Employees and team members working from home? You’re not alone. Even without pandemics like the coronavirus to think about, remote working trends are on the rise. Today’s small businesses have dozens of ways to benefit from a distributed lifestyle.
After all, when your team members aren’t coming into the office, you have less money to spend on overheads, access to greater productivity, and all of the scalability of the cloud. Still, creating a remote working strategy does come with a few things to consider. Here are our top tips to get small businesses started.
1. Invest in the Right Technology
Technology is what makes remote working a possibility in the first place. For small companies to thrive in this environment, they need to ensure that their employees have the tools that they need to stay productive. Cloud-based phone systems so that agents can take business calls for a distance might be crucial for a contact centre focused business.
Your employees might also need hardware like headsets and video cameras so that they can take part in regular video conferencing meetings too. Don’t forget about software tech, too, such as time-management applications, project tracking tools, and collaboration software. Team collaboration tools are often at the heart of the remote working stack, offering everything from instant messaging to screen sharing in the same place.
2. Encourage a Schedule
Though flexible schedules are one of the benefits of remote working, that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any structure to the day. Your employees need some kind of routine to follow so that they don’t get caught up by the urge to either overwork or procrastinate.
Set times each week when everyone in your team needs to be available for a meeting or group conversation. Make sure that teams know deadlines when projects need to be complicated and ask your employees to set hours for when they’re going to work each day.
3. Offer Assistance
Some of the people in your team just aren’t going to be comfortable with remote working at first. This means that they’re going to need some extra guidance. Training tools like videos and documentation can be very helpful for beginners. At the same time, it’s handy to ensure that your employees know who they can turn to for help, even if it’s just a coworker/mentor.
Implementing crucial tools from home-working from the moment you onboard your employees can be a great way to make accessing remote work a lot easier.
4. Embrace Video
Communication is key to a successful remote working strategy. However, some communication is more effective than others. Video conferencing is quickly becoming the best way for teams to stay connected in a remote environment. After all, there’s no better way to deliver contextual and intimate conversation to your team members.
With video, you can replicate the magic of face-to-face conversations, without having to ask your team members to travel to the office. Wirth many video conferencing tools today, you can also share virtual whiteboards and screens at the same time, allowing for a much more in-depth conversation when discussions about projects are necessary. Schedule regular video sessions with your team to ensure everyone stays connected the right way.
5. Stay Vigilant
Finally, remember that remote work comes with its own set of challenges, from employees that fail to adhere to security policies, to unsecure log-ins from remote working environments. You need to ensure that you have the right strategies in place to protect crucial employee and business data. VPN solutions that defend your connections, or two-factor authentication can make a huge difference.
Even the latest communication and collaboration tools on the market can feature critical measures for security, like encryption, to keep your data safe both at rest and in transit. Don’t slack off on safety when you switch to remote working.
from UC Today https://ift.tt/2VLbFFN
0 Comments