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Author: Gabby Davis

Gabby Davis is the Lead Trainer for the US Division of the Customer Experience Team. She develops and implements processes and collaterals related to the client onboarding experience and guides clients across all tiers through the initial implementation of Engagedly as well as Mentoring Complete. She is passionate about delivering stellar client experiences and ensuring high adoption rates of the Engagedly product through engaging and impactful training and onboarding.

Tips for Managers to Stay Connected When Working Remotely

“We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain,” says Stephen Hawking. 

This connection has changed how we communicate, work, learn, and whatnot! In the pandemic era, most companies switched to remote working, and with the help of the internet, working from home has proved to be easier and more productive. 

Since there is no need to drive or spend time in vehicles, employees can save time drastically. Also, since they work from home, employees get more time to finish their household responsibilities and won’t feel distracted, which results in better productivity. Working from home has been shown to reduce stress, give more time for hobbies and interests, and enhance personal connections, among other things. 

Remote, flexible workers tend to be happier and more devoted. Without the interruptions and reduced office politics that come with an office job and coworkers, the management of relationships can improve in addition to one’s health and well-being.

Though working from home or remotely has numerous benefits, it also has disadvantages. For example, meeting or discussing a project in person with a coworker or team manager won’t be possible. And it is imperative to keep everyone on the same page. Though remote work has considerable flexibility, distractions tend to come along. 

Setting the right priorities and being on track is extremely important. Another crucial aspect is motivation. Individuals are different in how they think, talk, work, and live. The same is applicable in the case of encouragement as well. Some need extrinsic motivation, while others require only intrinsic motivation. Since extrinsic motivation has limitations when working from home, it is vital to find intrinsic motivation. 

Another crucial support required is with technology hiccups. It is possible to avoid this with a fast and stable internet connection. When working remotely, time management is paramount. Family members might find you available 24/7 and might not be aware of your task priorities. So it is crucial to set boundaries to balance work and life. 

Also Read: Remote Work Challenges and How to Overcome Them

If you are a team manager or an employer, managing employees efficiently can be a matter of concern. They should feel glad to power up their laptops and get working. We have some smart tips for you; try them out and see the changes they bring! 

How to Stay Connected When Working Remotely – Tips for Managers

I.  Regular Team Meetups

For better staffing services, it is essential to have continuous team interaction. Regular team meetups are unavoidable to build trust and bridge communication gaps. Trello, Asana, Teams, etc. are examples of software you can use to ensure all team members are on the same page. Having a detailed pre-set workflow is also essential. 

A weekly meeting will help employees communicate, share their concerns, and better understand each other. Healthy communication makes work easier as employees will be willing to support each other better. The divide-and-rule formula is not an option for maintaining team spirit.

II.  Virtual Socializing

Socializing virtually is essential for team building. It fosters relationships amongst your remote team members on a personal level. Creating these connections promote team harmony and can improve communication and boost output. To plan socializing virtually, you can arrange virtual workouts, lunches, events, event competitions, gift exchanges, group chats, and more. 

  • Virtual Lunches

In most cases, remote workers can go to lunch with their coworkers in person (when they live nearby). These are not normal circumstances. So, promote a virtual lunch with the team. It’s not exactly like having lunch with coworkers at a restaurant, but for some people, it’s still preferable to eating alone! Additionally, a virtual office lunch is an option. Set up a group conference and invite everyone to attend to see what unfolds!

  • Virtual Workouts

Virtual workouts are a fantastic option for team building. Signing up for wellness programs like online yoga sessions or HIIT lessons as a team will help you engage positively. It will also be oodles of fun. Remember that having fun at the workplace is essential to boost employee morale. As part of the virtual wellness program, you can organize challenges like water drinking, battle of the elements, clean desk, virtual fitness, and more. 

  • Coffee Chats

Like virtual lunches, coffee chats are also an excellent option to make employees feel connected and relaxed. Employees can take coffee breaks virtually and interact with their teammates just like actual office coffee breaks. It helps build meaningful professional relationships.

  • Group Chats

Group chat helps your team’s adaptability in several interconnected ways. It reduces the requirement for in-person meetings and saves time and energy. Thanks to group chat,  decisions can be made remotely, faster. 

Also Read: 8 Best Strategies To Improve Global Remote Employee Experience

III.  Maintain Open Communication

Remote workers, particularly those who work irregular hours or outside the headquarters’ time zone, can feel their team isn’t available when they are though the opposite is true. Even if it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to be accessible all the time, knowing that they can contact their coworkers and maintain communication online makes virtual workers feel more bonded. Responding to messages and emails whenever you see them helps employees build trust and connection.

IV.  Appreciation

Even when they are working remotely, your staff deserves to feel valued. Since you aren’t along with them in the workplace every day, you should find little ways to praise them for their hard work or treat them to lunch on their work anniversary or major wins as frequently as possible. Even a kind word can make a big difference. 

  • Is somebody’s birthday today?
    • Send a virtual gift card their way.
  • Did an employee go above and beyond on a task?
    • Plan a call with the team to acknowledge their efforts.

Find small ways to show your staff that you appreciate them.

Make sure your virtual door is constantly open as well. The last thing you want is your employees feeling like they can’t communicate with you, ask questions, or voice concerns because miscommunications between remote workers are typical. Let them know that you are accessible for one-on-one talks, and when an employee confides in you, listen to them and respond accordingly – and keep it confidential!

Pro Tips

Now that we have discussed how to stay connected, knowing how to communicate is equally important. Make sure to communicate clearly and clarify doubts. It is also important to let your team members know your schedules. When in doubt, elucidate and keep communication professional. 

Conclusion

Your team will be just as effective and productive working with remote workers as in the office. However, it can be challenging to describe and quantify what employee engagement means to the people in your team. Many people find it difficult to work remotely since multiple distractions, including TV, housework, roommates, and social media take their focus away. 

Asking your staff about their work day and level of passion is the best method to determine how engaged they are. Additionally, you may keep an eye on their work progress and address any issues you might have with their performance. It would be best if you also built trust through employee engagement programs. When an employee approaches you with a problem, listen to them empathetically and take necessary actions.

 

Want to know how Engagedly can help you stay connected with your remote team members? Book a live demo with us.

Request A Demo

This article is written by Sophia.

Tips for Managers

Sophia is a passionate writer who regularly contributes tips and tricks for wellbeing and lifestyle. Having experience in human resource management, she guides companies on staff services. She is a full-time writer with more than ten years of experience.

How to Collaborate Remotely

Remote collaboration refers to the process that helps people to communicate and stay in touch from anywhere in the world. This allows people to work from their comfort and businesses to find the best talent no matter where they live. Your team could also be in several cities, states, or maybe countries but remote communication is straightforward with remote tools such as actual hardware like laptops and an internet connection. More commonly used software includes collaborative document editors like Google Docs, and Microsoft 365, different managing applications, video conferencing apps, instant messengers, and email.

Importance of Remote Collaboration Post COVID-19

COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown restrictions resulted in the worldwide population engaging from home almost overnight. To confirm that productivity wasn’t affected, companies rushed to implement software that might help people still work together.

Collaboration is vital for any company. With the increasing move towards work from home, working in unprecedented situations isn’t compromised when making the foremost of the opposite benefits functioning from home can provide. Moreover, effective teamwork not only allows individuals to require responsibility for or their part of any project but also allows them to focus on that area.

how to collaborate remotely

Challenges with Remote Collaboration

  • No clear boundaries – Without clear boundaries and routines during the workday, people can end up answering emails all the time, and feel like they’re working around the clock. This makes them less productive and eventually leads to burnout.
  • Asynchronous communication
    1. Unfamiliarity — Async may not be familiar to many people who are used to real-time chat and engaging with colleagues and superiors.
    2. Change Management — Async requires more data gathering upfront with effort placed on the earliest request
    3. Speed — Since there is less direct interaction, there is less opportunity to measure and get real-time feedback
  • Decision-making struggles – When people can’t come together physically, it becomes a lot harder for brainstorming and debate ideas. Teams often rely on video conferencing tools like Zoom to stay connected, but these tools can complicate ideas. 
  • Culture breakdown – Creating a positive culture of trust isn’t easy- it takes a lot of effort to promote and maintain it, even in an office environment. When a team is physically isolated from one another, the struggle to maintain a strong culture becomes 10x greater. People can easily feel left out, undervalued, or ignored, which can lead them to psychological tests or take a step back from their team and work.

Challenges with Hybrid workforce

  • Misalignment between in-office and remote employees
  • Balance during meetings
  • Office space and rent
  • Overhead and labor costs
  • Management and collaboration
Also Read: How to Build and Sustain Company Culture in a Hybrid Work Environment?

