We wanted to create a remote working guide for managers because, in the digitalizing world, remote working has become a part of almost every industry. While some companies are moving their employees from their offices to their homes as a necessity, we have seen a rapid movement towards remote working or hybrid working models for a long time.
There are numerous advantages to making the switch to remote working in the business world. It also offers many conveniences, especially for managers in terms of controlling and managing business processes.
- According to a study by Google Workplace Analytics, the number of people working from home has increased by 140% since 2015.
- In a study by CoSo Cloud, 77% of those who work remotely say they are more productive when working from home.
- According to a study by Tecla, 85% of executives believe that having remote teams will become the new norm.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses around the world have switched to remote work. The benefits of working remotely for you, your team and your business are much greater than we anticipated.
Practical tips for efficient remote work
Let’s start our remote working guide with practical tips.
Even small touches will make a big difference to increase these benefits and turn the remote working system into a workable method for you. You can increase the efficiency you get from working remotely through many details including your communication with your remote team and the technologies you use.
Take a look at the most important of them:
Communicate clearly and precisely
Since the pandemic began working remotely has become almost common in all sectors. The importance of communication in the remote working process and its impact on the business are huge. We can say that the lack of face-to-face communication also has an effect on the clear transmission of messages. Therefore, it is very important to understand the other person and express yourself correctly during communication.
You need to make sure that the communication cycle is clearly understood by the whole team you work with. Good, clear communication is essential when it comes to your team’s roles and responsibilities.
In particular, you should make sure that remote workers understand what you expect of them regarding their current, new or potential role. For this, it may be useful to communicate over an interactive system, and not only through written communication, especially in emergencies.
Organize regular meetings
We can say that starting the day and the week with regular meetings is the source of motivation that affects you and your team in a positive way. Ensuring motivation by making video meetings on a regular basis helps everyone to work by mastering the working process.
Regular meetings also increase internal interaction. It helps to minimize the problem of distraction as it provides work motivation as well as keeping everyone scheduling the day and week and focusing on the tasks.
It should be noted that regular meetings should not take too long. Your team, who spends a long time in meetings every day or every week, may have difficulty in organizing their own day. Spending more time than you need for short meetings, team meetings, discussions on important topics is tiring and time-consuming for your team.
Adopt a strategic approach to goals
Results are shaped by a set of actions. Effectively activating these actions with strategic approaches for you and your team, especially in remote working, brings you closer to the desired result and ensures work discipline. Otherwise, no action will yield positive results and will distract you from the path to your goals.
Goals and strategies are not the same things. Goals define where your organization wants to go, and strategies define how your organization will get there. Shape your actions with strategic approaches to the goals you set.
The strategy makes it easier for the remote team to work together. All members of the team can see the big picture more clearly and work more effectively for the goal they are a part of.
Care about employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction means quality work. The happier your team is to work with you, the more efficient and high-quality the work process will be. Their happiness makes them work with more love for their job, which adds more value to your business.
If you satisfy with your team, you can earn in the long run. Provide many things such as events, trainings, conferences, equipment supports, coaching sessions to ensure the continuity of your employees’ satisfaction. In this way, you create a perfect working environment with an excellent team.
In working conditions where it is not possible to gather everyone together, with online training, you can help your employees to improve themselves, not directly for the job. In addition, since remote work brings different needs for everyone, you can offer support that will make their lives easier.
Leverage the right technologies
With remote work, we see that many tasks, jobs and office environments are digitized. In the remote work process, using technology in many subjects such as meetings, training, documentation, organization and conference allows you to manage this process in the best way.
Today, there are systems and utilities where you can digitize all of your office work. As a comprehensive communication and training system, Vedubox meets corporate needs on the way to digitalization with different modules and packages. You can customize the integrated system with your own corporate identity, so you can help your employees feel the connection with the company while using the system.
Using technology to digitize various activities at the lowest cost contributes to your business in many ways.
Benefits of working remotely
To know why you work remotely is a part of the remote working guide.
Without being tied to an office environment, you can always continue to carry out your work in the comfort zone, away from stress and with higher motivation. With remote work, you can manage your time well, complete your work and spare time for your employees and yourself.
Below, take a look at the benefits of remote working that we’ve seen the most.
Increased motivation and productivity
With the remote working system, your employees can spare more time for themselves. This allows them to enjoy their work more. Since they do not have to go to the office, they can use their time more efficiently. When processes are managed correctly, the productivity level of company employees also increases.
