Many companies were suddenly thrust into a situation where the bulk of their workforce is now working from home. Since this came up suddenly, many of these companies were simply not prepared for the new reality.
Because of this, it isn’t exactly clear how these teams should be managed. Though a remote team can work as well, or even better, than when they all worked in the office together, it does take a plan and a system to make sure it can function at its fullest.
In this article, I will go over some ideas on how to keep your remote team productive and happy so your business can continue as normal.
1 – Security
The first challenge to tackle needs to be the security of your company’s, your clients and even your employees sensitive information. Which means you need to have a security system set up that can work among your team members and multiple platforms. Something like Webroot SecureAnywhere will work with your system as a DNS protection platform.
Things like malware and other viruses can be caught and reversed with the right system.
And since you will be using a variety of software and applications, it pays to have each employee with a firewall on their computer. Even better is to provide them with a work laptop that won’t be used for their personal use and can be equipped with the state of the art security system.
2 – Provide the best software and apps
You’ll need to streamline many of the processes that you took for granted when everybody was working together in the office. This means that a lot of the work will need to be automated to make sure that people are not spending time on too many things that aren’t part of their job.
Using time tracking software is a good start not only to make sure that your employees will get credit for the time they spend on a project, but also to make the bureaucratic aspect of their job easier. They won’t have an HR department working much with them so they can use an app to do things like request paid time off or submit an expense report on some of the time tracking software available.
3 – Establish the new routine
There are going to be a lot of new rules that need to be followed to make sure things run smoothly. The sooner you have everybody on the same page, the better.
For instance, if you need to have daily check-ins then make sure everybody knows what time and what platform will be used. You may want them to be video calls so it is important that everybody knows this.
On the other hand you may want to use a text messenger for less urgent communications and at certain times of the day.
Set expectations early on with regards to how and when information needs to be shared. This is particularly important when you have a department that relies on another to get their job done.