6 Reasons Why Remote Teams Need Agile Project Management Tool

Agile project management tools focus on delivering maximum value against business priorities within the given time and budget, especially when the will to deliver outweighs the risk. The Agile methodology is used by project managers and clients in project management companies. This iterative system is also known to be a priority when the project management team works remotely. 

1. Effective Planning

Agile methodology helps in project planning by using the number of tasks in previous sprints to estimate the workload that a team can carry in future sprints. Also, Agile encourages effective planning by enabling the proper scheduling of tasks that helps the project manager to analyze and assign tasks that suits their strengths and abilities by undertaking how the team performed in previous sprints.

2. Teamwork and Collaboration

Project team members in Agile should relay information about progress and barriers. In the long run, they become familiar and share a common sense of identity, which positively affects the project. However, in Agile, tasks are shared after the sprint, i.e. the performance of one task depends on the performance of another. Therefore, teamwork among members is very important for the production of a large project.

3. Regular Meetings and Reports

Regular meetings and reports help to review progress and decode the way forward. These meetings are referred to as scrum meetings and sometimes it is also called standup. Scrum meetings help to trace progress and to track important data and metrics. Budgets, deadlines, and timelines need to be communicated at the scrum meeting to hold everyone along. Specific data displaying the activities of the various project management professionals and the way they contribute to the whole process is sometimes shared and analyzed at scrum meetings.

4. Flexibility

Agile project management tools are built on flexibility. The objective of a project in the initial stage and final stage often does not match. The freedom to make frequent changes is a plus for Agile. 

5. Risk Management

The agile method has a great risk management device, especially for remote teams. This device works in four important steps; risk identification, risk assessment, risk response, and risk review.

  • Risk identification – Project risk can be identified by any member of the team. However, project managers identify the risks usually. In many cases, the customer/business owner also discovers the risk. Additionally, scrum meetings force project team members to look inward and ask questions that can identify risks.
  • Risk assessment – Risk assessment is measured by examining the likelihood that the risk materializes and the damage it can cause. Most risk managers use risk management software and calculations to approach risk.
  • Risk response – Risk response is essentially the solution to risk. It involves using different methods to deal with the effects of risk on an ongoing project.
  • Risk review – Risk review involves the application of risk assessment and risk response. Risk review prevents the reappearance of risks and early detection of risks.

6. Milestones

Milestones track progress to complete a portion of work. Measuring progress using milestones encompasses a great deal of what Agile methodology is about and the information found from regular sprints enable the team to move forward and plan for future sprints.

Also Read: Goal Setting for Remote Employees: What Goes In

Remote Team Collaboration Tools

Remote communication and collaboration tools help businesses and companies work with internal and remote teams. These web-based tools have become increasingly popular among professionals who communicate and collaborate daily with internal and external teams.

1. G Suite

Google’s G Suite is a collection of communication and collaboration apps capable of taking your business to the next level. It’s the only service through which people streamline the way of communication and collaboration on important tasks and projects. 

  • Sending and receiving emails through Gmail
  • Working on a workspace like Docs, Sheets, and Slides
  • Save copies of important documents and files in the Drive and easily share the documents
  • Connecting, and arranging meetings with team members from different sources of mediums like laptops, computers, and mobiles   

2. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams helps to keep communication in internal and external meetings organized, easy to follow up on and improves the effectiveness of collaborative work.

  • Create a shared space for the team
  • Integrates with all Microsoft’s Suite products
  • Compatible with iOS and Android platforms
  • Encrypted communication with external and internal teams

3. Cloudways Team Feature

The Cloudways Team Feature helps to distribute workload among team members. With this feature, adding team members is as easy as adding their email addresses and granting permissions from the platform. 

  • You can easily add, update, and delete team members using the Cloudways Team feature
  • You can permit the team member(s) to access Billing, connect with the Support team, and give business access to the Cloudways Platform

4. Slack

Slack is a popular remote communication and messaging platform built for interdepartmental and cross-functional teams. Rather than browsing multiple threads of emails and finding out email clutter, Slack makes it easy to attach, share relevant files, and create groups in line with specific channels. 

  • Simple interface
  • Makes searching out groups easier
  • Compatible with Android and iOS platforms

5. Zoom

Zoom overcomes this obstacle by allowing meetings with a maximum of 1000 participants. At the basic level, team meetings can continue for 40 minutes. However, the number of visits is unlimited.

  • Integrate Zoom meetings into your Calendar
  • Creating a Waiting Room so that specific participants can join the meeting
  • Interactive backgrounds to hide clattered rooms

6. Hubstaff

Hubstaff helps identify gaps by monitoring and analyzing team activities like clocking, assigning team members to specific tasks, and assessing the general contribution of team members towards a particular task/project.

  • Receive project alerts and notifications
  • Monitoring team members to ensure team efficiency and productivity
  • Tracking billing for team members working on contracts, including freelancers and external teams

7. Trello

Trello is a very versatile and easy-to-use project management tool based on the Kanban system. It allows admins to create cards and follow a streamlined process that is customizable as per requirement.

  • Easily organize and manage tasks and projects
  • Customizable cards
  • Easy to include internal and external teams in project cards

Conclusion 

In 2020, the remote work revolution accelerated hugely. This paved the road for the work-from-home lifestyle. The irrefutable benefits that remote work provides for employees, employers, and customers mean that it’s not likely to be going anywhere soon. Businesses need to leverage their remote workforce potential by demonstrating best practices for remote working, equipping teams with the right tools, and fostering an open and honest environment among remote workers.

 

Want to know how Engagedly can help you in remote collaboration? Book a live demo with us.

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8 Best Strategies To Improve Global Remote Employee Experience

As you strive to employ workers from around the world to join your company, you must also put in the work to ensure their retention. As a business owner, you have competitors. Still, your workers see these businesses as alternatives, and the only reason they will remain at your organization is because of how you treat them. Employee experience refers to how employees perceive their journey in an organization. An employee with good experience working in an organization would have good testimonies whether they are remote, hybrid, or traditional workers. Giving your remote employees a good experience will determine whether they will remain at your organization or leave. In this article, you will learn eight strategies you can use to improve your remote employee experience.

1. Streamline your communication channel

Communication is essential for any organization to grow. Your remote employees are scattered worldwide and to keep them engaged, you have to have a reliable communication channel. Examine the chosen channel to see whether it suits your employees and ensure regular communication with them. You should also keep track of what is being said. Employees feel appreciated when their employers pay attention to what they say, so you must have a reliable communication channel. 

2. Have a recognized payment channel

Every employee contributing significantly to your business must also receive timely payment. Make sure you have a payment method that is accepted all around the world. It would help if you were particular about the payment method that works for your employees before using it to distribute their funds. Some payment channels are accepted internationally, but not all nations recognize them. Give your employees pay stubs so they have a record of how their money is disbursed so that you can also control the payroll process. 

3. Organize remote meetings 

You should make your employees feel like they are a part of the company by frequently organizing meetings. By organizing virtual meetings, all your employees could get to meet with each other and at least know their roles and responsibilities. During the meeting, brief your workers about developments in the organization and where you want them to come in. You could also ask for their suggestions. In doing this, you make them feel like they are a part of something great and not just a cast-away employee. 

4. Ensure your employees have all they need

Your staff should have everything they require to be productive. Even though they would have had specific tools and talents before being employed, your employees still need to acquire other tools to be successful. During virtual meetings, you might quiz your staff on what they currently have and what they need to improve productivity. Make a list of their requirements and figure out how to meet them. You might also provide them access to online tools to perform better at work.

5. Check-in on your employees

You don’t need to wait until things are dire before checking up on your remote workers. It is important as a manager to monitor how well your staff members are doing on the job. Check in with them frequently, inquire about their wellbeing, learn about their struggles, and discover how you can support them. You can guarantee your workers’ happiness and continued productivity by doing this. You want to make sure that the productivity of your remote workers stays high. If you don’t check in on them, you won’t be able to guarantee this.

Also Read: Tips To Create A Culture Of Frequent Employee Check-ins

6. Celebrate important milestones

Important milestones like anniversaries, birthdays, and reaching a target should be celebrated at work or virtually. On an employee’s birthday, you could plan a surprise virtual meeting to wish them a happy birthday and appreciate their contribution to your company. A lot of organizations often overlook this gesture. Celebrating significant achievements tells your employees that you care about their small wins, and it will encourage them to strive to do better. 

7. Use remote work tools

It would be easier to assign tasks and submit them if you used remote work technologies like Skype, Slack, or Microsoft Teams. You must set up a route via which your staff members may easily submit their work and get new assignments. Other remote working solutions could help you streamline your interactions with your remote staff, even if many firms prefer to use emails.

