The current situation is compelling companies to conduct normal business outside of the office by working remotely. It’s become a necessity for most rather than a choice. Remote working can be a challenge for both you and your employees. As well as maintaining selling products, maintaining your website and engaging with customers from home, you also need to ensure you are supporting your employees and keeping them informed, even though you are no longer sharing the same working space. 

As someone who is leading your business, it’s down to you to make sure that any remote workers still feel like part of the team. You should take an active approach towards keeping them in the loop and show them that you care. This way you can get a strong sense of team motivation to keep your business thriving and your employees happy. 

This guide will help to overcome the challenges that remote working has and help you with the advice you need to overcome them: 

Challenges You May Face 

In order to know how to correctly support your team during this time, you first need to identify any challenges that remote workers may face.

These include: 

  • Minimal Interaction With The Team – There is going to be a serious lack of face-to-face contact within the team. To managers and this can lead to your employees feeling out of touch or disconnected. 
  • Difficult To Access Information– One of the major complexities of working remotely is hard to shake feeling that you’re missing vital information or not completing the tasks they should be because communication is more difficult. 
  • Loneliness– It’s far too easy to feel isolated when working remotely, just missing the opportunity for a casual social interaction whilst on a break can be missed. 
  • Distractions– There are far more distractions when working from homes such as TV, pets, and food, these can all affect the productivity of your employees. 
  • Burnout or Overworked–  On the other hand, their home life and work-life can become merged into one, leading them to have an unhealthy work-life balance. They may exceed their usual hours to get a task done because they forget to take a break. 

Remote team management can come with many challenges, however, it is still possible to meet your employee’s needs. With these easy-to-implement pieces of advice, you should be able to help your team feel connected. 

Communication Platforms  

The first thing you need to think about when managing remote workers is to determine the correct way to communicate with them. Have a look at or speak to an I.T. Support Company to help you put work-place specific communication channels in place. This will help to ensure your employees have an organized system to use for their professional communication. It also helps them to distinguish between personal and work messages. There are several popular ones that are used such a Skype for Business and video conferencing tools like Zoom. 

You need to make sure that the technology you use is consistent for all your employees, you should also provide training to everyone so they know how to use each platform. Make sure you set specific communication expectations like what times they should be using them or which tool they should be using for each type of message. 

Catch-Up Regularly

Even though you aren’t communicating with your employees face-to-face, you are still able to run successful briefs, meeting, and one-to-ones. Make use of the technology mentioned above to regularly catch-up and brief your team. It will help to make sure everyone is well informed with the latest news, tasks, and goal, and also still enables your team to have a causal discussion maintaining the team morale. 

Still Include Remote Workers In Your Discussions

When you aren’t connected to your employees in the office it can be really easy to make decisions without them and just delegate tasks without any discussions. Despite the distance, you still need to empower your remote workers by sharing their feedback, putting forward their ideas, and be able to take charge of projects. 

During your team meetings and one-to-ones try to ask about projects as you would normally do so if you were in the office. Let them contribute and allow them to take some control. 

Maintain Your Company Culture

When you lack face-to-face communication it can be really easy to forgo your company culture. It’s more important than ever to hold onto your company culture and values when you have so many people working remotely. Make sure you define your company values, and make sure you share them when engaging with your team. You could even work together to revise your current documents to reflect the current situation, giving you and your employees the chance to relook and appreciate the company culture. 

Show Them You Care 

You shouldn’t just restrict your communication with your team, to business-only related information. It’s important to make sure you also reach out to them to check in on their personal wellbeing. Make an effort to get to know them as individuals, maybe ask about their hobbies and personal lives. Then also share a bit about yourself. It’s good to show them that you care about them as people as well as employees. 

It’s also a good idea to make sure your remote workers know that you are thinking about them. Maybe think about celebrating holidays or special occasions like birthdays. Even if you can’t have the traditional office birthday cake make sure you still recognize it at your next team virtual meeting. You could even arrange for a cake or gift to be sent to their home so they don’t feel as though they have missed out. 

Reward Hard Work

Employees like to know and feel like their effort is both appreciated and acknowledged if they don’t, you risk losing them. When you have remote workers you can’t neglect this. Even if you offer a small token of gratitude it will go a long way to making a difference in making your remote workers feel valued instead of excluded. It’s up to you what you decide to offer, but it could be a good idea to speak to your employees and ask them what they would like. 

This short guide should help you to support your employees who work remotely, keep them motivated, and keep them feeling like part of the team. How have you been supporting your employees through this time? Please share any advice in the comments below.