Coronavirus is obviously forcing you to adapt a fully remote workforce, sending your team members home and having them to work in a way which you’ve never had. A remote workforce is ideal in the age of Covid-19 and you only want to obey the statutes of centers for diseases control and prevention.

This does not mean you should immediately lay off your remote workers or to go completely remote if you and some staff members can manage to work and meet up occasionally during the lockdowns. But you can take into considerations managing and leading your team in order to retain your workers but at the same time keep their productivity in check in a remote environment.

1. Miscommunications

Miscommunications are bound to happen if you’ve only been communicating with your workers via Zoom or Skype. You might tell your employees to never turn down an irate caller or to never escalate an irate caller when in reality, you’d like to deal with these tough cookies yourself.

These are just some examples of miscommunication that can occur during your managing and leading of people who work from home.

2. Power cuts

Power cuts are severely detrimental and so are Internet outages, the remedy here is to find them an alternate source of Internet or pocket Wi Fi and an Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS especially for those who rely on customer calls.

Successful remote work, however is absolutely possible for jobs that can be done offline such as Graphics, Copy Writing and Data Entry. You need to provide your employees with the right kind of equipment if you want their work to be in its top notch form.

3. Slackers

If you have Time Doctor, there’s always a way for your employees to Slack off. They might be playing Mobile Legends on their phones even though your computer very well takes screenshots of them supposedly doing their work.

To successfully manage remote teams, it is best to give them quantifiable output or metrics. This ensures they’ll be able to deliver you the bottom line each day and make sure that their work consists of actionable tasks which contribute to your quotas.

4. Morale

Sometimes, it’s simply challenging in effectively managing morale. But you can boost their self confidence through letting them know that they are part and parcel of the company’s entire marketing thrust. Letting people in on operational secrets, within parameters, is crucial. And transparency in communicating is something you ought to have fostered anyway.

Yet it is possible to have fun online activities and ice breakers to stop feeling like your work is routine.

5. Trust

You have to foster trust. This needs to have been your norm even before Covid-19. But again, another way to do this is to regularly call your employees on Zoom and see if anyone needs anything from anybody. This is a way your workforce can ensure that all of them are on the same page. Trust is among those challenges if you haven’t hired the right staff members to begin with. Therefore, it is critical to include this among your benchmarks in operating.

You can use Asana as a job board where they can consistently update you on the tasks they are currently working on.

6. Language

This is especially applicable for remote teams that may not have gone fully remote ahead of Covid-19. Retaining employees who may have language barriers, speak in a different accent is difficult.

So as you manage remote staff, it’s critical to make your Hispanic, your Asian, your Nigerian workers feel like they are a successful part of your project and team and as you move into working remotely, the same trust and communications your workers have can establish and manage their workflows.

Never let language or race become an obstacle in managing remote employees. You completely want a team that trusts each other and also works towards achieving your bottom line.

7. Motivation

managing and leading, manage and retain

Related to morale is their motivation to work. If they can no longer mingle with their colleagues in Covid-19, that might sap their energy and gradually reduce their productivity. The solution to  this is to allow them to stay in touch, within parameters. Remote employees need to start managing their tasks and expectations such that it aligns with company requirements.

8. Security

Security of information is something that can easily breach if companies manage only their workers but not their ISP’s. It’s crucial that you find protocols for workers to engage in their jobs while your team supervisors manages the specific aspects they get into.  A fully remote workforce needs not only accountability but superb training in the security of their data.

9. Home Life

It’s inevitable that your workers staying in the office might find many ways to slack off or to attend to their home chores rather than your quotas! They may very well be showing an otherwise productive front on Time Doctor but they may be very clever about staying afk yet attending to their home chores and responsibilities.

It’s good to let them do that, but your remote and flexible arrangements should constitute the right parameters for these advantages as well. You can’t get them to focus in a micromanaging way, what you CAN manage however, is the output and metrics you require and these KPI’s are still the measure of your success anyway if you are managing field staff.

10. QA Sessions

Ideally, if you want to do QA on products and apps, these need to be done in person because you want to be able to see any subtleties or nuances about the way they are handling their gadgets.

This is not always possible but is an absolute must. You can however oversee them through Zoom or Skype, get them to Share screens and demonstrate some of the functionalities.

These are some of the job challenges in remote work. Yet, because of Covid-19 you need to keep your workers motivated and keep them accountable.

There are ways to go about Outsource Remote Staffing, where you hire an offshore office and you will get the same or better quality remote staff. But for now, you need to weather the storm of Covid-19 and make sure you achieve your quotas.

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