Remote working was in practice a decade ago but was not as prevalent as not many companies had embraced it before. Recently, Work-from-home strategies came up with several advancements in Artificial Intelligence, providing a solution for many organizations to cut down their operational costs and face cutthroat competition.
Work from home strategies coming of the pandemic and post-pandemic, the market fundamentals have completely changed. On the verge of closure, the industries found a golden opportunity for revival by converting most of their operations to remote working. Remote working is a win-win situation both for the company and remote workers.
Remote working not only reduces operating expenses for the organization but also gives remote workers ample time to have a work-life balance and work according to flexible timings.
Despite all the advantages, many workers still struggle to cope with remote work. They lack the office atmosphere and interaction with their colleagues and feel left out of decision-making. This increases their alienation from the company, which adversely affects their productivity.
Some remote workers also feel neglected when there is a lack of communication or miscommunication with their managers. This makes them feel that they are not a part of the organization.
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6 Best Work From Home Strategies to Encourage Your Employee’s Morale
Following are some of the ways through which organizations can help their work-from-home employees feel more engaged and love their jobs:
1. Effective Feedback
Providing feedback with proper work-from-home strategies to remote teams in a virtual workstation is one of today’s most critical things. The employees are the ones that are keeping everything running while working from home. When there is no physical contact with them, sharing feedback is much more important in building a connection with the team and making them feel involved.
When remote workers get feedback from their managers, it helps them improve their workforce performance. It also helps them in decision-making, motivates them to do better by understanding their weak areas, and further helps in team building.
A study of 65,672 workers revealed that those who got feedback had lower turnover rates by 14.9% compared to those employees who did not receive any. Another study with 530 work units found that teams that received feedback from their managers showed 12.5% greater productivity.
Feedback doesn’t necessarily have to jump between an employee and their manager. There should be an option for peer-to-peer feedback, which is a great way to connect workers working from home. In peer-to-peer feedback, coworkers cheer each other for all their hard work and the efforts they put into every task. By stimulating peer-to-peer feedback, employees may start communicating beyond their work area, which can help boost their engagement at work.
2. Establish Regular Communication for Work from Work from Home Strategies
Setting up regular communication virtually with the remote workers is very important to help everyone remain on the same page and understand everything happening. Managers need to make themselves available when they are managing remote teams. It can happen often that remote teams may feel disconnected from what’s going on in the company.
Establishing regular communication can help remote teams overcome any challenges that come with their remote work.
To communicate effectively with remote teams, online meeting tools can be used, via Skype or Zoom, etc. To communicate on a company platform with a secure and stable connection, various AI software comes with features of encrypted video conferencing, integrated live chat tools, etc.
3. Conduct Social Events
It is very important for workers, especially remote employees, to connect with one another outside of their work-related meetings. Virtual happy hours or some game nights can be conducted for the virtual workforce to bond with one another and make working from home fun.
Virtual events might not be the solution to every problem within an organization. Still, they can improve the team members’ complete experience and create a feeling of community.
There is a concept in psychology called the Johari Window, which means building and enhancing group relationships. The crux of this concept is simply that to build trust within a team, each and every individual is motivated to open up and share their personal experiences. This helps the members understand their co-workers better and also helps in providing any support they might need to work effectively. (Source)
4. Support Newly Hires
It is important to understand that a manager who hires an employee is the one responsible for their success. It is because they know everything about their employee, from their skills and talents to their weaknesses. Thus, it is important to support newly hired workers, whether remote or on-site workers.
But it is also important to understand that when remote employees are hired, they can’t absorb the on-site team feeling. This is where their managers can help them make them a part of the team where the members work on-site and off-site. To motivate the newly hired remote workers, the managers can send them either a positive message or a welcome kit.
It is crucial to remember that remote workers do not have a typical onboarding where they are given a tour of the company and an introduction to their colleagues. It takes more effort than that to make the newly hired remote employees motivated and engaged with their jobs. The managers should also be there for the remote workers in case of any query or if they are experiencing any type of difficulty with their work.
Managers can provide appropriate training and resources to support the newly hired remote employees during onboarding. Managers can make sure the remote employees have their log-in details with them, have a clear knowledge of how the company software works, etc.
5. Acknowledge Employee Contributions
It happens that when remote workers work, they aren’t working exactly like the on-site workers with complete dedication and no distractions. However, remote workers put in more hours than on-site workers and still feel like they are not a part of the team. The only solution the management can take here is to make employee recognition a prime concern.
This can be achieved using an online recognition platform like a virtual meeting platform. This allows every employee to observe, share their views, and get real-time recognition for their efforts. When remote employees are recognized for their efforts by their managers and peers, they feel connected, further improving their self-esteem.
6. Embrace Flexibility
One of the main advantages of working from home is the flexibility it provides to the employees. When it comes to weekly team meetings or sessions, a particular time is decided around them but with work, remote workers should be given some sense of autonomy or freedom for how they work for the rest of the day.
Developing trust between managers and their employees is very important for employee satisfaction and to get the work done. If companies start adopting a flexible work culture, it will help the organization and the employees create a healthy work-life balance.
Takeaway
Working from home will continue to stay for a very long time in the future as it has become the new normal.
Understanding how to control and involve remote employees by adopting various employee engagement strategies is far more important than ever.
