The increase of remote work might be unavoidable, and you must want to take advantage. Allowing remote work can advantage not only your employees, but you as an organization too. But then, it is not that simple as it may sound.

Tips to Manage Your remote workers for the Best Productivity 

Well, you could be excited to take on your first remote team members, perhaps, an existing employee is going remote or you got hired to manage a completely distributed team– but are you familiar with the challenges that accompany it? You know, it is not easy Managing remote workers if you do not know what to do and how to do it.

The Challenges of Managing Remote Employees

Though there are great potential benefits of permitting remote work on your team, there’s an issue that the most of the founders and managers still are not really familiar with. These are the challenges of managing remote employees. 

Remote work is quite different from the typical work structure in a couple of big ways. And while there are big benefits, there are also fresh and distinct challenges with both  recruiting and managing remote employees  that managers never witness coming. Moreover, well, without any prior experience working remote, it could be tough anticipating the challenges your remote employees may face. 

Loneliness and isolation

Without a doubt, it is one of main challenges all remote workers face.  It can get quite easy to get in the zone and skip that life exists outside work. But a healthy balance of working from tea shops and doing different outdoor exercise can keep that at a distance.

Moreover, regular human interaction can be easy to take for granted, until you don’t have an office packed with people to be around every day.  Socializing and being around others is the main ingredient to how humans evolved. After all, you are social creatures used to living and working in communities or even tribes.

Remember, isolation and loneliness in humans are just as harmful. Prolonged isolation can in extreme cases end up in things like  anxiety and depression. As their manager or team head , you need to be aware of this. Do what you can actually do to engage them socially with the rest of the team whenever likely. Also, motivate them to get out of the house, no matter going to a coffee shop or co-working space to work, taking a simple walk with their family, exercising outside, or even getting out to go to events or meetups in their region  can help.

Communication problems due to a lack of non-verbal cues

Communication is a clear challenge with managing remote employees, but some of these communication-related challenges are not really so obvious. Yes, you lose some of those hall conversations, and quick in-office chats, but it gets deeper than that.

Well, when you do not really have enough face-to-face communication, it can turn out to be difficult to sense intent in messages between you and your team members. It is quite tough to understand a message when it is only text, or you don’t really know them as well as other, in-office staff members.

Unfortunately, your minds tend to do the opposite because of thousands upon thousands of years of original programming that triggers you to assume something is a threat by default for the sake of survival. Such natural defense mechanisms are unfortunately unhelpful and counterproductive in the modern-day workplace.

Moreover, in the absence of any of the non-verbal clues that come from what you see and hear, communication problems can easily arise. So, being the head or the manager, you need to ensure that the communication is smooth and there are not any gaps. 

Feeling of left out 

The feeling of getting left out– of company celebrations, consideration for any rise or promotion, and your opinion in general– is more common amidst the remote employees than that of the ones on-site.  So, you need to ensure that such a thought is not getting emerged in anyone. You must engage with employees  on this part or you may end up marring their thought processes.

Conclusion 

To sum up, it is your responsibility to know what to do and how to do to ensure that there is productivity in the remote working. You must keep in mind the discussed things regarding managing your remote workers for the best experiences.