The outbreak has discovered the advantages of working from home and how firms may bloom in a virtual environment. Work from home certainly provides key professional and personal life balancing opportunities for employees. Employees can focus more effectively on plans and use their commute time to be more productive. Businesses also benefit as they have to spend less on office rent and maintenance.
In a survey, Karrie Ilagan, Cisco Philippines managing director found that people are less interested in choosing how they work. This data reveals that 66% of employees want to travel less and 83% desire to include more fitness into their daily routine.
According to a March JLL poll of 3,300 employees, respondents desire to work from home 1.5 days each week. Only 37% of the employees presently feel extra creative at home than in the office, down from 48% previous year. While 88 percent of respondents still wish to pick their working hours, one-third do not want to stay at home at all.
COVID-19’s new trend of stay-at-home directives is also posing a challenge for HR managers such as managing work from home, how HR can support remote employees and more.
Regardless of the factors that lead to businesses considering a remote workers policy, an implementation might be difficult. Thus, firms must explore how to manage a remote workforce strategically.
Strategies that the HR department can use to manage remote work
Best practices can aid you through the process of evaluating your current WFH policy or anticipating having remote staff. This article offers information, tools, and strategies to support HR managers.
1. Develop infrastructure enabling human capital management.
HR must adapt and transform to align with the company, and an HCM (Human Capital Management) cloud solution is a better alternative for this. Human Capital Management is a set of software that companies employ to handle their internal HR functions.
HR must choose the best cloud-based HRMS to manage the complete employee lifecycle in order to be representational of change.
HR software can aid cross-company teamwork by letting managers and employees in offices effortlessly exchange resources with remote workers.
Companies can improve their ability to manage and serve a remote staff by taking a variety of initiatives from an HR perspective. Employees can have self-service access to a range of applications using cloud-based HR software, for instance.
- Single HR, payroll & assistances platform
- Flexible support
- Information and analytics management
2. Providing the Right Tools
Even if the person works remotely, providing them with the necessary tools to accomplish the task is crucial. Consider what you would offer if they worked in the office instead of home. Consider how you might offer remote staff comparable tools.
Coordinating with remote workers can be challenging, communication tools can help in improving the coordination. Offering a stipend to allow employees to purchase what they want is also a preferable option. There should be a limit on spending to save employees from extravagance.
3. Performance Matters
Companies are frequently hesitant to allow employees to work remotely because they are concerned about performance concerns. HR department must set up metrics to evaluate the performance of remote workers. They should also plan the corrective action, which needs to be taken in case the performance of remote workers fails to meet the expectation.
However, ensuring that managers follow through when there are performance concerns is vital. It’s easy to supervise performance matters when you don’t have to see your staff every day.
4. Establish a Schedule
HR should make flexibility and regulation over work hours to eliminate any confusion. Work hours must be clearly defined for employees. It is ideal to inform the workforce to stay available for clients or colleagues during specific hours.
It is also critical that you make it obvious to employees what level of flexibility they have. The employees must proactively inform their managers if they fall ill, just as they would if they were at work.
5. Combatting Loneliness
Working from home can make employees feel lonely and alienated. Additionally the lockdowns can add more fuel to the fire.
Consider providing opportunities for remote employees to communicate with other remote or in-office employees, even if it is not part of a formal policy. Managers should organise informal meetings to destress their employees and improve the bonding.
6. Balance In-Office and Remote Teams
Many businesses are now handling a mixture of in-office and distant workforces. Treating everyone equitably, regardless of their job location, is one method to ensure that this works effectively.
For example, whether it comes to promotions or projects, decision-makers should not favor in-house employees. Therefore, remote workers are not the only major beneficiaries of mobility.
7. Upgrading Technology
Technologies that allow employees to participate and communicate can be helpful for monitoring distant employees.
Take into account equipment purchases including computers, cellphones, and tablets. Employees should test these gadgets before starting to work from home. Prior scrutiny of gadgets ensures they can access the internet and any job-specific internal networks while away from the worksite.
8. Revamping Organisational Culture
When your workforce is spread, establish a detailed plan for developing culture, sharing knowledge, and transmitting core values.
Tools along with an employee handbook and regular updates from managers can aid in sharing that information. Tactics such as organizing regular meetings, company-wide debates, and seminars can help with orienting your employees with your organisation’s culture.
9. Offer Training Material
Working from home may require the employees to use certain tools which are new for them, for instance Zoom for conducting presentations and meetings.
The management should offer training related to such tools, so that the employees are not overwhelmed while working. Offering training can also minimise the errors which may occur due to experimenting with new tools.
10. Security
Security is a huge challenge for firms that work with remote staff. When security issues are highlighted, the emphasis is often on online security.
While creating a security policy, considerall confidentiality aspects and create a stringent monitoring policy so that sensitive data remains safe.
Our take
To make a long story short, remote work is here to stay for a long time. It is vital to adopt the aforesaid practices to manage a remote workforce ensuring long term success of the business.
If your company is looking for competent and efficient employees that are comfortable working in a WFH environment, consider partnering with a MANILA RECRUITMENT agency in the Philippines to help you increase your staff.