8. Encourage your employees to socialize 

You should establish a social media network where staff members can interact and plan online gatherings. Every weekend, you can plan events to promote bonding among your staff. After a challenging workweek, this might ease workplace tension. Your staff members’ self-awareness would also improve as a result. Ensuring that your employees have to time out is also important in shaping how they view you as a company. 

Conclusion

It is not impossible to manage a global remote team. Even though it seems quite challenging when you first consider doing it, technology has made it simpler. To successfully manage your remote business, you must come up with a plan for providing your staff with a positive working environment. Although numerous additional techniques guarantee that your remote employees enjoy their time working for your company, implementing the tactics mentioned above would help you provide the greatest working environment for your staff.

 

Want to know how Engagedly can help you improve the remote employee experience? Book a live demo with us.

Request A Demo

This article is written by Daisy Benson.

Daisy

Daisy is an industrial and organizational psychologist who researches to identify solutions to problems that improve the well-being and performance of organizations and their employees. Daisy is also a freelance writer and often writes articles for credible blogs.

7 Tips to Create a Successful Work From Anywhere Strategy  

While remote working has been a norm for a long time, it gained immense traction during the Covid-19 pandemic and later on. According to research, the number of remote working employees has increased by 159% from 2009 to 2021, which is no surprise.

Many professionals still find working from anywhere challenging, as they feel lost in managing the quality of work and personal life. The need of the hour is to devise an engaging and interactive strategy to keep your employees motivated to work from anywhere.

The concept of working from anywhere enthralled the corporate world’s attention when businesses were facing a talent pool shortage at their office locations and had to search for deserving candidates from across the globe. The Covid-19 pandemic also pressured businesses to enable remote working as a new normal. The workforce and the companies have their respective challenges in managing the successful work from anywhere strategy irrespective of various reasons.

Successful work from anywhere strategy

Here are some practical tips to make remote working a successful part of your business.

1. Using a Digital Adoption Platform

Among the many tools meant to support remote working employees and help them adapt to new technologies and processes, Digital Adoption Platforms (DAP) is the best choice. It can handle multiple business-related tasks for globally located employees like:

  • Instant communications
  • Project announcements
  • Process changes and updates, etc.

Moreover, certain DAPs have analytics that can assist businesses in identifying gaps and starting work on creating effective workflows. 

Apty is a credible name in this context, as its dedicated digital adoption platform helps companies to ensure: 

  • Smooth remote onboarding and training of new employees
  • Guaranteed business continuity
  • Making data-driven decisions based on analytics

2. Create dedicated working spaces

Unwanted disturbances and sounds often create distractions while concentrating on an important task or virtual meetings. The ideal solution is to create a dedicated working space at your location, such as in a peaceful corner of your home. Working professionals can establish a working table, comfortable seating, etc., to get the exact feel of their official workplace. 

Sumit Bansal, Founder and CEO of TrumpExcel, says “As a business owner, parent, and individual, true balance is hard to achieve. I find myself leaning in too much in one direction and sacrificing in other directions. I can be an engaged parent and a mediocre team leader, or I can work 70 hours a week and do the bare minimum as a parent. Sometimes balance means leaving early to hit the slopes with my kids or meeting with my team for a virtual happy hour. I used to work from my bed when I first started, and it affected my sleep. Having a dedicated, comfortable workspace helps the mind naturally focus.”

3. Abide by regular office hours

For employees operating from their respective workspaces, it is essential to: 

  • Define regular working hours 
  • Comply with the official timings
  • Remain strict during the breaks 
  • Go distraction-free during working hours

Adhering to these tips will help your workforce be productive at a given time without taking a toll on their personal lives.

Setting the regular office hours creates a sense of responsibility, and the family members feel relieved of the working hours. It is essential to include frequent coffee breaks, tea breaks, etc., during remote working, which the employees usually take while working from the office.

Moreover, the ability to work from anywhere does not mean that workers are available at any time. The employees should therefore respect and value their personal lives.

Abdul Saboor, a Full Stack Developer at The Stock Dork, says, “Whether you work from home or in an office, plan your working day to incorporate numerous regular breaks. For example, taking breaks lowers the time spent distracted by colleagues, family, or domestic activities during regular work hours. Because most individuals can only focus for 90 minutes at a time, taking frequent breaks is critical for being productive throughout the day.”

4. Create rules when working

Professionals may not be alone at their current location, which results in the setting of rules to focus on work. These can include: 

  • No entrance for kids when at work 
  • Asking someone else to handle delivery persons, home-helps, and more
  • Optimal screen time during working hours

These and many other similar rules lay the foundation of the strict office environment at home. Hence, it is essential to stick to them. Professionals abiding by these rules can increase focus at work, thus leading to better productivity.

Also Read: Productivity Tips For Managers and Employees In 2022

5. Create a healthy working environment with colleagues

It is likely for professionals working from anywhere to miss the office chit-chat with their colleagues. It may seem unimportant at first glance, but it contributes to their productivity. Therefore, professionals must take the initiative to create a healthy working environment with colleagues, even when connected remotely. For instance:

  • Conducting virtual meetings during coffee breaks or lunch breaks could replicate the official break time
  • Companies can conduct fun activities like fun Fridays, etc. to improve employee engagement
  • There could be sessions to introduce new employees to the team to promote a healthy remote office environment

6. Follow a healthy regime

Work has taken a toll on the health of many busy professionals and the work from anywhere model can worsen this situation further. It is high time that employees realize that remote working has restricted their physical activities in the absence of traveling or movement in their office. Hence, it is imperative to pay attention to a healthy regime that may subsume:

  • Early morning exercises
  • A healthy diet 
  • Morning or evening walks
  • Following the 20-20-20 rule to reduce eye strain
Also Read: The Complete Guide To Employee Health And Wellbeing Strategy

But, what is the 20-20-20 rule?

This rule applies to people having long screen times due to any reason. Doctors recommend such people to: 

Spend around 20 seconds after every 20 minutes of screen time to gaze at something located at a distance of about 20 feet. 

This appears fit for employees who work from anywhere for long hours, as it can help minimize the strain on their eyes, thereby contributing to a healthy regime.

Alex Uriarte from 1-800 Injured says, “The Pomodoro technique is a time management approach that emphasizes brief bursts of work to improve focus. Figure out what distracts you the most and use that as your daily motivator to get things done.”

7. Don’t forget self-care

Like professionals love to relax on weekends, they need to create self-care time when working remotely. The definition of self-care is not the same for all. Hence, the employees can decide their ‘me-time’ according to their likes or dislikes.

It is essential to stay away from work during self-care time or prevent the work from consuming your leisure time.

Joe Troyer, the CEO & Growth Advisor of ReviewGrower, says, “By regulating our stress and encouraging self-care, we were able to grow our business during the pandemic to keep up with the demand for our services. The increased number of customers didn’t phase us. I believe this is why we encourage healthy work habits and recreational activities.”

Conclusion

73% of departments are likely to have remote workers by 2028. With the increasing trends in work from anywhere culture, professionals need to create a successful remote working strategy.

It includes effective communication, delegation, work delivery, sticking to timelines, occasional informal interactions, etc. The significant part of the picture is to stick to this strategy to get the optimum results. The remote work journey is smooth with a dedicated system with appropriate time for flexibility.

 

Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you create a successful work-from-anywhere strategy? Book a live demo with us.

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This article is written by Kruti Shah

Kruti Shah

Kruti Shah is a content writer and marketer at The Marketing Drama. She loves to write about insights on current trends in technology, business, and marketing. In her free time, she loves baking and watching Netflix. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

Remote Work Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Remote work is increasingly popular. After all, there are a string of benefits when working remotely. There’s no stressful commuting, no managers and colleagues looking over your shoulder at all times, and no worrying that you may have no lunch as your boss makes you deliver some urgent ad-hoc task during lunchtime (you have no time to go out to grab something to eat). That said, managing a remote workforce is not without its challenges.

remote.work

A remote workforce typically carries out work away from a physical office. Most choose the option of working from home. However, managing a remote team is challenging. While you may strive for “business as usual,” several pitfalls of remotely working await you. Here are the challenges of a remote workforce and how to overcome them:

1. No Work-Life Balance 

The irony of not having a work-life balance when remote working is that many opt for remote work in the first place to enjoy a healthier work-life balance. However, having no work-life balance is one of the pressing remote work challenges; not knowing when to turn off “work mode.”

At the office, there is a clear signal; you see people turning off their computers when it is time to ring out. You know it is time to stop work and leave. 

However, at home, there is no clear signal to stop working. You keep chugging on despite the sun setting down. Some of you worry that your bosses think you are slacking when working at home, so you want to prove them wrong by working off the clock. Ultimately, you will burn out. 

How to Overcome?

Prioritizing work is essential to ensuring remote work success. However, balancing work with breaks is equally important. Hence, remote workers must manage their time wisely. When it is time to work, stick to it, but when it is time to relax and take a break, do so. 

