With working remote being the new normal for the past few weeks, it’s important to keep your employees engaged. Employee engagement is crucial to not only the success of your business, but it’s equally essential for your employees as well. Engaged employees are happier and more productive than their non-engaged peers. Promoting remote employee engagement starts with leadership. We’re sharing three ways to leverage these to promote remote employee engagement.
Start with Clear Expectations
Employees who know what’s expected of them are far more engaged and effective than those who lack a clear direction. With the team outside of the traditional workplace, your remote team is one-step removed from their normal expectations and will need leadership to fill this gap. Remote employees need to work with their managers to set goals, know their expectations, and be accountable for the work they complete.
This can be achieved through regularly scheduled check-ins, daily calls, or a time to meet with their manager 1:1. Another tool for engagement success is giving your team collaboration tools. This helps create a culture of accountability by providing a cross-team view of how workers are tracking against goals.
Keep Things Predictable
Keeping a predictable cadence of communication and deadlines is crucial for keeping your remote employees engaged and effective. This cadence holds your team accountable and ensures your organization remains on the same page on various projects while physically separated from each other.
Here at EG, we’ve been using this practice even before the mass move to remote working. We start each morning with team huddles to go over top priorities the team has for that day, and weekly, we have an all-company huddle to go over our company priorities and numbers. This transparency helps our team know exactly what’s going on and leads to more effective and productive staff.
Find Ways to Have Fun & Stay Connected
With a team that’s accustomed to working together, staying connected, and having a little fun is still an essential part of keeping your remote employees engaged. When communicating, try to always use video. When you can see people’s faces and communicate “face-to-face,” your team will be more connected than if you did the majority of your communication over the phone.
It’s also important to have a little fun to maintain company culture; plus, we all need to laugh during these challenging times. We’re practicing this by holding virtual happy hours, dressing up during some of our morning huddles, and using a team recognition software called Bonusly.
Keeping remote employees engaged means changing some traditional business practices and operations. These changes will accommodate the new normal while people continue adjusting to remote working and will lead to more effective and productive employees.
About EG Workforce Solutions
We’ve been in this business for decades and have developed a deep network of professional connections. Whether they’re companies looking for talent, job seekers looking for work, or an up-and-coming store in need of some temporary help, we know the right people to bridge the gap between the hiring and the hired.
But what’s more, we get to know people. From employers hiring to candidates looking, we take the time to listen and learn. We hear your likes, talents, and needs. We gain an understanding, and with it, we’re able to facilitate lasting relationships between businesses and people.
Just because many of us are working from home doesn’t mean this is a pass to take it easy or be less productive. In fact, working from home should spur you, even more, to want to impress your manager. We’re sharing our three best ways to impress your manager while working remotely.
You Should be Reliable and Responsive
While you were in the office, your manager could easily see when you were working since you’d be sitting at your desk or at your work station. You can convey the same message as a reliable worker even while working remotely by being responsive and available while online.
You should be attentive to your phone, email, and instant messages throughout the day and that when you receive a request from your boss, you respond as soon as possible. This doesn’t mean you have to drop everything and scramble when a message from your manager comes in, you should plan to respond as quickly as you can then complete the request in a realistic timeframe. You’ll want to make sure that you follow through on your promised deadline – if you tell your manager you’ll have the task compete by lunch, for example, make sure you do.
Remember to be Timely
This goes hand-in-hand with following through on your promised deadlines. When you have deadlines, whether you’ve set them or your manager has, you should always make an extra effort to meet these deadlines.
Beyond work assignments, this also relates to video calls and scheduled phone calls. Be prompt, on time, and prepared, and you’re sure to impress your manager. Putting forth your best effort to remember to be timely will help your manager see that you’re a proactive, hard-working employee – even while working remotely.
Always Communicate with Your Manager
While you don’t need to tell your manager every little detail of your day, you do want to be communicating with him or her regularly. Always communicate what tasks or goals you’ve completed either daily or every few days to show them the efforts you’re making to be productive. Your manager will appreciate you taking the initiative in sharing the tasks and goals you’ve completed.
You can impress your manager even while working remotely by showing that you are reliable and responsive to assigned tasks, remembering that timeliness matters, and by always communicating to show your productivity.
About EG Workforce Solutions
We’ve been in this business for decades and have developed a deep network of professional connections. Whether they’re companies looking for talent, job seekers looking for work, or an up-and-coming store in need of some temporary help, we know the right people to bridge the gap between the hiring and the hired.
But what’s more, we get to know people. From employers hiring to candidates looking, we take the time to listen and learn. We hear your likes, talents, and needs. We gain an understanding, and with it, we’re able to facilitate lasting relationships between businesses and people.
