Working from home has been popular in recent years despite its advantages, such as happier employees, lower operating expenses, a high percentage of staff retention, and more. However, several things need to be considered to resolve the challenges of managing remote employees.
Employers may readily alleviate these challenges of managing remote employees with better planning, employee monitoring tools, and software assistance. The following are the key challenges for supervisors that can occur while managing remote teams and the remote team solutions they can take to alleviate them.
Table of contents
1. Communication and Collaboration Challenges
Maintaining good levels of collaboration and communication is the biggest challenge of managing remote employees. According to a recent survey by Buffer, 20.5% of remote employees responded that the most difficult challenge they face is maintaining a balance with communication and its connotations.
Face-to-face communication makes it easier to determine if the team is united. As a result, managers must cope with difficulties such as miscommunication and delayed communication because they need visual cues. Cultural differences and time zones may also be a hindrance to successful collaboration, thus creating challenges in managing remote teams.
Solution
Having the necessary tools is considered one of the challenges of managing remote employees. Therefore, Supervisors must guarantee that the employees have the tools required for ease of remote collaboration and communication. Teleconferencing and video chat could be beneficial in helping them understand the aims and objectives.
As a result, it is recommended to have regular meetings, such as town halls, where all employees can participate and share their thoughts on the topic, and a conducive ambiance can be created. Employees should be encouraged to have one-on-one meetings and talks with management about ongoing projects.
2. Diversions
Working remotely can easily lead to scenarios that cause employee distraction. Therefore, it is one of the significant challenges of managing remote employees.
Employees may have to pay attention to family members while they are nearby and conduct household duties instead of attending office meetings when working from home. However, this is only the case for some. Some individuals can deal with distractions effectively and are skilled at balancing work and leisure time.
However, individuals in the early stages of this new working environment may need to be more focused while dealing with the challenges of remote work. As a result, it is a challenge for supervisors to investigate this aspect of personal distraction.
Solution
To overcome such challenges of managing remote employees, employees should be given the resources to deal with distractions. Regular pauses may be required to balance work and personal commitment.
Creating a flexible work schedule allows employees to do things at their leisure. It has been discovered that several companies offer childcare and stipends to their employees independent of the working type (remote or work from home).
Employees should not feel bound to their workstations, and as a result, such workers should not be punished if they manage their time successfully despite strict restrictions.
By measuring employee productivity, organizations can maintain employee productivity tracking, eventually track their employee’s performance, and provide any necessary training or coaching to get them back on track.
3. Quarantine and Seclusion
Employees working from remote locations can feel seclusion and social isolation. Employees with less social interaction might start feeling secluded as workplaces are a big social outlet for such employees, and it is a significant workplace communication challenge.
Studies have shown that employees feeling lonely or isolated tend to develop health issues beginning with sleep problems and body exhaustion, which can even lead to substance abuse.
Solution
Managing remote employees’ best practices includes a frequent team-building exercise led by management that assists employees in combating Seclusion.
Virtual connections cannot replace in-person events, which is the biggest challenge to managing a virtual project team; they can benefit employees by allowing them to socialize with their coworkers.
Managers can also include virtual lunches, breaks, and learning activities to ensure staff feel socially connected. In-person meetups let employees meet each other, and workers in the same area can take advantage of the opportunity.
Every quarter, the organization can promote a charity work day among its employees to spend time together working on a charitable cause of their choice.
4. Distrust Among the Team
Maintaining trust within the team is among the significant challenges of managing remote employees. As per a survey by Microsoft,85% of managers do not believe their staff will be productive when working remotely.
This lack of trust can exacerbate miscommunication, causing supervisors to continuously check-in and, ironically, interrupt work. Employees who need to be more trustworthy will likely be engaged in their work and may even develop burnout.
Solution
Employers must use employee computer monitoring software to monitor staff productivity objectively so that management can be confident that the work is completed.
This can be accomplished using KPIs and other indicators or employee performance management software such as Leapmax. Employee computer monitoring software can assist leaders in determining how, when, and where people perform their best jobs and where they may require additional assistance to develop.
5. Big No to Corporate Culture
Corporate culture can benefit a business, including higher employee productivity tracking, improved customer satisfaction, and more engaged staff. It can also help employees maintain their mental health and prevent turnover.