If you’re the manager, you have to get your team members to have a balanced schedule of work and breaks, and they must adhere to it. Remember to allow some flexibility in their work schedule. After all, everyone is different and has various needs. Also, regularly remind them to ring out when it is time. 

Emphasize the importance of de-stressing with their respective hobbies and others during off-work times. Encourage remote employees to have a separate workspace in the house and never bring work out of the room. Your remote workers must have a psychological differentiation between work and personal life. 

Also Read: How To Create A Time Management Plan For Remote Teams

2. Collaboration Becomes More Challenging

When working from the office, you can drop by your co-worker’s place and have a quick discussion. You then know how to proceed confidently. However, when working remotely, collaborating becomes tougher. Things become worse when each team member is not aware of their respective tasks and the project’s progress.

As the manager, you do not know what your team members are working on and at what rate. You also don’t know which team members are not pulling their weight or are overloaded when remotely working since you do not know their productivity.

How to Overcome?

There are collaboration tools that help managers track and monitor the productivity of the team. Establishing clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is essential to measure each individual’s productivity and a guide for your staff. Doing so does not mean that you must micromanage. 

Your goal is to track their productivity so that you can make necessary adjustments to maintain high output and meet deadlines. Setting clear deadlines, detailing each task and expectations, tracking projects’ progress, and regularly reviewing them are just a few to ensure your team is on track.  

Identify the suitable project management tool that gives everyone a real-time bird’s eye view and a more zoomed-in view of each individual task-at-hand and its progress. Get your team to regularly update their progress so that everyone knows where everyone is at all times. 

Moreover, implement the security best practices for your remote workforce. Insider threats are dominant and can cripple a whole organization overnight. 

Set a reasonable schedule for a meet-up to accurately gauge productivity within a suitable time frame. Not too many as such meet-ups can backfire and disrupt your team’s focus, but just enough to help you track major milestones and catch potential issues in time.

3. Too Many Distractions

You may have removed office distractions like colleagues coming over and chatting at your desk or having a co-worker’s birthday celebration at the cafeteria when working remotely. Unfortunately, there are other interruptions at home – family and doorbells. 

It becomes more difficult if you have toddlers at home who cannot understand why you cannot play with them when you’re at home. Also, there’s no over-the-shoulder accountability that would keep you in check. Hence, you get easily sidetracked. 

How to Overcome?

It can be as simple as taking your family aside and explaining to them that you are not to be disturbed whenever you are working (in focus mode). Doing so will only result in longer work hours to complete your tasks, which eventually means less time with them later. 

You can also help your family become more independent and self-sufficient to reduce the probability of interrupting you at work. Worse case, lock your room and put up a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign. However, know that there are times that the interruptions are unavoidable, especially emergency ones. So, set clear boundaries, but be flexible when you have to.  

4. Lack of Communication

Communication is key to the success of everything, be it personal or business, and this especially applies to a remote workforce. There’s no face-to-face interaction, which makes communication more difficult. As a team manager, you’re always skeptical and wondering if the team is making progress. As a team member, you worry if your manager knows of your contribution or thinks you’re not doing your work. 

Although under-communicating can create dissension among the team members, over-communicating can cause the team to feel suffocated, untrusted, and micromanaged. Hence, striking the right balance between them is crucial. 

How to Overcome?

Leverage technology to enhance employee experience. It is of utmost importance for the manager to identify a suitable internal communication platform as a dedicated place where open communication is encouraged. Also, the manager should invite questions, provide answers, and actively listen to the team members. After everyone has provided their input, you address any issues promptly. 

Never dismiss your team members because doing so will only make them clamp up in the future. No matter what communication platform you use, ensure that all are involved and actively participate. Adopt a direct approach and be specific in your messages to avoid possible misunderstandings. Also, be careful of the tone because sometimes, it is not what you say but how you say it. 

5. Unhealthy Lifestyle

When you’re at the office, there will be times you are required to move around to attend meetings and climb stairs to attend training and conferences. However, when you’re at home, you are literally at your desk all day because all meetings and training are virtual; this is especially true for knowledge work. 

Some stay on the internet for long periods until they have forgotten how dangerous the internet can be. You place yourself and the company’s critical data at a security risk anyways.    

Home sweet home. Yes, everything is comfy and whatever you need is at home. Your fridge is just several paces away. So, you binge eat all day as it is nice to chew on some crispy junk food to help stay awake. 

Or it could be the direct opposite when you work and work until you have forgotten that you have legs. 

How to Overcome?

Well, there’s no wonder drug for this. But you must be disciplined to be more mindful of what is good for you and what isn’t. Please include exercise routines in your schedule (you need vitamin D) and fix healthy snacks when you feel hungry. 

6. Lack of Motivation

Remote working can get your team members depressed and bogged down. After all, there is much less human interaction. They can feel lonely and not motivated to work. Or they may feel like they aren’t growing much or developing any skills, a huge bummer for most companies.

In general, humans are social beings. They need to feel that they belong in an inner circle to feel needed. At home, they may feel isolated from the rest of the team members and drift away. Eventually, their output will be affected.

How to Overcome?

Let your team members realize that their tasks depend on one another so each will know the importance of their work and that it can hold up another person’s deliverables. Your team will feel more motivated to work and deliver. Also, please award praises when needed (do not overdo this as they can become diluted and ineffective). 

When you give your team members the recognition they deserve, they will feel visible and appreciated. Reinforce them positively to push them to achieve more. Make it a habit to include virtual one-on-one meetings to discuss personal and professional growths. Take notes so you will know how to support them better. Have empathy when you chat with them, but know when to be firm when you need to.    

Conclusion

Managing an on-site team is not easy. What more than a remote team when there’s no face-to-face interaction? Fret not, as the remote workforce challenges are surmountable. Pursue the above to improve productivity, boost employee morale, increase efficiency, enjoy flexibility, and more. After all, remote work (if done right) can be rewarding; a company shines when the employees shine too.

 

Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you overcome the challenges of a remote workforce? Book a live demo with us.

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This article is written by Jason Chow

Jason

Jason Chow is a marketer at WebRevenue, a company that helps online businesses to thrive with tailored solutions. Jason loves to write about remote workforce, communication skills, SaaS, and more.

How To Create A Time Management Plan For Remote Teams

Thanks to the pandemic, remote working has become the norm in so many industries. It has a lot of benefits, such as eliminating commuting time, reducing costs, and removing office distractions. Of course, there are challenges too. One of those is time management, something that can be difficult to have oversight on when you have a remote team. 

The good news is you can help remove the challenge by having a good remote time management plan in place. Here’s how to create one and get the most out of your teams, wherever they work. 

Why Create A Time Management Plan?

Is a time management plan needed for remote workers? It’s highly recommended, as there are lots of benefits that you can reap by using them. These include:

    • A better sense of direction for staff, and knowing what’s required of them.
    • Fewer miscommunications in the workflow.
    • More engagement for those who are working from home. 
    • Less time is needed for organizing employees.
    • Better final product and client satisfaction.

So, there are plenty of benefits to using a time management plan in your team. Now, you need to know how to write it. These tips will help you get the most from your plan. 

Set Expectations Upfront

The very first thing you’ll want to do is discuss a time management plan with your team. You’re going to want to set expectations upfront, so they all know what’s expected of them as they’re working remotely. 

Ensure that you listen to this team at this stage. What are they expecting from the remote working system? Is there anything they’re concerned about, or anything that they want to happen? This feedback will help you put a plan together that’s easy to use and realistic. 

Pick Between Time Tracking Or Productivity Tracking

When it comes to time management plans, you’ll either want to focus on time tracking or productivity tracking. “On average, many employees will prefer to stay working remotely as they prefer the flexibility it gives them,” says Fiona Carmichael, a project manager from Dissertation discussion and OX Essays. “You’ll want to keep this in mind when making a decision.”

Productivity tracking will usually allow for more flexibility in the workflow, so many employers will choose this method when creating their plans. However, it does depend on the work you do, so consider carefully before you start putting the plan in stone. 

Also Read: Tips To Improve Productivity As A Remote Worker

Choose The Right Platform

There are plenty of time management platforms out there you can use to create your plan. It is highly advisable that you use one, as trying to do it over instant messaging or email is going to be far too difficult to track. With a platform, everything is kept in one place so everyone can see what’s needed from them at a glance. 

As well as a platform like Slack or Trello, consider using cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive. This allows everyone to share files, so you and your clients can access them when needed. 

Define Your KPIs

You’ll need to create and define the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your team as they work remotely. What will be expected from them? You can set both short and long-term goals for each team member, and then they have a clear idea of what they need to be working towards. This is something you can discuss in individual coaching. 