With your team now remote, leaders face new challenges when it comes to managing their teams. Digital is the way of the future, but remote working without a strategy is bound to fail both companies and its employees. Here at EG Workforce, we’re sharing the tips we’ve acquired as our team has become entirely virtual.
Leaders Must be Visible
Your team cannot be there best if their leader isn’t visible. Successful leaders of remote teams can retain positive relationships with their team, and the best way to achieve this is through remaining visible to their employees. A Gallup poll found that positive relationships among teams lead to higher employee engagement. Managing these relationships is easier in a traditional office setting; it is even more crucial while your team is remote. Without managers, team members, and even the organization’s leaders putting in the time and effort to foster relationships with their newly remote employees, it’s all too easy for those workers to feel isolated and left out. Isolated employees will burnout quickly and will not feel engaged in their work.
Leaders must make a conscious effort to remain visible to their teams and continue building their relationships with their employees. Leaders should be seen on camera over video, call their team members on the phone, over-communicate what’s happening, and set up regular check-ins with their team members.
There Needs to be Team Collaboration
Since your team is no longer sitting in an office together, it’s essential to keep the collaboration going digitally. Utilize tools like video conferencing, Google Docs, project management software like Monday.com, or chat tools like Slack to keep your team collaborating and working as a team.
Without team collaboration, your company’s efforts will either fall through the cracks or efforts will be duplicated, leading to less productivity and time wasted. Leaders should encourage collaboration by implementing team-centric tools like we mentioned earlier.
Always Use Video When Possible
With the lack of face-to-face connection, using video is a key component to remote team success. Instead of relying on just a phone call for your next meeting or check-in, leaders should encourage the use of video when possible. There are plenty of resources available for companies to use video conferencing, the most popular being Zoom, but you may already have access to video conferencing on the phone system your company currently uses.
Being seen on camera reinforces the connection between your team and leads to higher engagement and productivity.
Using video also allows leaders and co-workers to pick up on the nonverbal cues that occur. Research shows that up to 93% of communication is nonverbal. So while phone calls are great, they cannot make up all of your meetings and communications as video conferencing allows you to pick up on your team’s non-verbal cues.
Provide Face-to-Face Communication
Much like using video conferencing is important for maintaining employee engagement, it’s crucial for providing face-to-face communication. Leaders should plan to set up personal check-ins with their team members where they can communicate virtually face-to-face.
These check-ins provide the space to connect with your team deeper than a regular phone call can and helps strengthen the professional relationship between you and your employees. Face-to-face communication also reinforces that your company is still operating as it would (given the circumstances) in the traditional office environment.
Leaders Must Set Clear Expectations
Leaders must set clear expectations for their remote teams to eliminate as much uncertainty as possible and avoid any miscommunication. Each member of your team will have different ideas of what working remotely looks like, and it’s up to you as a leader to get everyone on the same page by laying out clear expectations.
You may want to mandate calendar sharing, project check-ins, or daily task lists. However, while these are great tools to help keep your team accountable, you’ll want to make sure you avoid becoming too much of a micro-manager. Research shows that employee productivity and engagement drops dramatically when an employee feels like they are being micromanaged, and this will lead to burnout quickly.
Be Hyper-Focused on Your Core Values
Now more than ever, your company should be visibly living out and hyper-focused on its core values. This time is uncertain and full of challenges and stressors beyond what a typical workday looks like. On top of worrying about how to adapt to working remotely, your team members will be stressed about what the future of the company looks like, their financial state, and of course, getting sick. If your employees have children, their home is also doubling as a school as well as an office.
To help their employees succeed while working remotely, leaders must show empathy and live out the company’s core values. Here at EG, we have 5 core values: Do the Right Thing, Value the Individual, An Attitude that Works, Red Hot Chili Pepper Urgency, and Healthy as a Whole. We are going above and beyond during these uncertain times to live out our values in the work we do individually and as a whole team.
Encourage Your Team to Set Boundaries
To avoid employee burnout, leaders must encourage their team to set boundaries. While people work from home, it can be difficult for people to know when to “turn-off.” When the office and home mesh into one, it can be tempting for your team to not power down their email of close-out projects at the end of the day. While this may seem like an exciting prospect to increase productivity, it will quickly backfire as your team will become overwhelmed and burned out.
Leaders should encourage their team to set boundaries between work and free time. Be sure to remind your team to take a lunch break as they would in a traditional office setting and to turn off their computer at the end of the workday. One tip is to have a separate workspace from the space you relax in, if possible. If your team member isn’t able to have a separate work area, encourage them to put their computer out of sight when it’s time to power down. Setting these boundaries to “turn-off” will lead to happier and more productive employees.
