Remote work has become an increasingly popular choice among businesses. Employees cite the lack of commute as a major positive, while many companies can realize significant savings through downsizing in real estate. However, maintaining business productivity through remote work is essential.
Understanding Productivity in a Remote Work Environment
Productivity levels can be high in a remote work environment, but improved productivity doesn't come from anywhere. Factors like company operations and employees' personalities contribute to remote work's effectiveness.
For example, engineers sometimes prefer in-person work because the ability to discuss and bounce ideas off of each other can be helpful. In contrast, almost all customer support jobs are easy to do remotely.
A successful business considers the personal productivity of each employee for remote work. What works for one employee won't work for another.
Productivity measures should also include proper task management for business processes and an efficiency mindset that leverages the strengths of working remotely. In many cases, it's better to set a common goal and let employees pursue it on their own time instead of micro-managing every minute of their workday.
Top 10 Tips for Maintaining and Improving Productivity Amongst Remote Teams
Here are ten quick tips to help you achieve long-term success while managing a remote business environment.
1. Prioritize Communication
Communication is vital in all businesses, and it's easy to check in with remote employees. However, remember that constantly sending messages distracts employees and ultimately reduces productivity.
Instead, figure out when and how often you must communicate about an employee's daily tasks. It may be acceptable to have a 30-minute group meeting in the morning, then only contact employees as relevant. Other companies need significantly more collaboration.
Don't rely entirely on phone calls or email. A tracking system where employees mark off jobs as they complete them often facilitates communication and minimizes disruption.
2. Automate Complex Workflows
It's possible to automate many complex daily workflows while doing remote jobs. Products like IFTTT and Outfunnel offer automation support, as do many internal work management systems. The primary goal is figuring out which tasks are routine enough to automate and which still require a human touch.
Collaboration tools that automate your business systems can offer significant productivity improvements by simplifying an employee's list of tasks and providing an integrated experience for getting things done.
3. Calendar Sharing
Calendar sharing is one of the best time management techniques. Having a single calendar for people to reference lets you maintain a list of tasks, helps employees know when you expect specific jobs to be done and provides a place to list meetings.
Google Workspace is a particular highlight, focusing on remote and hybrid work. However, there are other options by any stretch of the imagination, and companies still need to consider the available tools to determine which one meets their needs.
4. Host Virtual Meetings
Virtual meetings are another way to help manage your employees. Business leaders can leverage these to significant effect. Virtual meetings let people collaborate across the globe near-instantly, and they're a great way to discuss things quickly as a group.
However, try to do these sparingly. Zoom fatigue is a real issue, and failing to account for it can diminish the value of technology improvements.
Some organizations are near-addicted to meetings, but ask yourself if something can be an email instead.
Meetings are still necessary for many jobs, but minimizing them and focusing on when they're required gives employees more time to demonstrate their productivity skills and get their work done.
Companies may experiment with ideas like having employees walk around and stream themselves from a phone instead of staying in a chair for the whole meeting. Others will likely experiment with VR meetings, but these are unlikely to take off in the next few years.
5. Track Employee Performance
The best way to track employee performance is by looking at the results rather than their daily activities. Some companies go as far as demanding things like not allowing anyone in the household to stream a movie during work hours, as ostensibly a way to ensure the employee isn't distracted.
Other companies install things like bossware, allowing the company to track measurements like keystrokes and database entries to be sure people are working.
However, there are better ways of tracking employee performance. Remote work makes it possible to leverage each employee's strengths and allow them to work in ways that help.
If they listen to music, so what? If they have a movie going on, who cares? If it doesn't interfere with their work, it doesn't matter.
Maintaining business productivity in a remote environment is about the results rather than the method.
Constraining employees too tightly, especially with methods you wouldn't use in an office, only lowers morale.
6. Set Goals
Setting goals is always helpful and ties in with correctly tracking employee performance. The best goals for remote work have a clear timetable and, for larger projects, a way to measure progress toward them.
Incremental goals give you an effective way to monitor performance and catch potential delays as soon as possible.
Goals are ultimately a part of big data. Using them lets you track which employees tend to finish early and whether you're balancing workloads adequately.
Also, remember that an employee's failure to meet goals doesn't always mean they're a low performer.
If they have more work than others, experience more interruptions to handle other matters, or otherwise aren't able to focus on their work, and it may make more sense to rebalance their workloads or figure out another solution.
7. Consider Gamification
Gamification is a practical and effective strategy for many remote work environments. Simply put, when things are fun, people are more engaged and more likely to work harder and better than when they're entirely disengaged from things.