Also Read: How to build a KPI System for Performance Reviews

Set Up Regular Meetings

Now you have all the tools in place, you’ll want to create a regular slot in the schedule for a meeting with the whole team. This should allow for everyone to share where they’re at with a project, and give feedback. This will be how the team gets together, as they won’t be working in the same space. 

Remember that as they’re remote, the team may not be working the traditional 9 – 5. You’ll want to find a time that works for everyone. Doing this ensures that you can stay flexible, and give your team the space they need. 

Also, you can organize meetings into mandatory and secondary meetings. Make the agendas available for all sessions, so staff will know what will be discussed. 

Plan Out Individual Meetings Too

Now that you have group meetings in the schedule, you’ll have to ensure that you make time for one on one coaching and development, too. This needs to be handled whether your team is remote or in the office, so either way, you’ll be ready for it. 

Take the time to reach out to every team member, and work out the best time for individual coaching. It’s arguably more crucial in remote teams, as you’ll be looking to help them stay connected and focused on their work when they’re not in the office. 

It’s even more important you do so when you have younger employees or recent graduates on your team. They will need coaching to help them reach their full potential, and it can be harder for them to do so when they’re working remotely. 

Have Deadlines In Place

You’ll have deadlines for KPIs and deliverables, whether your team is in the office or remotely. When your team is remote, it’s even more important to make these deadlines as obvious as possible. 

“As the team aren’t centralized, it’s easy for them to lose sight of the big picture,” says HR manager Graham Pike, from Paper Fellows and Boom Essays. “You want to ensure that everyone is on the same page.”

Create timelines and deadlines in your action plan, and have them available to view within your chosen platform. That helps staff stay on target when they’re working, and get everything delivered on time. 

With these tips, you’ll be able to create a time management plan that works for you and your team. It will make remote work much more feasible and every staff member will know what’s expected of them. Start writing your time management plan now, to get the best results. 

 

Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your remote teams? Book a live demo with us.

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This article is written by Sara Sparrow.

Sara Sparrow

 

 

 

 

Sara Sparrow is a technical writer for Assignment service and Academized. She covers workflow and time management for business owners. She’s also a writer for Write my essay. 

5 Terrific Ways Workplace Belonging Enhances Engagement

Are you still trying to decode the complicated challenge of employee engagement in your organization? Have you done well to reap the tangible business benefits of high employee engagement? As per Forbes, organizations with high employee engagement can drive 21 percent higher profitability. That does sound amazing for sure. However, it is also true that not all organizations have been successful in cultivating the kind of engagement that can effectively contribute to business success. 

To substantiate, as per Gallup, not more than 36 percent of US workers are engaged in their work. This explains why organizations are now keen on looking at some novel and unique strategies for promoting greater engagement.

However, Cultivating strong workplace belongingness in employees can help you achieve exemplary levels of employee engagement. It is vital to ask here, what is workplace belonging and how can it help organizations unleash scalable engagement? 

In this blog, we find answers to these questions that will help you understand how creating a strong sense of belonging among employees can be the key to employee engagement. To begin with, let us delineate the concept of workplace belonging. 

Defining Workplace Belongingness 

In the workplace, employees feel different kinds of emotions that reflect their commitment, behavior, and confidence. Among these feelings and emotions, the sense of belongingness that they feel for their organization is important for you as a leader to assess. In simple terms, workplace belongingness explains how accepted and valued your employees feel in the workplace. 

When employees carry a strong sense of belonging, they manifest the belief that they deserve to be in the workplace and are valuable to the organization. Furthermore, this sense of belonging also influences the kind of emotional affection they feel for their employers and organizations. Simply put, when your employees feel a strong sense of belonging, they will have greater loyalty. Besides, they will see their individual success in correlation with organizational growth. 

Now that we are on the same page regarding what workplace belonging signifies, let us understand its implications. The subsequent section elucidates the various ways in which workplace belonging can boost employee engagement. 

5 ways workplace belonging can enhance employee engagement

Enhances confidence and performance

Let’s start this discussion with a simple question you must think about as a leader. Will your employees give their best unless they feel confident enough in the workplace? Needless to say, confidence is the foundation of exceptional performances. In fact, your employees’ self-belief and morale blend together to reflect the overall confidence that your organization carries. 

But what do you think is essential for them to feel confident enough? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Your employees will feel optimistic when they feel valued in the organization. Confidence comes with acceptance and as a leader, it is your responsibility to make your employees feel accepted for their individuality, skills, talents, and opinions.  

When you successfully promote that kind of confidence in them, performance levels are bound to go up. Can you perform exceptionally well despite the fact that you are not very confident about it? Certainly, the chances are quite bleak, to be fair. Having said that, you need to promote greater belongingness in your employees to channel their confidence in the right way. 

The bottom line is that confidence and performance complement each other. When employees feel valued, they will feel the constant urge to raise the bar of performance and offer greater value to the organization. 

To substantiate, Deloitte research reveals that a strong sense of workplace belonging among employees can increase their job performance by 56 percent. The report further highlights  that workplace belonging can also lead to a 50 percent decline in employee turnover. Clearly, workplace belonging holds the key to workplace motivation. 

Did you know that? Well, now you do and you must act on it to boost your company’s engagement scenarios.

Brings down absenteeism

Absenteeism is quite a realistic and credible metric of employee management, engagement, and satisfaction. Looking at the broader perspective, there could be multiple and subjective reasons for high absenteeism in an organization. Among these reasons, a desolate feeling of belongingness in the workplace is surely considerable.

To explain, employees will only want to come to a workplace if they feel that strong sense of association and belonging. Otherwise, they can choose from a wide spectrum of excuses to make for not attending the office. Besides, when they have a strong sense of belongingness, they will understand their responsibility better. Consequently, they will not keep things hanging by taking arbitrary leaves. 

Assessing further, there is a proven inverse relationship between workplace belonging and absenteeism. Research suggests that by promoting a strong sense of workplace belongingness, organizations can reduce sick days by 75 percent. 

The lower the absenteeism rate in your organization, the higher will be the engagement. So, create a workplace people would love to be a part of on a daily basis. Give your employees a workplace that inspires the best in them every day. For that, it is essential to foster powerful feelings of belongingness among employees that enable them to contribute more proactively.

Promotes greater trust

As per Harvard Business Review, trust and employee engagement have a direct correlation. This correlation is explained through the following insights.

  • Employees in high trust companies exhibit 76 percent higher engagement and 50 percent higher productivity. Also, employees manifest 106 percent higher energy levels when trust is embedded in the natural virtue in the organizational culture.
  • In organizations that cultivate trust, employees express 29 percent higher satisfaction
  • In companies where there is high trust between co-workers, burnout rates are 40 percent lower and the stress levels are 76 percent lower.

It is amazing how a single virtue of trust can lead an organization to incredible things. What we need to figure out is the correlation between workplace belonging and trust. Acceptance is the basis of trust and this will always remain an undeniable fact. 

When employees feel accepted, valued, and appreciated, they trust their co-workers with greater ease. This is how belongingness proves to be imperative for positive workplace relationships that can drive high engagement. 

With high trust, people collaborate better and steer their organizations to new horizons of success. Are you willing to go that extra mile to create high trust in your organization? As a leader, you need to lead by example

Cultivates better inclusiveness

Inclusion and diversity are among the most significant trends in the contemporary workplace. Organizations are more eager than ever before to embrace the virtues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. However, for that, hiring a diverse workforce may not be sufficient. 

To get the best out of your diverse workforce, you need to incorporate inclusion as a natural virtue into your company’s culture. This is where creating a strong sense of workplace belonging among your employees can be of great help. 

When you foster an inspiring sense of workplace belonging, you include your employees in the decision-making process and empower them to share their perspectives. Or to look at it the other way, when employees carry that feeling of belongingness, they feel like contributing more. In this zeal to add more value to the organization, they come up with innovative ideas and creative insights that can be of great value to any organization. 

In fact, in the highly competitive business world, you need to innovate at every level to sustain your competitive advantages. What better than a workforce that feels excited every day to bring innovative and creative ideas to the floor? You can literally draw great value from a workforce that does not shy away from taking initiative. 

By promoting a greater sense of belonging among your employees, you can also inspire greater creative liberty among your employees. This creative liberty will become the basis of a massive hike in employee engagement levels. 

All in all, creating a sense of belonging in your workforce can lead to greater inclusiveness in multifarious ways. Further, this increased inclusiveness will lead to higher engagement in the workplace in multiple ways.

Leads to a more resilient workforce 

In the contemporary corporate world, the skill of resilience has immeasurable value. In the last few years, daunting challenges such as COVID-19 pandemic have tested businesses to their core. Organizations that were resilient enough to these changes survived, while others went out of business.. 

Resilience has become a sought-after skill in the modern workplace. It also complements engagement in a direct way. When employees are resilient, they stay upbeat even in the face of adverse challenges.

