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Published on May 23
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And how you can help your remote employees overcome them
Working from home may seem like a dream come true, but there are some surprising drawbacks that you will need to address to help your remote employees succeed. With assistance and support, your work from home associates can help your company continue to grow and succeed.
Here are five of the top challenges faced by remote employees and how you can develop policies and procedures to help combat them.
Loneliness
One of the go to methods for ensuring employee happiness long term is to foster a sense of camaraderie amongst your associates. Being isolated from the rest of the team may leave some work at home employees with a sense of loneliness. Lack of face-to-face interaction and hours spent alone in a home office can only increase your employee’s sense of isolation.
An easy way to help your remote employees stave off loneliness is to implement regular team video calls. Build a schedule, weekly or daily, that fits your team’s needs. Also, encourage employees to call remote employees when they have more complex questions, rather than all communication occurring via email. Consider implementing a team chat application into your company’s repertoire to facilitate better communication and help employees feel more connected.
If you have a lot of remote employees, you may consider hiring creating hiring hubs. Hiring within fixed geographies or specific metro areas allows your remote employees to have face-to-face collaboration and interaction when necessary. Another bonus? You can offer get-togethers, group volunteer days, and holiday parties for employees within each hub.
Short Stints on the Job
Remote employees often cite a lack of value as their reason for shorter lengths of time on the job compared to their in-house counterparts. Ensuring that you show your work from home employees that they are contributing members of your team will help you retain your top talent.
Starting with a strong onboarding process, you can help your remote employees prepare for success by introducing them to the company culture and the people they’ll be working with. Remote workers often struggle with new hire downtime, so plan on having at least three projects ready for them to begin working on immediately. Just make sure that you also have contacts and support people in place to help keep your new employee from feeling overwhelmed.
One of the easiest ways to show appreciation to your remote associates is to offer them access to the same types of professional development opportunities and promotions as your in-house employees. An employee newsletter with information about upcoming trainings and job openings will ensure that all of your employees stay up to date on opportunities.
Communication Difficulties
Since stopping by a coworker’s desk for a quick discussion or dropping into HR to discuss benefits isn’t really an option when an employee works from home, creating a culture that values and truly communicates well is ridiculously important. In fact, when working with remote employees, effective communication is the key to your business’ success.
Implementing video conferencing options, like Skype or GoToMeeting, offers your employees the opportunity to communicate “face-to-face”. While not suitable for every meeting or discussion, weekly team video conferences can help boost communication and create a better sense of teamwork. Additionally, business messaging applications, like Slack or Microsoft Teams, and voice chat applications, like Discord, can help keep your team connected and communicating effectively throughout the day.
Domestic Distractions
Whether its dirty dishes or a mountain of laundry, domestic distractions can be a serious drain on productivity for your remote employees. Effective policies, realistic expectations, and communication can help employees successfully avoid becoming distracted while working.
Your employee handbook and communications prior to hiring or offering an employee the opportunity to work from home should include the requirement for a dedicated work space during business hours. Whether that space is a home office or just a quiet corner of a room that no one else is allowed in during work hours, it is important that remote employees have a work location that is separate from their domestic life.
Another consideration is the question of when work will be performed. If you expect that your remote employees will work during your regular set office hours, be sure to convey that in your employment offer or handbook. Having set hours for work can help your employees avoid domestic distractions while ensuring greater production.
Switching Off from Work
On the flip side, many remote employees report finding difficult switching off from work at the end of the day. Whether answering emails late at night or staying at the desk “just a little longer” to finish a project, traditional boundaries between work and home are blurred when your employees are working in their home.
Encouraging your employees to stick to the traditional hours set in your handbook will offer approval for remote employees to shut off at a set time, as does requiring a dedicated work area. If you allow your work at home associates to set their own hours, ask them to email their hours of availability to the rest of the staff, so that the team is less likely to disturb one another outside of work hours. If you routinely see emails or phone calls from an employee outside of their set hours, offer them a gentle reminder that the company encourages them to have a quality work-life balance that begins with knowing when to disengage from work. Set positive examples for staff by limiting the number of afterhours emails and calls from you or your management team.
Sheakley can help you better manage your remote workers
Being mindful of and meeting the unique demands of your remote workforce may seem daunting on the surface. Sheakley’s Human Resources expertise can assist in the evaluation of your existing employment practices and help you develop policies and procedures to create a more remote-friendly workplace.
Learn more about Sheakley’s HR team and contact us for your free consultation today. Stay up-to-date on all things Sheakley by subscribing to our blog and following us on social media. Join in the discussion by commenting below.
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