employee morale
The remote workforce has boomed over the past week and a half with thousands of organizations moving from office buildings to laptops at home. While ¼ of the U.S. workforce was part-time remote employees before the viral outbreak, many organizations have been faced with the harsh reality of shutting their office doors and becoming remote organizations.
employee morale
We previously outlined ways for your employees to easily transition to remote office work, and now we’re here to talk to you about managing and helping your employees remain engaged during this time.
Some of your employees may feel challenged in new ways as they shift to remote operations. Otherwise, high-performing employees may have a difficult time transitioning to this new position and employers may see a decline in performance and engagement.
Challenges Your Employees May Face
Lack of face to face supervision
Managers and employees both feel the challenges associated with the lack of face-to-face interaction. Managers worry that their employees will not work as hard or as efficiently as they would in the office. Employees can feel that remote work managers aren’t as communicative and don’t support their own needs.
In some cases, it has been found that remote work employees work harder at their jobs when they’re remote due to the lack of office distractions. The one employee that always seems to be chatting with their co-workers maybe your new top-performing employee due to the lack of social distractions.
Lack of Access to Information:
In this case, the information doesn’t relate only to common knowledge things like answering a difficult question. Remote employees also lack the emotional awareness that they would normally have in an office setting. While in an office employees would be aware if one of their coworkers was having a bad day, but while working remotely, employees won’t know the situation for their coworkers.
Social Isolation:
Normally employees will be in an office building and have other people to have conversations with, then your employees might continue their day after work with different types of social interactions. Now your employees are isolated by themselves in their homes. Loneliness is one of the most common complaints about remote work. Isolation can cause your employees to feel less involved in their organizations’ culture and can drive employee intentions to leave up.
At Home Distractions:
Working in an office has its own set of distractions, but distractions at home vary from procrastination cleaning to family members. With the sudden onset of being a remote worker, a number of these employees may not have had time to create an adequate plan to have an office or find childcare. Managers should expect a greater number of these distractions due to the unplanned work from home circumstances.
Poor Time Management:
Without an in-person manager to keep employees on task, it can mean employees’ time management starts to slip. Many people convince themselves that they are effective at time management because they’ve got a schedule built out on their calendar. These employees might rush from appointment to appointment when they’re in the office but may find that their ability to keep time slips when there is no one to hold them accountable. Poor time management is usually caused by a failure to evaluate the work that needs to be completed.
Employers can help employees who lack time management skills, by giving these employees hard deadlines for certain tasks. These employees may also lack the awareness to set priorities. One way employers can help employees is through a straight forward time management table. This is one way for your employers to help employees reevaluate their priorities.
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important | Urgent & Important | Not Urgent & Important |
| Not Important | Urgent & Not Important | Not Urgent and Not Important |
Misunderstanding Technology:
Employees who normally log right into their desktop at the office may be confused with how the new remote work and communication systems work. Some of these employees can be used to just logging into their desk computer and having everything they need right in front of them. With the move from an office to remote, employees can struggle with how they are required to access their information.
How to support your remote employees
Provide several different communication options
If at first, you don’t succeed, try and try again. If GoToMeeting doesn’t work for one employee, try Slack, Skype, Zoom, Google Hangout, or a traditional conference call on your cell phone. Limiting your newly remote employees’ ways of communication can be frustrating to you and the employee. This can be especially true if your employees aren’t used to using remote communication tools.
Establish daily check-ins:
Every phone call to your employees doesn’t have to be work-related. Start your daily meetings going around the group and seeing how everyone is doing, how they’re holding up and if there is any good news they would like to share with the group. These daily check-ins will allow your employees to communicate and socialize with their team members they’re used to seeing every day.
Provide opportunities for remote social interaction
This is uncharted territory for everyone. Humans aren’t used to staying at home and only interacting with their peers via computer screens. Try hosting a remote Happy Hour, where all of your staff hosts a non-business-related meeting. This can include sending care packages to all of your employees with party favors to be used during this meeting or sending them pizzas. Or just a nice after work chat among your coworkers to show solidarity during these times of social isolation.
Provide encouragement and Emotional Support:
There has been a lot of conversation surrounding the mental wellbeing of your employees. Supporting your employees emotionally can go a long way. A 5-minute wellness phone call can go a long way. Encourage your employees to speak up if they are struggling with anything work-related or personally during this time of isolation. People who struggle with addictions are more likely to relapse during times of isolation like these.
As a manager, it is your duty to provide a fearless attitude and lead your employees in the right direction. Much like productivity, emotions also have a trickle-down effect, if you’re feeling helpless and lost in a situation and portray that to your team, then your team may start to feel helpless and misguided.
Be Responsive and Available
As you expect your employees to be responsive to any emails you send, return the favor. Communication is key for organizations to remain calm and functional while transitioning to remote work. This doesn’t mean that you have to respond to emails that your team sends out after work hours. Your employees look to you for guidance, while your availability should be based around work hours, you should be open to talking to your employees about nonwork-related topics as well.
Metropolitan Risk is here to answer any questions you may have about transitioning your employees to remote work and boosting your employees’ morale. If you are a current Metropolitan Risk customer, you have access to ThinkHR one of the largest digital HR platforms.
Return To Work Checklist provided by ThinkHR
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