Greg is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of CareerGig, host of the Agile World podcast and author of The Agile Workforce.
Many workforce experts refer to a “hybrid workforce” as part of our future. This is made up of several types of workers, including independent consultants, full-time employees and it also incorporates both on-site and remote workers.
While many employers had been reluctant to encourage more telecommuting because of goals of achieving greater productivity and retention, the requirements of a pandemic like the coronavirus outbreak have forced companies to rethink their approach.
It’s not just recent events that have caused increased consideration of telecommuting. Outside of this immediate shift, there has been a 159% increase in the remote workforce between 2005 and 2017, and this is only going to continue to grow.
So how can employers maintain a great employee experience with a shift to a more remote workforce? Let’s explore a few.
Set clear guidelines and check in often.
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Ever had a manager or supervisor who felt like they were always standing over your shoulder? Well, that feeling can still exist even in a virtual work environment. In fact, the anxiety of managers to ensure their employees or contractors are doing the right things — or anything at all — can increase when those individuals are less visible.
This is where clear expectations, guidelines and deliverable due dates always help, whether your workforce is in-house, remote or a combination of both. If your guidelines are clear, and there are quantifiable measures of success, then it’s time to trust your employees to do great work. You will be able to clearly see where certain employees are struggling as long as you choose the right type of metrics, and this will keep you from having to check in so often.
Although I recommend checking in often, that doesn’t mean you should take a position of distrust with your employees. You need to hire and retain employees who you believe have the ability and desire to do great work, and then let them do it. Frequent check-ins are less about lack of trust than they are about the sometimes perceived notion that coworkers are less accessible when they aren’t in the same physical location. And after all, if you don’t trust your employees enough to work out of eyesight, perhaps there’s a bigger problem than challenges with remote work.
Ensure employees have the right tools needed to do great work.
It’s always surprising that even in such a technology-dependent world of work that we live in, companies don’t more clearly see the relationship between having the right device and software and a great employee experience.
While this is true for on-site workers as well, the challenges this poses can be exacerbated when an employee works remotely and isn’t able to get hands-on technical support. A 2018 report by Igloo shows that 41% of employees (off-site and on-site) are using non-approved applications at work because they are both more comfortable with them and they increase productivity. Remote work exacerbates this need because it can often be more difficult to get technical support in a remote setting.
This means that your IT team needs to see its role in creating a better employee experience, and HR needs to embrace that fact as well. It’s time for your technology and HR teams to work more closely together and have a better understanding of how things like access, technology downtime and ease of use can increase productivity and create more engaged employees.
Understand that remote work isn’t one-size-fits-all.
While remote work may have been 100% at the height of the Covid-19 global pandemic, this will not always be the case. There are, however, many types of approaches to telecommuting. This can include partially remote work, increased flexibility for telecommuting and even fully remote positions.
Fully remote work, while not possible with many types of jobs, does exist in a number of industries. Expect this to become more and more accepted as time goes on.
Employers should create flexible programs where possible and take a common-sense approach into account. Remote work can create a greater amount of freedom, help attract a more diverse set of applicants and even result in greater productivity. This flexibility helps create a greater experience for those full-time employees and contractors.
Regardless of companies’ post-Covid strategies, remote work is here to stay, and while many organizations are embracing it because of short-term necessities, it can have long-term benefits if done well. Improving the experience of telecommuting can allow a more diverse workforce to be productive, engaged employees. This helps with attracting and retaining the best workforce possible and enables a better employee experience for all.
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Author: Greg Kihlstrom, Forbes Councils Member