As a leader, You would want your employees to have exemplary resilience at all times. But what does it take to inspire resilience among employees?

Employees will give their best to stand by their organizations when there is a powerful sense of belongingness. Why would they want to face all kinds of challenges for their organizations unless they are convinced that they are a valuable asset to the company? Therefore, it is correct to say that by promoting belongingness among your employees, you can make them more resilient and hence, boost engagement. 

Conclusion

To encapsulate, there are multidimensional benefits linked to encouraging a strong sense of workplace belongingness among employees. When you help your employees build a deeper connection with your organization, they feel valued and empowered to bring out the best in them. Especially, when it comes to a diverse workforce, working on fostering a sense of belongingness among employees seems far more essential. As a leader, your ability to inspire belongingness among your employees holds the key to driving high employee engagement. 

Author’s Bio

“Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.” Wayne Dyer’s thoughts are well suited to Kiara Miller. She has been working as a content marketing professional at ‘The Speakingnerd’. Her passion for writing is also visible in the innovative joys of material she provides to her readers.

Importance of 360 Degree Feedback for Hybrid and Remote Employees

Some observe that certain large, well-known organizations such as General Motors Co., Citigroup, Ford Motor Co., Nationwide, and IBM have adopted a hybrid model of working as they see it as the trend of the future. Having mentioned this, there are many other companies that are going fully remote. Currently, both trends are gaining traction after the pandemic. The hybrid system is becoming a more accepted form of a working model, as it allows an employee to work from home on certain days and go to the office on the remaining days. 

Also, as aforementioned, there are many employees who want to work from home. It is expected that most of the workforce will prefer to work remotely by 2028. Thus, remote and hybrid models of working are growing in popularity and are here to stay.

Hybrid/remote working models: Overcoming the challenges

Though hybrid and remote working models are necessities of the present times, organizations will have their own set of challenges in training employees for these models. One of the major challenges is providing constant feedback to the team members to ensure that all are on the same page. This is where a 360 degree review survey can be a handy review system that would ensure that timely feedback is provided to the employees, irrespective of adopting any working model. 

One can also use a 360-degree feedback software as offered by Engagedly, which offers the feature of providing real-time feedback to employees who work in a hybrid or remote work environment.

This blog post will focus on what is the 360 degree feedback process; why opt for a 360-degree feedback system for hybrid and remote employees? How to employ a 360-degree feedback system in hybrid and remote environments, and its benefits.

Understanding 360 degree feedback and its significance 

360° feedback system focuses on employees’ feedback; colleagues’ feedback; a manager’s feedback, and customers’ feedback. One of the best aspects of the 360° feedback mechanism is that it is impartial as it offers feedback from all avenues. 

The 360-degree feedback system plays a big role in identifying and nurturing future talents; bringing collaboration among the employees and managers, and fostering an open and transparent workplace culture. 

In the present hybrid and remote working age, a 360-degree feedback method provides employees with the required insights into their performance and helps them to improve themselves, aligned with the company’s objectives.

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About 360 Degree Feedback

Importance of a 360-degree feedback survey for hybrid and remote employees

Managers can bolster hybrid and remote employees’ productivity in several ways by using the 360-degree feedback review mechanism, as described below:

Understanding team’s concerns and suggestions: 

A company can lose billions of dollars in profits if it ignores disengaged employees’ concerns and feedback. This is where a 360-degree feedback system can help a manager understand his team‘s concerns and suggestions so that the team‘ productivity can give consistently increasing outputs. As per a research study, employees who feel their voices are heard are more likely (4.6 times) to feel encouraged and would give their best efforts. This holds true for both hybrid and remote employees.

Empathy:

The current workplace scenarios are such that a lot of work has to be done in less time period. In such situations, employees may get stressed and may not have enough time to spend time with their families. This is where managers can act as a coach so that employees can learn to complete their work in less time and maintain a work-life balance. 

Thus, the 360-degree feedback system helps managers to identify if an employee is finding it difficult to balance or draw a line between his personal and professional life. 96% of employees are of the thoughts that caring and empathic managers can increase employee retention.

Understanding the level of employees’ stress: 

There will be a high level of absenteeism in the workplace if employees are overworked and they have the feeling of being isolated and disengaged. This is highly prevalent in a remote working model wherein the employees feel they have to work more to prove to their efficiency and productivity to their managers. 

With the use of 360-degree feedback review, managers will come to know about the level of stress experienced by an employee, through the employee himself and his colleagues. Managers can guide the remote employee and address his fears.  

Eliminating the biased nature of the feedback system:

Sometimes, unfortunately, hybrid or remote employees may not get the desired reviews or may be the subject of biased reviews from the managers for their performance. This may happen as managers may not be aware of the remote or hybrid employees’ contributions as much as they have knowledge about in-house employees’ contributions. So remote employees can feel helpless and isolated, and they may leave the company. 

When a 360-degree feedback system is implemented, it can eliminate such a biased nature of the review, as colleagues and clients take part in the review process.

Implementing a 360-degree feedback process for hybrid and remote teams

A 360-degree feedback process is undoubtedly an effective means of enhancing employees’ performance and productivity. However, this is only possible if you implement the 360-degree review process correctly. You can follow the below techniques to implement the 360-degree feedback process for hybrid and remote teams.

Face-to-face approach:

The best way to communicate with your employees is by talking to them face-to-face. Sending feedback through emails can be cold and impersonal and may give a feeling to the employees that their managers aren’t open to the idea of addressing their issues. 

Sending feedback through the email over a longer duration can make employees feel they are not a part of the team and their contribution to the company is insignificant. Thus, it is always better to talk to the employee on a one-to-one basis during the review process. For remote employees, a face-to-face conversation can be carried out over a video call embedded within a 360-degree performance review software.

Agenda for 360 degree feedback process:

The agenda of the 360° feedback review process should be made clear to the employees so that they feel that the review process is for their own good. If your employees don’t understand the scope and purpose of the survey, there is a possibility that they may shy away from sharing the relevant information with you. Thus, before the review process, communicate to the employees that this feedback will improve their performance and help them reduce their workload and stress. For remote employees, you can use performance review software for conveying the agenda.

Anonymous review system:

Most of the companies implement a 360-degree feedback system in an anonymous fashion so that employees may not have to fear their feedback will be leaked out of the discussion room. For implementing the anonymous review feedback, use Engagedly’s 360-degree performance review software which allows the employees to share their feedback and concerns with their higher management on the software itself.

Eliminating favoritism: 

There is always a possibility that a manager may prefer certain employees for promotion over others, which may lead to a biased review. When performance review is conducted using a performance review software that allows feedback to flow in from managers, colleagues, and clients, it can prevent such biased decisions. Interestingly, a system like this should also help employees to bond better, since employees who deserve credit will receive appreciation from their colleagues.

Simplifying the feedback:

You, as a manager, need to ensure that your feedback is easy to understand for your team members. This is possible when you use a 360-degree performance review software that allows you to demonstrate your ideas for improvements using charts and graphs. Once you have explained the areas of improvement to your team members, you can explain a defined plan for their self-improvement and suggest baseline employee performance for the company’s growth.

Understanding what is working and what is not working:

The 360° feedback review system would help managers to understand what processes are working and what are not working and, they can tweak them so that the overall productivity increases. Importantly, the feedback review system would bring better transparency and would make communication among employees easier within hybrid or remote work models.

Also Read: How To Conduct An Effective 360 Degree Feedback?

Benefits of 360° feedback review system for hybrid and remote employees

Given below are some benefits of using the 360° feedback review system for hybrid and remote employees.

Self-understanding 

A 360-degree feedback system helps employees to understand when they are going wrong and how they need to improve. They come to know the areas for improvement from their managers, peers, and clients. This way they can self-understand their limitations and develop their skills as per the company requirements. Further, employees become more productive and efficient because of self-awareness. 

Enhance communication and collaboration 

Since the covid-19 outbreak, communication and collaboration have been challenging for various businesses. Managers and subordinates find it difficult to build close relationships when working remotely. Sometimes, managers make use of certain jargon during a long-distance video call that employees may not understand. Here is where 360-degree feedback can help managers to understand various communication challenges that employees face and jargon that should be avoided so that it doesn’t cause problems for the employees. 

Eliminate biases

Remote or hybrid working employees may feel that employees who work on the site daily often receive more benefits than them. This kind of perception may affect the overall productivity of the company. In order to avoid such circumstances, managers can make use of a 360-degree feedback system to provide clear communication and maintain transparency among employees.

Bring cohesiveness

360-degree feedback evaluates an employee’s performance individually and as a team. The 360-degree evaluation ensures that employees’ efforts are aligned with the company’s mission, objectives, and vision. 