Trust Your Team
Finally, simply trust your team. You hired this team for a reason, and when they have the tools to succeed, believe that they will. When you have trust in your team, you will see better results and a higher level of productivity. A team with the right tools and trust from their leaders cannot fail, even while being completely remote!
Times are changing; we believe we will see the lasting impact of teams being able to work remotely outside of COVID-19. Companies will need to learn to adapt to this new normal, even if teams aren’t fully remote on the other side of these challenging times. Leaders and employees will need to work together right now to be successful while remote and build strategies for virtual work in the future.
About EG Workforce Solutions
We’ve been in this business for decades and have developed a deep network of professional connections. Whether they’re companies looking for talent, job seekers looking for work, or an up-and-coming store in need of some temporary help, we know the right people to bridge the gap between the hiring and the hired.
But what’s more, we get to know people. From employers hiring to candidates looking, we take the time to listen and learn. We hear your likes, talents, and needs. We gain an understanding, and with it, we’re able to facilitate lasting relationships between businesses and people.
During these uncertain times, many of us are working from home, the EG team included. Teleworking should be a great way to be more productive, but the underlying stressors and unknowns can make it difficult to truly be successful. We are sharing our five best practices we’ve developed to be successful while working remotely.
Stick to a Routine
Our first remote work success tip is sticking to a routine. For example, if you normally get up for work at 7:00 am, make sure you’re still waking up generally around the same time so you can follow your regular schedule. If you take a lunch break, make sure you still schedule one for yourself. It’s important to take a break from your work during the day to prevent burnout. Taking a break will also help clear your mind and leave you feeling refreshed for the remainder of the day.
Sticking to a routine also helps stabilize your mental health. With all the uncertainty floating around, having some constants in your life, like your routine, can help serve as an anchor for your well-being.
You Must Embrace Digital
When face-to-face is no longer an option, we have to learn to embrace digital technology. It’s no secret that Zoom has become the go-to platform for video meetings. Video meetings are an essential tool for working remotely because it allows you to see your team. Research shows that up to 93% of communication is nonverbal. So while phone calls are great, they cannot make up all of your meetings and communications as video conferencing allows you to pick up on your team’s non-verbal cues.
Some additional tips for embracing digital is to use a headset or earbuds while having meetings. This will allow you to hear and be heard more clearly over just using your computer audio. We also recommend using a light to illuminate your face so your team can see you well. This light doesn’t have to be expensive, a simple lamp you already have will work just as well.
Over Communicate with Your Team
People are stressed and scared right now, so over-communicating with your team is another key to success while working from home. Leaders must use this time of uncertainty to be transparent and honest with their employees, and employees also need to be communicating with their leaders and team. Stressed and scared employees won’t be able to give their best efforts to their work because they’ll be nervous about their job security or what the future holds.
Leaders should do all they can to over-communicate the state of the business and what lies ahead in the foreseeable future. Employees should be over-communicating their list of tasks, their accomplishments, and their emotions with their managers. The more aligned your team is, the more productive your organization will be.
You Should Dress for Success
It can be tempting to want to wear your pajamas or sweats all day while working remotely, but we’ve found a best practice is to dress for success. Do your best to wear clothing that supports productivity. This means getting dressed and ready in the morning instead of slugging to your workspace in the pajamas you wore the night before. Dressing for success puts you in the mindset of working. While you don’t need to wear a full suit or be business professional, you’ll want to wear something that is comfortable but not what you’ll wear to bed later.
Know When to Step Away
Our final best practice for working remotely is to know when it’s time to step away. It’s easy to be “always on” while working from home, but you have to set boundaries for yourself to power down, just as you would if you were at the office.
It’s important to have a set time to step away at the end of the day, to help, you might want to set “do not disturb” settings on your email or if your team is using an instant message platform like Slack or Google Chat. It also helps to move your equipment and computer into a different room so you won’t be tempted to log back on. While it’s fine to still check your email time and again, by not setting boundaries, you’re likely to burnout quickly.
Working remotely has become the new normal for most of us and will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. Make working from home successful by following these five best practices.
About EG Workforce Solutions
We’ve been in this business for decades and have developed a deep network of professional connections. Whether they’re companies looking for talent, job seekers looking for work, or an up-and-coming store in need of some temporary help, we know the right people to bridge the gap between the hiring and the hired.
But what’s more, we get to know people. From employers hiring to candidates looking, we take the time to listen and learn. We hear your likes, talents, and needs. We gain an understanding, and with it, we’re able to facilitate lasting relationships between businesses and people.