How to manage remote employees: Challenges and 5 secrets to success

1. Common challenges when managing remote employees

Typically, supervisors and business owners will face four key challenges when managing remote workers.

• Not much time to meet colleagues and leaders/managers: Face-to-face interaction is an important element of company culture and workplace meetings. However, remote workers often lack face-to-face communication.
• Communication difficulties: When working remotely, it is not possible to know if a colleague or leader is available to answer questions immediately. In addition, messages and emails can be delayed and unnoticed.
• Distracting factors: When working remotely, you may encounter annoying factors that affect the work area such as: Construction works near home, children playing, ...

2. 5 ways to effectively manage remote employees

2.1 Set clear goals and requirements of the job right from the start

In the process of managing remote employees, businesses need to focus on goals and results rather than time management issues. To do this, businesses need to set specific and clear goals. This is an important premise for building an implementation plan and achieving goals easily at work.

When goals are clear, employees will be motivated and have specific goals in their work. Based on that, employees can also define a clear plan to accomplish the set goals. At the same time, employees must also commit to the set goals for the work to be effective.

However, productivity standards can vary flexibly depending on the nature of the job, although there are still a few standards that apply as a common standard for the entire company. For example, a business might stipulate that all email from customers must be answered before the end of the working day or require employees to be available for any meeting from 9 a.m. morning to 5 pm.

For individual standards, management needs to conduct a thorough analysis and issue a separate standard.

In the process of managing remote employees, businesses also need to learn the documentation of productivity standards to quickly identify problems that need to be resolved, thereby providing remedial measures and solutions. optimize working performance .

2.2 There are meetings and updates on employees' working situations and difficulties

Businesses should regularly hold fixed meetings every 1-2 weeks. These meetings will be a time when employees and managers can share difficulties and obstacles while working remotely. This helps companies consider reasonable solutions to solve employee problems, avoid long-standing problems that affect employee performance.

2.3 No micromanagement of employees

Micromanagement is a method of human resource management that focuses on controlling every little detail. The Micromanagement style of management emphasizes on monitoring the work of employees, rather than empowering them to get the job done on their own. Accordingly, this management style will monitor every employee's actions and give step-by-step instructions to ensure that the work is done as required.

However, if trust is lost or weakened, it becomes very difficult to restore trust. When employees do not trust their boss, they will feel unsafe and start to maintain a job instead of being productive.

Currently, there are many managers who tend to manage such Micromanagement. Unfortunately, many businesses appreciate these managers because they think they can control every aspect. While short-term results can be achieved, over time this approach has significant consequences, even hurting employee morale.

2.4 Make employees feel like an important part of the business

Businesses need to show recognition for their employees' contributions. Let each individual in the organization see that you are respecting and appreciating the work they are doing. In particular, do not hesitate to give compliments to your employees because this will increase encouragement and improve the performance of the whole business.

Besides, businesses can regularly update information and news for employees so that they can grasp the latest information. This will help employees feel that the business cares about them. From there, a relationship between employees and businesses will become closer.

2.5 Provide appropriate documents, tools, and applications

To effectively manage remote employees, businesses need to ensure that employees are fully equipped with support tools to easily communicate when needed. To do this, it requires leaders and teams to exchange and coordinate to find solutions to help transform business operations to an online working model.

Remote workers need to have the same access to important resources as when working in the office, including:

• A guide to business processes and policies
• Sample documents, suitable work forms
• Provide all necessary office supplies such as pens, paper, mailboxes, etc. to support daily work.
• The software program needed to do the job and interact with colleagues and customers.
• Personal laptop

Above are 5 effective ways to manage remote employees that Vietnam Mnapower wants to share with your business. Hopefully through the above ways, businesses can find a management solution that is suitable for their business model.