Develop strong leadership skills

360-degree review surveys are meant not only for employees but also for managers too. Reviews offered by employees help managers to improve their leadership skills. Through anonymous survey platforms as offered by Engagedly’s performance review software, employees need not fear about their reviews being read by managers. Thus, employees can freely express their opinions regarding a manager’s team handling capability and performance to higher management. This may help managers to develop even their own leadership skills.

Improve employee engagement

Engaged employees can be highly efficient and productive. They’re even ready to go that extra mile to achieve their goals. With the use of a 360-degree feedback survey, you can get to know as a company what you should do so that employees will be highly engaged and motivated to do their jobs. Again here, you can make use of Engagedly’s performance review software to carry out anonymous surveys.

Also Read: 10 Benefits of 360-degree feedback

Summing up:

As hybrid and remote work environments become more prevalent, 360-degree feedback should become the norm. Management needs to adopt an innovative technical solution, such as Engagedly’s 360-degree performance review software, to understand the challenges faced by the employees and boost their performance.

Our 360-degree performance review software gives employees and their managers insight into their progress toward goals and key results. The solution can also help you to break down a larger goal into smaller ones that can be tracked and monitored. This would ensure that the employees are making advancements in the right direction. 

Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.

Request A Demo

10 Excellent Ways to Reward Remote Employees

Stop everything for a moment and think about the last time you were told that you were doing a great job. How did that make you feel? Good, right? All employees need that pat on the back to stay motivated and work at their optimal productivity levels.

Continue reading “10 Excellent Ways to Reward Remote Employees”

The Top 20 Ultimate One on one Questions

The relationship between managers and their direct reports is crucial to successfully running a company. And one effective way to achieve a positive relationship between them is through one-on-one meetings. A one-on-one meeting presents an environment to have honest talks on various topics, leading to a less stiff atmosphere between managers and their direct reports. 

A crucial side of this meeting is asking the right questions to make the most of them. Asking the right one on one questions helps stir the conversation in the right and productive direction. This article will discuss the importance of one-on-one meetings and the type of one-on-one questions managers should ask.

Why conduct one-on-one meetings?

People, not robots, make up companies. Therefore, there should be a means to improve communication between employees and management. Fortunately, one-on-one meetings present managers with this opportunity. A study by SHRM found 89% of HR Leaders agree to ongoing check-ins and communication help retain and recruit better. 

In this section, we will highlight the reasons for conducting one-on-one meetings.

  • Builds Trust

It takes effort to build trust, and it’s crucial to build trust between managers and direct reports to run a successful team and, by extension, a successful business. A Human Era at Work study revealed employees who trust their management also respect them. The study also found that when employees trust and value their managers, they were 58% more focused and 63% more satisfied with their jobs.

  • Improves Engagement

To get the best out of employees, they must be engaged. Employee engagement will improve with one-on-one meetings because it allows managers and direct reports to discuss issues they would not otherwise discuss during office hours. Direct reports feedback on the company, career progress, and current projects can help identify and rectify pressing issues. A study by Gallup backs up this point showing employees who have regular one-on-one meetings are three times more engaged and 21% more productive.

Also read: Qualties of a good manager: 10 Skills you need

  • Improves Teamwork

One goal of a one-on-one meeting is to understand your direct reports. It is getting to know them beyond the four walls of the office space or, in recent times, your laptop screens. Engaging with your direct reports as people and not employees helps improve your working relationship, which can help in raising teamwork. One-on-one meetings can also help to diffuse friction between colleagues by the manager becoming a mediator.

  • Reduces Staff Turnover

A study by salary.com shows that 23% of employees look for new jobs every day. Another research by Hogan assessment shows that 75% of employees state their direct boss is the worse part of their jobs. Holding one-on-one meetings can help reduce these figures, as one reason employees leave their workplace is due to lack of engagement.

One On One Questions to Ask Employees

When conducting a one-on-one employee meeting, the questions must explore the various areas of the direct report’s life. The questions you ask should cover their personal life, relationship with co-workers, career goals, the working environment, and feedback on management. Touching the various areas that affect your direct reports brings about an open meeting. 

You can have a list of questions divided into separate sections to help you structure it. Also, while timing is essential, flexibility is much more effective because any question can become an issue that needs immediate attention.

This section will discuss the areas to ask questions and the type of questions you should ask your direct reports.

  • Personal Check-in Questions

Understanding the physical and mental health of your direct reports is crucial. Showing genuine concern and empathy can help break the ice and open up the floor for discussions. If this is the first one-on-one meeting, you can ask about their lives outside the workplace. 

Questions about hobbies or what they find fun can help to ease tension. Who knows, both of you may enjoy similar activities.

If this is not your first meeting, you can ask follow-up questions from the previous conversation. 

Questions to ask:

  • 1. How are you feeling today?
  • 2. What do you do over the weekend? / Do you have plans for this weekend?
  • 3. How do you feel about your current work/life balance?
  • 4. Do you have any hobbies you are passionate about?

Depending on the answers you receive to these questions, spend more or less time in this section. If the employee is not doing well mentally or physically, allocate more time to this section.

  • Career Goal and Progression Questions

A study by the Conference Board shows that only 57% of workers show job satisfaction, and for a typical worker who dedicates hours to their job, it’s a low figure. One good way to improve this figure is by understanding your direct reports’ career goals. Asking the right questions will allow you to help with advice, point them to books or other materials they need, and assist them in reaching their goals. 

Many companies have lost excellent employees due to not understanding how their goals align with employees. Identifying the career goals of your direct reports can also help you assign projects they are interested in working on or projects that will help them develop their skill set.

Sample 1 on 1 career goals and progression questions to ask include:

  • 5. What are your career goals? Have you put much thought into your career goals?
  • 6. What can I do to help you achieve them?
  • 7. What do you enjoy most about your work?
  • 8. What skills do you think you need to develop? Do you feel you need more training?
  • 9. Do you feel your current job role contributes to achieving your career goal?
  • 10. Do you feel you can achieve your career goal with this company?

These one-on-one employee meeting questions will help you and your direct report clear the air regarding their career goals and progression. Their answers will highlight what you can do to help them progress in their career.

  • Workplace Environment and Condition

The workplace environment is vital in ensuring the success of a company. Employees are a significant source of feedback since they spend most of their time working and interacting in the office environment. A poor office environment can impede productivity, so it’s best to have feedback by asking one-on-one questions from your direct reports. Chances are you would receive a few.

Sample one on one workplace environment and condition questions to ask:

  • 11. Are you happy with the current working environment?
  • 12. What changes would you make to the current work environment?
  • 13. Do you feel you can be more productive if we make changes to the work environment?
  • 14. What distracts you in the office environment?
Also read: Benfits of employee career development program

  • Company Culture and Relationships

In a study by Gallup, managers determine how great or lousy a workplace turns out. The study states managers have a variance of 70%, suggesting they are vital in dictating the company culture. A positive atmosphere helps to foster teamwork and healthy work relationships. When managers promote a healthy culture, it improves employee retention and productivity.

One good way to determine if managers lead by example is by asking questions in one-on-one meetings with employees.

Sample 1 on 1 company culture and relationships questions to ask:

  • 15. Is there any aspect of the company work culture you would want to change?
  • 16. Do you feel the team works well together?
  • 17. Is there anyone in the team you notably work well with? Why is this?
  • 18. Is there anyone in the team you dislike working with? Why is this?

  • Managers Feedback

Managers need feedback from their direct reports. According to Gallup, managers provided with strength feedback showed a 12.5% increase in productivity and a 14.9% increase in turnover rates compared to those who didn’t receive such feedback. In short, managers also need feedback to improve, and a one-on-one meeting presents an opportunity for the managers.

Sample 1 on 1 managers feedback questions you can ask:

  • 19. Do you feel I give enough feedback?
  • 20. What can I do to support you better?

The aim is to make sure the employee is comfortable with your management style and get feedback on what you should do more or less. In this section, take the words of your direct reports in friendly spirit. If they are giving constructive criticism or observations they have made, it’s because they also want to see you grow. They could easily have kept quiet, spoken behind your back, or given a written complaint to HR.

Bonus  1 on 1 Questions

Managers and employees are busy individuals, and therefore they need to make every moment in the workplace count. On average, managers spend 23 hours in meetings during the week. That’s a lot of time spent in meetings, and because of this, it’s best to ask your direct reports about the effectiveness of your one-on-one sessions.

  • Do you feel these meetings are a good use of your time?
  • How as these one-on-one meetings helped you?
  • What do you think I should change about my approach?

Conclusion

Asking the right one on one questions in meetings with your direct reports is essential in getting the best from these meetings. The success of the one-on-one sessions is dictated by how well you can break the ice and have simple conversations, leading to more complex ones. As you question your direct reports, remember the aim is to understand your employees better, to provide adequate support.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your remote employees better? Request us for a demo.

