Tips For Managing Your New Remote Staff During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Tips For Managing Your New Remote Staff During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Remote work capabilities are extremely important for businesses that need their staff to work from home during a crisis like the current coronavirus pandemic. Do you how to manage your staff effectively when they’re working from home?

The coronavirus pandemic is building day by day and has not shown any signs of slowing down.

This global crisis has forced a majority of businesses to send employees home to practice social distancing. While remote work isn’t anything new, it’s a business model that has been adopted to this degree ever before.

Managers around the world are trying to figure out how to do their job when they’re not in the same building as their team members.

Do you know how to manage your team effectively?

Understand The Benefits of Remote Work

While remote work certainly complicates the task of management, it’s essential to understand the other benefits of remote work.

• Businesses can stay productive while keeping their staff members safe. Thanks to remote access capabilities, companies don’t have to choose between continuity and public health for the extent of the coronavirus pandemic.
• Remote workers don’t have to spend time commuting to and from work each day, the extent of which can often be a deal-breaker for potential hires when considering a job.
• Employers don’t have to invest in the space or resources for their entire staff – that means saving money on office space, hardware, break room amenities and more.
• Businesses get access to a skillset and personnel base far outside of what you could call the “commute radius”; whether it’s 30 minutes from the office or two hours, at a certain point you wouldn’t be able to hire someone you’d like to because they live too far away for it to be feasible.

7 Tips For Managing Your Remote Staff

1. Make Sure They Can Do Their Work. Remote workers need to be able to do their work, and easily. If they’re fighting against unintuitive software, a bad connection, or anything else tech-related, their standard workday won’t be all that productive. It won’t be long before their employer would simply instead hire a local, in-office worker. That’s why, so long as the remote worker has a strong Internet connection, the rest of the work is on the IT provider to deliver a responsive and user-friendly cloud platform with which the worker can access their business data.
2. Decide What Jobs And Tasks Can Take Place Outside Of The Office. Most jobs can be done from home, but you should take a moment to consider what jobs specifically can be managed while outside of the office and write them down.
3. Confirm Technology Resources Within Employees Homes. Your best bet is to have a conversation with each employee who will be working from home and have them send information regarding their computers, smartphones, and internet connection over to you.
4. Updates Technology Where Necessary. If you need to upgrade any devices and/or internet packages, start doing so as soon as possible. For internet connections, you may also choose to provide corporate-owned smartphones with data packages that can be tethered to computers.
5. Educate Your Employees On Remote Cybersecurity: Now more than ever, your employees need to know how to spot social engineering scams:
   1. Phishing: Phishing (and all social engineering techniques) is about the element of surprise. It’s a method in which cybercriminals send fraudulent emails that appear to be from reputable sources to get recipients to reveal sensitive information and execute significant financial transfers.
      
   2. Business Email Compromise: Business Email Compromise is a social engineering technique used by cybercriminals in which they pose as a business or member of a company to execute fraudulent payments. In layman’s terms, a cybercriminal will write an email pretending to be from, for example, your credit union, and request that a payment be processed. Instead of a legitimate source, the payment will go to them.
      
6. Make Sure A Help Desk Support Team Is Available. A help desk support team should be available to your employees in the event of technology issues, questions or concerns. Typically, most of their work will be done remotely – troubleshooting issues and answering questions.
7. Don’t Forget To Socialize. Switching from a full office to their quiet house can be difficult for workers – don’t forget to schedule time for business and casual communication. Your employees should still communicate regularly with one another and with you. Decide on a communication protocol, such as daily check-ins via email with one group video call each week.

Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:

Pandemic Technology Planning

Millions of Workers Overcome COVID-19 with Microsoft Teams, Slack

Remote Work: Keeping Your Staff Healthy And Productive During The Coronavirus Pandemic