COVID-19 has forced all companies to embrace the remote working model. However, many companies are struggling with keeping their remote employees engaged and motivated in order to maintain their efficiency and output.
As your company continues to implement full-time remote work policies due to COVID-19, here are some smart ways to keep your employees engaged in their jobs.
1. Let employees control their schedules
Once you’ve taken the leap of letting people work remotely, it’s not that big a step to allow them to set their own schedules. For instance, if your employees wish to work from 6 PM to 2 AM, it shouldn’t be much of a problem unless you have to meet certain deadlines or attend teleconferences.
You can’t maximize your workers’ comfort from teleworking if you still require them to clock in daily at exactly 8 AM.
2. Work on constructing an active employee community
The major problem when it comes to how to keep remote employees engaged is addressing the sense of isolation one might have from the larger group. Your management efforts should be focused towards bringing people together and fostering employee happiness.
One way to do this is to make sure team members have a chance to talk together in various online channels, whether through email, messaging systems, web conferencing tools, or a peer-to-peer recognition platform. Give your remote employees the tools they need to communicate with their colleagues and managers easily.
3. Facilitate online company-wide meetings
Corporate culture is crucial to the identity of your brand, and it can be affected when team members are physically separated. As your company grows, it gets tougher to keep everybody aligned to the vision while maintaining your culture.
That’s why Cambridge Heating and Cooling, a renowned company that offers air conditioner repair in Toronto, believes in organizing regular quarterly meetings of the entire organization for better employee retention and overall productivity.
It’s also imperative to support occasional fun virtual hangouts to ensure all employees feel involved and a part of the company’s culture. Your virtual hangouts can include open Q&A sessions, leadership office hours, team meet and greets, and voluntary one-to-one coffee chats.
4. Invest in professional development
Offering professional training and development to your remote workers is a utilitarian way to identify the value of their contributions, and to keep them engaged and passionate about working for you. Whether through individual mentorships, remote webinars, or tuition assistance for in-depth online learning, you can keep your teleworking staff on a solid path to career progression.
Did you know 40% of employees who receive poor training leave their jobs within the first year? Avoid high turnover from remote and non-remote employees by offering valuable professional development and online training programs.
5. Offer recognition and rewards
When your employees go the extra mile, it’s important to recognize them. With advanced recognition tools, employees can easily recognize others from anywhere. There’s no excuse to not recognize the great work of your remote staff. Employee recognition and rewards take on a great sense of importance when workers are physically distant, as it shows workers their extra effort really makes a difference.
In fact, recognition has the biggest influence on employee engagement. As per an in-house survey conducted by a leading air conditioner repair company in Toronto, the lack of recognition is the biggest reason their employees say they would consider leaving their jobs.