Options include trackable achievements and uses of customizable elements in collaborative systems and leaderboards.
Gamification can be tricky to integrate into corporate or workplace cultures, especially those that historically discourage fun and personality in employees. However, it's especially appealing to Millennials and Gen Z, who comprise an increasing percentage of the workplace.
8. Embrace Flexibility
Flexibility is excellent in remote business practices as long as you balance it well. For example, some content writers may work outside of regular hours, typing well into the evening instead of leaving it for the next day.
If an employee is willing to work heavily for a few days and lightly on other days, why not allow it?
Remember, maintaining productivity in a remote environment is about managing outcomes, not the moment-to-moment activities of employees. People have different needs, preferences, and schedules.
If someone wants to take an hour and a half to enjoy a slower-paced lunch, then work a little later, they're probably still saving time without their commute.
However, flexibility only works for some roles. Like many customer service roles, any job requiring a live presence can allow a different level of flexibility than other roles. Rather than trying to set a single standard across your company, it's better to deal with this on a case-by-case basis.
9. Support Employees
Try to say yes to employees and encourage their preferences. There are several reasons this helps maintain productivity.
First, employees like companies that are flexible and supportive. Such employees are less likely to change jobs, disrupting your schedule and forcing you to spend weeks or months getting someone else up to speed.
Second, employees are not machines. Some employees prefer precise schedules and pacing, while others only want a list of tasks and a weekly completion deadline. You cannot swap people and expect them to act the same.
By trying to approve things and only rejecting things if you have a good reason to, you can improve employee morale and let workers address tasks in the most effective way.
10. Employee Recognition
Employee recognition is a crucial aspect of productivity. However, proper recognition is best done through pay increases or equivalent financial compensation. Most of this has to do with the costs of housing and common goods.
For example, between March 2021 and 2022, almost every state saw double-digit increases in rent prices. Housing, similarly, has gone up dramatically in many areas.
Many employees are noticeably more productive at home than in an office. Not having to pay for gas and having more free hours because of lacking a commute contribute as significant benefits.
However, employees who still need to come into the office occasionally need to live within a reasonable distance, which usually means paying more rent or a mortgage.
Other forms of employee recognition usually come down to money, too. Allowing people to order lunch for themselves (up to a set amount) can be a great perk, as are solid year-end bonuses.
Just announcing the employee as a hard worker usually only goes over well if employees feel adequately compensated.
In short, reinvesting some of the profit from higher productivity into employee recognition keeps good workers around and maintains their performance.
Remote Business Productivity In 2023
As 2023 continues, companies and employees will probably find a balance or a compromise for hybrid work. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 59% of employees prefer working from home most of the time, and there are many reasons for that.
The reality is many companies have less reason to encourage people to be in the office.
Increases in remote work productivity software and ending lease contracts mean companies can save quite a lot of money by allowing as much remote work as possible. Real estate cost savings can support the company's long-term success by allowing reinvestment elsewhere.
Hiring outside talent is also becoming more popular. Outside of regular labor productivity, companies are increasingly open to hiring freelancers to help with specific jobs.
These can minimize productivity issues by allowing regular employees to focus on critical tasks while freelancers deal with more unusual jobs.
Personal productivity measures will likely involve bossware for a little while. However, bossware will likely become less appealing as companies settle into remote work and focus more on overall productivity and meeting goals as a metric. Employees generally dislike bossware, especially when it's installed without consent.
Employee productivity will also have to match the company culture. Some employees are only too happy to ditch their company culture, while others thrive in it. There are no universal answers here, so this will likely get addressed on a case-by-case basis while considering things like collaboration tools and business processes.
On a less immediate level, virtual interviews are likely to become increasingly popular. They match how people already communicate for remote roles, and getting an interview team and questions together is easier if they don't have to be in the same room.
A few companies are choosing to have one-way interviews, asking people to record a video of themselves and send it in. This interview method may fade out for two reasons. First, companies may face discrimination lawsuits if it affects their hiring demographics.
Second, workers loathe being unable to ask questions and determine if the job is right for them. Good employees do not accept one-way interviews, so companies that ask for these are self-selecting for bad employees and lower productivity.
Wrapping Up
Working from home is noticeably more productive when done well, with some estimates saying that more than half of employees accomplish more work in the same or less time.
The evidence shows clear benefits to business productivity through remote work, so all that remains is following through to support it from the company side.
The overarching goal of remote work is to maintain or improve business productivity. Some companies are willing to experiment with being more flexible, and if this gives them a competitive advantage, other companies are likely to follow suit.