A remote work setup can provide Vancouver businesses like yours with plenty of awesome benefits. It can lower your utility and rental expenses, make your company more resilient to sudden disruptions, and improve your employees' work-life balance, to name just a few.
But to reap these benefits, your business will have to do more than just implement a remote work arrangement. You also have to leverage the right technologies and your team must possess the following skills:
Productivity management
Remote workers don't have a coworker or supervisor who will glance over their shoulders to keep track of their progress. For this reason, they must be able to manage their own productivity by planning and organizing their daily activities. They must also be able to break down tasks into manageable chunks and create work schedules that they can stick to.
To help them improve their productivity and manage their time better, employees can create a to-do list of everything they need to accomplish in a day, week, or month. This list will help employees visually lay out their activities, making it easy to track deadlines, adjust job priorities, and monitor task progress.
Alternatively, remote workers can take advantage of productivity and time management apps like Trello, Monday.com, Microsoft To Do, and Asana. These apps enable team members to share resources and track their colleagues' progress on tasks, allowing them to easily collaborate on projects regardless of their distance from one another.
Adaptability
Your employees must be able to quickly adjust to the differences between remote work arrangements and traditional office setups. They should be able to collaborate with coworkers over the internet and master the tools that enable collaboration. Your employees must also be able to follow new policies, especially those that were created to safeguard your company data and maximize operational efficiency.
Your employees must be able to quickly adjust to the differences between remote work arrangements and traditional office setups.
Communication
Smooth collaboration is impossible without proper communication. For this reason, your employees must be capable of effectively understanding and sharing information over platforms that are commonly used for/in remote work. These include SMS, email, chat, voice calls, and video conferences.
Remote workers should also be conscious of their spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This is especially crucial if they have coworkers who are foreigners who might misunderstand grammatically incorrect statements.
Collaboration
Even though remote workers work alone at home, they must keep in mind that they are still part of a team. Unfortunately, working with people who are far away from you can be very challenging. Because of this, remote workers must have an open mind, a drive to collaborate, and empathy for their coworkers.
Good collaboration skills also entail being able to take full advantage of the technologies that bring the team together. These include communication and conference tools like Teams, project management software like Basecamp and Planner, and cloud collaboration services like Google Drive and SharePoint.
Concentration
Most traditional offices are designed to be conducive to focusing on tasks, so employees who work off site may be vulnerable to distractions. At home, they may have to attend to their loved ones' needs or go on errands in the middle of their shift. In coffee shops and coworking spaces, they may have to deal with disruptive background noise.
Remote workers must be able to tune out distractions and concentrate on the tasks ahead of them. If their surroundings are too noisy to ignore, they can also put on noise-canceling earphones and play music that helps them focus better. Alternatively, remote workers can use noise-canceling apps like Krisp while they do their tasks.
Technical know-how
The hardware and software that remote workers use can malfunction unexpectedly. Remote workers must, therefore, possess sufficient technical knowledge to troubleshoot common issues, such as jammed printers or suboptimal internet router performance. They must also know how to search for solutions to more complex problems.
The right skills and the right technologies go hand in hand in developing and implementing a successful remote work setup. As you help your staff develop their skills, our IT experts at Quicktech can manage your company's technology for you. With our knowledge, experience, and tools, we will ensure that your IT systems are in their top condition at all times.
Discover the many productivity benefits of outsourcing your IT processes to us when you download this free eBook today.