One issue that every employer faces is figuring out how to effectively manage their employees. Thanks to COVID, though, large companies and small business owners alike have had to deal with a new challenge—how to manage workers who telecommute.

The good news is that many employers have discovered that managing remote employees is nowhere near as difficult as they feared. However, remote workers do have different challenges than employees working in the office, so if you have people working remotely on your payroll you’ll need to adopt some new strategies to keep them productive and happy.

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Set Clear Productivity Standards

This is good advice when managing any worker, but setting expectations is a must when you manage remote employees. For instance, if your remote employees are customer support representatives, you might want to set a standard for how many calls they should be handling each hour. For knowledge workers, such as coders, you’ll want to set deadlines for when they should have their projects delivered to the team.

In addition to productivity standards, you should also come up with limits on when employees should be on the clock. This is as much for the employee’s benefit as it is for yours. Remote workers tend to burn themselves out by overworking, and setting limits on when they can work can help avoid that.

Make Sure They Have the Right Tools

It doesn’t matter how dedicated and skillful your employees are if they don’t have the right tools to get the job done. Make sure any remote workers have the resources they need to work remotely, such as a stable high-speed Internet connection, a decent computer setup and a PC camera. You’ll also want to make sure they have any software they need to complete their tasks.

In addition to hardware and software, you’ll also want to make sure your remote employees have resources like policy and procedure manuals, not to mention any templates they may have to use for presentations.

Set Aside Regularly Scheduled Time to Interact With Your Team

While working remotely has a lot of benefits, it also has one big disadvantage: you end up losing the camaraderie and sense of being on a team that you get when regularly interacting with people.

There are several ways to help keep your team cohesive. The most obvious solution is to schedule video meetings regularly where you and your team can get together. You can use this time to have your team talk about the projects they’re working on and the challenges they’re encountering, but you may also want to include a few extra minutes in the meeting to just let your remote employees talk with each other.

You can also encourage remote workers to reach out to each other through other means. While that might mean sending emails or making phone calls, you might also use software like Slack or Microsoft Teams to send instant messages to your clients or to a group.

Finally, set aside time to talk with your remote employees one-on-one. Doing this will give your employees a chance to talk about individual issues, such as things that are going well for them, obstacles getting the way of their work or even requests for supplies. This is also a good time to talk about what your employees would like to do to further develop their career.

Invest in Your Remote Workers With First Alliance Credit Union

Managing remote workers has different challenges than working with employees in the office, but it’s not that hard. You just need to give your remote workers the tools they need to succeed, set clear standards and communicate with them regularly.

If you have remote workers, you can make sure they have all the tools they need when you get a business credit card or commercial line of credit at First Alliance Credit Union. In addition to getting a competitive interest rate, you’ll also get the services of our business lending advisors who will help you find the best financial solutions for you and your company.

Open a business account today!