Today, remote or virtual work has become more than a passing trend that emerged during the pandemic. Businesses of all sizes and industries increasingly employ this model to boost operations and access top talent overseas.  

However, despite its accessibility, many businesses still struggle to transition to this setup. Remote work involves numerous complexities that managers and owners must overcome to find success with such a structure. 

In this guide, we’ll provide the best tips for monitoring and managing your remote employees. Read for more as we cover areas like communication and work-life balance. 

The Common Challenges of Remote Work Management

Handling a remote workforce presents various challenges for managers or owners. To address these challenges, you must first understand them. Now, before we proceed with some of the best tips you can follow, let’s explore these common obstacles. 

The absence of in-person interactions 

Traditional offices provide many opportunities for employees to have face-to-face interactions. Because of that, employees are more likely to have better collaboration and trust. 

In addition to instant messaging, video conferencing, and emails, remote work environments can also foster interpersonal connections through platforms dedicated to email health and monitoring. This lack of physical presence might make your employees feel isolated and detached from their teammates, which affects their productivity and cooperation. 

The absence of physical interactions also means your employees might misinterpret or misunderstand facial expressions, tone, and body language. When that happens, your team will experience numerous bottlenecks when assigning or handling tasks, impacting productivity and causing significant delays. 

The likelihood of distractions 

Remote workers are vulnerable to distractions in their homes or public spaces like cafes or shopping malls. These distractions will likely disrupt their focus, decreasing productivity and leading to poor work quality. 

The most common distractions your team might encounter are household chores, interruptions from family members or roommates, loud neighbors, and pets running around and making noises. Aside from that, addressing technical issues like connectivity problems and software difficulties could significantly disrupt their work. 

Without supervision, it’s also easy for employees to get distracted by social media platforms, streaming services, and other online outlets for entertainment. When that happens, they will face significant downtime and procrastination.

The risk of video chat fatigue

Video conferencing is one of the most essential tools you will incorporate to maintain successful communication and collaboration in a remote setup. Unfortunately, excessive use of these platforms can lead to what experts call “video chat fatigue.” 

Video chat fatigue is when individuals experience mental exhaustion when using video conferencing platforms extensively. This issue is becoming increasingly common as virtual workspaces embrace video conferencing as part of their communication channels. 

Additionally, there are many contributing factors to video fatigue you must watch out for. These include constantly looking at monitors and cameras, limited mobility, technical difficulties, self-consciousness in meetings, and emotional drain from isolation.

Conquering the Challenges 

Now that we’ve explored the common issues you may encounter while running a virtual team, we will look closer at the best practices you can do to address them, from creating rules to hosting virtual events. 

Establish clear rules and guidelines 

Developing regulations and guidelines for your remote working environment is crucial to make your team more organized. Establish work policies that outline what employees must expect, do, and avoid. That way, processes will become more streamlined, and teams will work cohesively. 

With that, you can create policies on some crucial areas: work hours, compensation and incentives (including exempt vs. non-exempt employees), communication protocols, and task assignments.

Provide work-life balance 

Finding the right balance between remote work and personal life will be vital for your remote employees. They may experience increased stress, anxiety, and burnout if they don’t have that clear boundary. When that happens, their performance will significantly drop, and they will likely leave the company. 

You must remind your remote employees constantly to set boundaries between work and personal life. This is why defining specific work hours and breaks is crucial so they know when to disconnect. It would also help to discourage them from working beyond their regular shifts.

Another way to promote excellent work-life balance is to offer flexible work arrangements, including alternative schedules, time-off policies, and offsetting. Doing so will help remote employees to manage their workload without overlapping with their commitments or responsibilities. 

Invest in quality collaboration tools 

Open communication and collaboration are integral to ensuring success in your remote workplace. Investing in the right tools will help streamline interactions, project management, and workflow coordination, allowing teams to work more efficiently and cohesively. 

The most common programs you must adopt in your remote workplace are instant messaging, remote device management, video conferencing, and cloud computing. These tools will facilitate real-time collaboration through virtual messages, document sharing, and task monitoring. 

Moreover, providing remote employees with the necessary tools will help them work effectively, regardless of location. Some of the best tools you can invest in for all your teams include Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, Asana, Trello, and DropBox. 

Ensure Cyber Safety Whilst Working Remotely

Making sure that your team members are limiting the risk of cyber attacks or information theft is of paramount importance. Employees no longer have the security that comes with an office, both physical and virtual and there are some steps that need to be taken to ensure cyber safety when working from home.

This may include using the right firewalls, password protections, VPNs and practices such as locking your home office after hours or keeping your laptop or computer in a secure location so it cannot be easily accessed.

Build better personal connections

To prevent employees from feeling isolated or disconnected from their team, you must prioritize building personal connections among them. Encourage informal interactions and conversations so members can learn more about each other. 

For instance, they can have weekly virtual coffee breaks while discussing different subjects or doing various activities. Doing so will help strengthen their relationships, break virtual boundaries, and create a sense of community. 

Another helpful practice is acknowledging and celebrating team milestones and achievements. This practice can help boost employee engagement by making workers feel valued by the company. 

Always be available

Interactions with leaders in a remote working environment are crucial for employees because it helps them feel more connected with the company. Because of that, you must always strive to be readily available for any questions, inquiries, or issues remote workers may have.

Always respond promptly to instant messages, emails, or assistance requests to showcase how you support and value your employees. Doing so will help increase employee engagement, retention, and maximise productivity. 

You can schedule regular one-on-one check-ins or team stand-ups to let employees provide or receive feedback, discuss project updates, and voice any concerns with their setup. This is an excellent way to foster open communication and collaboration, putting you closer and more connected to your employees. 

Minimize check-ins

Being readily available is an excellent way to connect more with your employees. However, constantly checking up on them is not the right way to go. Setting meetings or sending instant messages too frequently will hinder productivity and autonomy. It will be more like you’re micromanaging your employees, which can significantly affect their motivation.

Regular check-ins are essential to keep your remote teams aligned and informed. But, you must find the right balance and ensure it doesn’t affect their performance. 

Only use meetings or send messages when checking progress or goals, evaluating an output, answering questions, and establishing rapport. Think of it like this: if you can send a message via email, you don’t need to talk about it at a lengthy video conference or constantly bug your employees on chats. 

Hold virtual team buildings

Virtual team-building activities will help remote employees bond and collaborate despite their distance. This will help foster teamwork and strengthen relationships among members. 

Organize events like virtual happy hours, online games, or collaborative projects. These activities will help break remote work’s monotony and improve trust among remote employees. Hosting them will create a positive remote work culture, enhancing morale and overall team performance. 

Manage Your Remote Team Effectively

Adopting a more remote working environment takes a lot of effort. However, you can successfully manage a remote workforce with the right tools, clear guidelines, open communication, and proper balance between work and personal life.