Successful Supervising: Top 4 Tips for Managing Employees Who Work From Home

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers like you are facing changes and challenges they weren’t prepared for. Many companies are now managing employees who work remotely since they can no longer gather at the office. This is an immense challenge for companies who have never managed remote employees before.

Is this starting to sound familiar? Are you struggling to figure out effective management techniques for managing remote employees? If so, we’re here to help.

Working from home has become a new normal for many around the world. Knowing how to take care of your remote workers is important as it not only ensure that their productivity remains top notch but also their mental wellbeing.

Surely you’ve noticed that the management techniques you’re used to are no longer applicable. That’s why we’ve made a list of effective management techniques specifically created for managing remote employees.

Study this list and use these techniques when managing remote workers.

1. Give Quantifiable Instructions

You can’t see what remote workers are doing. But you can see the results. So, make sure your instructions/assignments to your employees are based on measurable results.

Give them a certain number of specific tasks to be completed in a set amount of time. This way you don’t need to monitor how hard or fast they’re working. You simply have to check and see if the work gets done.

2. Meet Online Daily

You should also have a set time every day where you can see your employees face-to-face. If you and your workers never see each other, it’s easy for them to feel disconnected, like they’re no longer part of a team. This is bad for their morale and their motivation/productivity.

Stay connected by requiring a mandatory daily meeting with your employees. You can also break this up into separate departments. That is, you hold a meeting with your department heads, then they hold a meeting with their departments.

3. Stay Glued to Your Phone

Likewise, make sure communication lines are as open as your office door was. Always be ready and available to respond to anything your employees bring to you. Even if you are momentarily unavailable when an employee contacts you, message them immediately and let them know you’ll respond in a few minutes.

This reassures them that you’re still right there with them, even though you are physically distant.

4. Remember One-on-One Coaching

It’s also easy for you to start feeling disconnected from your team. Since you never see them in person, it’s easier to forget that they are, in fact, persons.

Personal connections, like small talk around the coffee machine, no longer exist. So, you must make them exist. Make sure you check in on each and every employee regularly.

You can schedule a few one-on-one check-ins per day, just so you know where they’re at emotionally. You can also give one-on-one coaching and/or recognition for good work this way.

Managing Employees Remotely

If you’ve had to restructure your business to allow for social distancing, don’t worry. Managing employees remotely does get easier once you get used to it.

Remember these tips and use them to effectively manage your remote workers. If you know someone else who could also benefit from these tips, please share this page.

Now check our blog for the latest small business tips and articles.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.