Earlier this year, professional networking and career development platform LinkedIn, released figures that the number of remote jobs advertised on the platform has increased four times since June 2020. Their research indicated remote job postings resulted in a 20% increase in the geographical diverse applications. For businesses to adapt to this change and build successful remote-working strategies, they’ll need to is by re-imagining how they hire and retain skilled workers,
When it comes to hiring top talent, companies who are open to adopting long-term remote work plans will have greater access to candidates around the globe. The remote work push will also lead to a continuation of virtual recruiting, and there is a distinct opportunity to adopt a hybrid virtual model that best fits your company. Forming a new shared culture that provides stability, social cohesion, identity, and belonging whether your employees are on-site or remote, is the real challenge.
Avoiding potential pitfalls of remote working requires thinking carefully about leadership and management in a hybrid virtual world. Interactions between leaders and teams provide the ideal situation to navigate this into the next normal. The more geographically dispersed a team is, the greater the need to define and embrace new behaviors for engagement, productivity and trust-building within teams.
In a hybrid or remote work arrangement, some employees will be working in the office while others will be working from home. Due to unconscious bias, team members who are physically onsite are likely to get more preferential treatment. One way to counteract this is by arranging meetings to involve workers both in the office and offsite. To level the playing field, have everyone log into the meeting individually, rather than grouping onsite employees into a conference room.
Real-time communication is more of a challenge when people aren’t physically in one location. Although the most efficient solution in many situations, constant real-time communication online is a huge burden on productivity. It prevents uninterrupted work time necessary for people to feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction. An added benefit is that it will encourage planning and more thoughtful work.
When you do have real-time meetings—whether it’s one on one or in a group—it’s more important than ever to connect and prioritise meaningful interactions. When physically together, team members informally interacting before a meeting helps make work more fun and rewarding. With back-to-back video calls a reality for many remote workers, agendas are often limited to transactional communication. Make time at the start of a meeting to engage in more personalised conversations.
When setting up expectations around new ways of working, it’s vital to seek input from all team members to increase buy-in and engagement. Create space for the team members to set additional operational guidelines to improve their day-to-day experience. Each person will have a different set of circumstances at home, and flexible communication will support this. Because buy-in will be critical to success, resist the urge to impose entirely one-size-fits-all policies.
If you tell your remote employees your priorities are to ensure they’re not at risk of burnout, be mindful about communications out of office hours, as it sends a mixed message. Some might assume this means that you really want them to keep switched on and accessible at all hours.
Equally important is walking the talk when it comes to taking leave — without modeling behaviors, companies become at-risk to heading down the road of burnout.
People are undoubtedly the heartbeat of almost any organisation, so it’s vital that remote workers are provided with empowering tools to feel connected, supported, and able to bring their best selves to work. If organisations do not consider employee wellbeing, even the most highly recruited candidate or star performer can decide to leave at any time. To make remote work really meaningful, you can’t underestimate the power of virtually staying connected.
In the context of an abrupt shift to remote work, which the recent pandemic has ultimately triggered, it’s critical for managers to acknowledge stress, and empathize with people’s personal challenges. Effective leaders are those who are able to both acknowledge the stress and anxiety that employees may be feeling, but also provide reassurance of their confidence in their teams. With this level of support, employees are more likely to respond to the challenge with a renewed sense of purpose and focus.
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28 Mar 2024