As previously noted, workplaces can be critical social outlets for employees, and business culture can play a role. However, corporate culture can provide teams with a feeling of meaning and purpose, making them more enthusiastic about their work.
Managing remote teams may need help to build a business culture, which can increase the challenges of managing remote employees.
Solution
Employers may develop business culture by ensuring they have a firm goal statement and vision to follow and allowing staff to communicate and collaborate with the correct tools and regular meetings. Company culture encompasses common beliefs and ideals and team members’ daily jobs.
Many organizations work to instill a company ethos that includes these shared values, for example, by focusing their efforts on eco-friendly or sustainable practices, donating to and remote team collaborating with charities or community groups that share the company’s vision, or empowering employees to do work that advances these shared values.
This could be accomplished in a remote work setting through communication and a commitment to values from the top down.
6. Work-life and Mental Balance Coordination
According to one of the Buffer surveys, 27% of remote employees stated that unplugging was the most challenging aspect of working from home.
Remote employees frequently put in more significant hours than their in-office counterparts, partly because they don’t have to commute and can spend more time at their desks.
However, they are just as likely to be unable to switch off since they do not have a physical separation from their work as they would if they were leaving an office. Most employees will get exhausted as a result of this, and managers of remote teams must pay close attention to this.
Solution
Create and enforce precise work and non-work time regulations to overcome these challenges of managing remote employees. Ensure staff take regular breaks, whether a 20-minute lunch or a three-day vacation.
Many remote-first workplaces incorporate community or family days into their work schedules in addition to national holidays when the business is closed and employees are not required to work. Some companies may even turn off email or impose “do not disturb” hours on their staff, as this benefits employees’ mental well-being and saves overtime spending.
7. Approach to the Required Tools and Technology
Work-from-home challenges include employees needing help walking to the IT desk (or their manager’s office) to inquire about accessing new tools or logging into the most recent technology.
They also cannot request that a colleague demonstrate how to use the technology or attend in-person training sessions where they can ask questions.
One of the remote working issues is that employees abandon technology or tools they need help understanding, which can lead to workarounds and, ultimately, could create challenges for supervisors and compromise your company’s cybersecurity.
Solution
Managing remote employee best practices include mustering all your technology and resources in a virtual hub that all employees can readily access and providing an easy mechanism for them to contact a help desk when necessary.
Employees should be able to locate anything they need, from HR resources and corporate policies to collaboration tools and file-sharing services, through a single link. Ensuring that staff have appropriate internet connectivity for their purposes is also critical.
This implies that certain employees may require Wi-Fi booster gear or satellite access to provide a secure connection and productivity no matter where they operate.
8. Ensuring Company Security
Cyber security is one of the challenges of managing remote employees. Cybersecurity is an ever-present issue in the digital age, and managing remote teams spread throughout the country or the world can create unique challenges.
Maintaining the physical security of devices such as computers and phones is one challenge for the remote workforce; another is keeping company assets secure by using secure Wi-Fi connections and avoiding phishing attempts.
Some IT businesses go so far as to suggest that employees are the most dangerous security hazard to any organization, owing to a lack of understanding of dangers and training on how to deal with them.
Solution
Ensure that employees are routinely instructed in identifying phishing and scams. It would help if you also encouraged staff to use a trusted virtual private network (VPN) when dealing with sensitive information, particularly customer or confidential company data.
On company-owned computers and devices, install firewalls and other security measures. Use two-factor authentication (TFA) and strong password policies for employees’ devices or tools.
Create, implement, and enforce a cybersecurity policy that employees understand and follow.
Conclusion
Managing a remote workforce provides its own set of issues that must be addressed with careful planning. One important strategy to assist employees and supervisors is using employee monitoring software such as Leapmax to get a complete view of how people perform when working remotely.
Leadership can readily observe when employees are most productive, how remote employees use their time, and what tools enhance (or impede) productivity with Leapmax. Through employee performance management software, Leapmax enables the managers to question the team’s inefficiency or which staff may require more training to achieve their objectives.
Set up a demo today to learn more about how Leapmax can assist you in managing your remote workforce.