Allowing your team to work from home with flexible working hours allows them to balance their work and personal lives, leading them to be better, more productive and motivated.
Better job in less time
Business processes can be easily managed with cloud-based systems. Cloud-based systems also play a big role in accelerating the time each task takes. Controlling the workflow from a single platform saves you and your employees time.
In systems where all documents and information are gathered under a single roof, your employees can easily access everything they need. They can easily communicate with each other and even instantly organize their teamwork as needed.
Lower costs
You may want all your employees to be centrally located in a single office. You may prefer to meet face to face at any time and follow along with close contact. But they all come with many costs, such as office space, office supplies and equipment.
Having a staff that works from home reduces almost all costs and saves you a lot of money. Moreover, a Global Workplace Analytics study states that 36% of employees would prefer to work from home instead of a pay increase, and a survey of 1500 technologists found that 37% of respondents would accept a 10% pay cut if they could work from home.
Decrease in quitting
The trust you give to your employees in getting the job done enables them to work with more confidence and motivation. People who can work in their own comfortable space feel freer. This is very important especially at a time when the Y generation is so active in business life. Working processes are changing definitions and methods for the younger generation. Keeping up with this transformation helps you add and retain qualified employees to your team.
When your employees are happy, they also reduce the likelihood of quitting. Being able to work remotely is also an excellent advantage for managers and bosses, as not losing employees is a key to success.
Remote Working Guide: Efficient Remote Working in 6 Questions
Which teams should collaborate in remote work?
Inter-team communication has critical importance as well as the importance of intra-team communication within a business. These teams need to work cooperatively in order to manage processes and work more efficiently. For this reason, take care to determine which of the remote teams should be in more communication and to establish a system that will provide this communication.
Nowadays, it is very easy to access technology that enables businesses to communicate effectively with each other through digital channels. You can also communicate between teams with Vedubox, which provides easy communication and where teams can share their work with each other in the cloud.
Which online communication applications and software are needed for remote working?
When your team is working remotely, there are technologies that you must first have in order to ensure effective communication. The benefits of technology are great for many activities such as performing various business tasks, recording data, and video conferencing. It is possible to benefit from these technologies in matters such as calendar, online meeting, documentation, analysis and management. In this way, you can save time while performing activities using technology.
Technology also simplifies business communication. You can easily communicate with your suppliers, business partners and employees in a virtual environment. Cloud-based technologies, the use of databases and remote storage facilities ensure that business information and data are secure and accessible from anywhere.
Vedubox has all the applications, features and software you need in these concerns. You can run your business process professionally using Vedubox. With its cloud infrastructure, it does not require server – installation and technical personnel, thus minimizes the challenges of working remotely.
Does your team know the technologies you use?
Your team’s familiarity with the technologies you use plays a major role in increasing business productivity and efficiency. Using these technologies provides great convenience to your team and you in your activities such as onboarding training, employee training, video conferencing, online meeting.
With Vedubox, it is possible to run all these from one place. Thanks to its ease of use, you can benefit from the possibilities Vedubox offers you without any difficulty. As the Vedubox team will support you in every aspect, it facilitates the digital transformation of your business.
What are the essential items of a remote work plan?
You need to establish a communication chain from the top to the bottom of your business. In this way, you can work in a cooperative way.
Separating your working hours and the time you devote to your personal life allows you to work in a systematic way. You can work in a planned and disciplined way by providing work motivation to your team and yourself through regular meetings.
What can be done to make the team more efficient?
Among the things you need to do to make your team more productive and more efficient, it is most important that you regularly provide trainings, conferences, and webinars for the development of your employees. In this way, working with a fully interactive system ensures that your team has no difficulty in implementing their business plans.
We can say that choosing working models that will provide flexibility to your team is an effective factor in working more efficiently. By using the right technology, you can do more productive work in a short time.
Sometimes we work from home, sometimes from the office. What should we do?
We call working from both home and office a hybrid work model. As we often hear about the hybrid model in education, we have also started to hear it frequently in office work. In the hybrid model, which has become widespread, you need to separate your remote and office works after you first make your general business plan. So, making a remote work plan and office work plan allows you to create a regular working system for yourself. In this way, you can run your business both from home and from the office.
By working from home or office with cloud-based online platforms such as Vedubox, many activities such as ensuring the continuity of your business and recording your data, managing and controlling the business process, and providing trainings are possible from a single platform.
Contact us to start using Vedubox now and get more detailed information.