With the advancement of technology, workplaces have been undergoing a major transformation. Conference call transcription services play a key role in facilitating this transformation.
The infrastructure and the expenses associated with maintaining elaborate physical workplaces have led to remote workplaces. With a team of remote employees, geographical locations have ceased to be barriers for businesses.
The Rising Popularity of the Work-from-home Arrangement
Research by Global Workplace Analytics states that 3.2% of the world’s workforce – amounting to more than 4.3 million employees – works from home. A 2018 study by SkipTheDrive says that remote work has increased by a massive 140% since 2005. That’s 10 times more than the growth rate of the remaining workforce. Remote working is therefore here to stay.
Why Remote Work Here to Stay
And it’s only set to keep growing not just because of the resource savings they enable, but also because employees like to work from home. It has been seen that employees working from home deliver greater performance since they put in more working hours. Working remotely relieves them of workplace stress, which in turn helps them work more. If your organization hasn’t already employed remote workers, you’d probably be getting there soon. Companies having flexible employers that allow such arrangements can also increase their staff retention rate.
But remote workers also need to be managed efficiently. Workplaces are all about productivity – making the environment conducive for employees to give their best. How do you ensure that? Let’s look at some tips or measures that could help with this.
How to Take on the Challenge of Managing Remote Workers?
- The first thing you need to remember is keeping in touch. With your local team, you are always within physically accessible range. You need your remote team to feel that way as well. So you need to ensure you maintain a great deal of engagement with them. You need to communicate regularly with them through multiple channels as well as through face-to-face communication so that they feel a valued part of the main team and organization.
- Video-based communication is essential. That’s because you actually look at the employees and talk. That’s a vital aspect of feeling connected. That feeling makes them feel valued, appreciated and accountable. All these factors play a key role in raising performance. Schedule video sessions and be quick to respond to the needs of your remote staff.
- It is important to ensure that your remote team is fully aware of what your expectations are of them. That will help them to do exactly what’s necessary for the well being of your organization or company. Again, continual communication enables those expectations to be explained clearly time and again. Focus on the goals you’ve set. The end result is what matters. And if your remote team is fulfilling those goals, you should be satisfied and not be too worried about how they go about doing it.
- One of the biggest concerns managers have with a remote workforce, particularly those working from home, is the trust factor. This can be addressed by setting up reporting guidelines or measures which your work-from-home employees must follow, such as fixing a time frame within which your emails must be responded to or instructing them to send daily work reports.
- Remote employees need the right tools to get the job done, be it submitting or downloading files, communicating with the top management, or receiving invitations for meetings. So make sure you have these infrastructural tools in place that are also reliable. It is also important to create clear processes for using these tools.
- Of course, no aspect of remote workplace management will work for your organization unless you have the right managers supervising the remote employees. According to Gallup research, managers make up for around 70% of employee engagement score variance. With engagement strongly influencing productivity, managers could make the difference between productivity and ambiguity. Ensuring engagement with remote workers is certainly a challenge.
Digital transcription services can make remote workplace management more efficient with accurate documentation of audio, video, web conference, and telephone recordings. Such documentation can serve as an important basis for future reference, decision-making, and training programs.
