employee, you might need to take a drastic step and force them to work on-site.