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4 Creative Team Building Activities

Teams that score higher in engagement are much more productive, creative, and innovative than their counterparts. Building great teams can be a bit tricky as the current work environments do not allow to gauge the non-verbal cues to understand the team members. It is therefore important to focus on team building activities that bring people closer and help them understand each other. While there are a bunch of activities that help in boosting motivation, productivity, and learning, it is crucial to involve the team in fun and creative activities too.

This article will discuss four creative team building activities that will help your team members come out of the silos and unite to bring more fun to the table.

Creative Team Building Activities

Here are four unique and creative team building activities for your employees that are fun guaranteed.

creative team building activities

Team Building Activity 1- Two Truths And A Lie

This is one of the most engaging team-building activities for employees.

Recommended number of People: 10 to 15

Material required: None

Goal: To guess the true statement from other players’ set of statements and to make other players believe your false statements to be true.

How to play:

Step 1: Every player writes down three statements about himself (2 truths and one lie)

Step 2: Each player is asked to read those statements aloud to the group.

Step 3: Take a vote on which statement is a lie.

Step 4: The players who guess the false statement correctly get one point each. If no one is able to guess it correctly, then the player who wrote the statements wins the points.

Step 5: Continue steps (1 – 4) and the player with most points wins the game.

Team Building Activity 2- Back-to-back Drawing

creative team activities

Recommended number of players: Multiple teams of 2 people

Material required: Paper, pen and picture cards

Goal: To instruct your teammate verbally and help them draw the shape.

How to play:

Step 1: Divide your group into pairs, and have each pair sit on the floor back to back.

Step 2: Give one player from the pair a picture and the other, a pen and paper.

Step 3: The player who receives the picture, verbally explains the picture to his teammate and the teammate tries to draw the picture on the paper.

Step 4: On finishing, each pair compares their original shape to the drawing, and consider how they worked together, and where they could improve their communication.

Also Read: 5 Employee Engagement Activities On Budget

Team Building Activity 3- Acted Charades (Dumb Charades)

Another common, yet engaging team building activity for your employees

Note – The Engagedly team tried this out. It was a roaring success. 😉

Recommended number of players: 10-15 (two teams)

Material required: None

Goal: Convey the movie name given by the opposite team to your teammates by enacting and guessing the movie name correct when your teammate enacts.

How to play:

Step 1: A player from one team is chosen by the other team and given a movie name.

Step 2: The player enacts the movie name and tries to convey it to his teammates without talking or pointing out to any objects.

Step 3: If the team succeeds to find the movie name they win a point, if not the opposite team wins a point.

Step 4: Continue steps ( 1-3) The team with most points wins the game.

Team Building Activity 4- Winner/ Loser

Recommended number of players: Multiple teams of 2 players each

Material required: None

Goal: To change the negative perspective of your teammate to positive perspective

How to play:

Step 1: Both teammates write their bad experiences and share it with each other.

Step 2: Both partners, then tell the same story of their teammates, but relate the good things that came from the experience.

Just give these team-building activities a try. The goal is not to win, but rather to have fun and build team spirit!

Conclusion

Team building is critically important for organizations that are working in hybrid and remote working environments. As most employees are fixated to their systems throughout the day, it is important for them to be involved in activities that help them bring out their creative sides. The creative team building activities discussed in this article will surely help your team members have a great time. Share the activities that you enjoy the most with your teams in the comments sections below.

Want to know how Engagedly can help in managing and building highly productive and dynamic teams? Book a live demo to talk to our experts!

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Motivating Your Team: 6 Proven Ways To Engage Team At Work

“To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace!” —Doug Conant, Founder, Constant Leadership.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to lead your team effectively. The way you conduct yourself before them, affects their productivity significantly. There are many challenging issues that you have to deal with as a manger. One of such issues is not being able to improve team engagement at work.

Continue reading “Motivating Your Team: 6 Proven Ways To Engage Team At Work”

Goal Setting for Remote Employees: What Goes In

In today’s world, there is not much option when it comes to where people want to work from. If you wish to be safe, you have got to stay in and work from home. On the brighter side, technology has evolved to such an extent that you don’t feel the necessity to be present in an office space to be able to accomplish all the tasks that is in your kitty. Of course, there will be exceptions. But what about setting remote workforce goals?

Continue reading “Goal Setting for Remote Employees: What Goes In”

Employee Performance Review for Remote Employees

The thought of employee performance review and evaluation is often very painful for most employees. The process is tedious, complex and time-consuming in most cases, especially for remote workers. But, it does not necessarily need to be so.

The most important factor of a performance review is the performance analysis of an employee. If that is done right, the data can be used to improve employee output as well as in other decision-making processes. Things get slightly more complex when the employees are working remotely. While some traditional in-office methods can be used to evaluate remote employees, it’s best to streamline the process according to the situation.

Here are some tips to improve your employee performance review process for remote employees:

It’s the output that matters

If an employee is professionally dressed, comes in on time, pours over his or her system throughout the day, is that enough signs to show that he or she is working efficiently? How does that help when it comes to evaluating remote employees?

You can act like an obsessive boss and keep checking their login, logout details and the quantity of work, but does that really showcase productivity?

It does not. In all great companies, the focus is on the quality of work, the output, not the input. To be honest, in the current world affairs all businesses are focusing more on sustenance, not profit. So don’t push your employees to produce enormous work that does not really add value to the organization. Give them the peace of mind and the liberty to give in their best and produce great work. This is what will keep the company afloat through the COVID-19 crisis. It’s not the other way round.

Also read: Is Lack Of Employee Recognition Damaging To The Company?

Gather 360-degree feedback

An employee does not just work with their direct manager, they work with team members, other teams and departments, other managers and supervisors among others. So when you are evaluating remote employee performance, make sure you gather feedback from everyone else who is associated with them. That way you don’t have to rely only on your evaluation but gather more insight about their performance, their style of work, their coordination skills, and where their talent and skills can be best utilized. This is a great way to accurately review your remote employees’ performance.

Get them to Self-evaluate

A Harvard Business Review article says that an employee can be susceptible to two different traps when it comes to self-evaluation. One of them is, they tend to get overconfident (termed as the Overconfidence Effect) and set higher bars than they can possibly achieve. The second one is, they attribute their successes to talent and skill, overlooking the other environmental factors (termed as Fundamental Attribution Error).

So when you get your remote employees to review themselves, you can then compare what other employees think of them, how they see themselves and then compare those data to how you as their manager see them. That gives a wholesome view of each employee.  Moreover, the employees also feel that their own perspectives matter. So giving them a chance to evaluate their own performance can also lead to employee engagement and drive them to access themselves better.

Provide valuable feedback consistently

Most employees are used to working in an office environment where they interact well and receive regular feedback. So when these employees start working from home, they might feel anxious in the face of prolonged silence and may start thinking up negative scenarios. As a manager it is important for you to keep providing them feedback often, and document it. That way they won’t feel disconnected from the work environment and would continue to perform stably. And you will be able to follow the pattern of their performances.

Also read: Why You Need A Real Time Performance Management Software

Have a sense of trust

It’s not easy to trust employees, even when you are working with them in an office environment, let alone when they are working remotely. But in the given situation, it’s something you would need to practice. Even if you are not able to see them in action, you need to trust them, unless you have evidence of them not working.

Evaluating remote employee performance efficiently is a significant element of consideration in the coming quarter. Given the world scenario, it’s important to get it right and make sure that your company and your people, both benefit from your employee performance review process.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you implement seamless performance reviews for your remote employees?

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How to Build and Sustain Company Culture in a Hybrid Work Environment?

Hybrid work environments create unique challenges and opportunities for building and sustaining company culture, but they don’t have to be impossible to navigate. The rise of remote and freelance work has changed the way we look at traditional Hybrid workplaces, but it’s not always easy to put those new ideas into practice. If you have clients all over the world, or if you outsource some of your own functions, creating an environment that values company culture can be challenging. With these tips on how to build and sustain company culture in a hybrid work environment, though, you can bring this approach into your day-to-day life as much as possible without sacrificing quality or productivity.

Not all work takes place in the office, but that doesn’t mean that a company culture can’t be fostered and sustained. With the right strategies, you can foster and maintain company culture even if your team doesn’t regularly meet in person.

Here are 10 ways to build and sustain company culture in Hybrid work culture.

1) Communicate and listen to your employees

No two employees are alike, so why would you treat them that way? So many companies end up treating their remote workers as second-class citizens who can’t be trusted with as much responsibility or leeway, but that’s simply not fair. Do your best to get acquainted with each employee on an individual level; when you do, you’ll find that they’re all working for your success. Your team members should feel like their ideas are welcomed, regardless of where they’re sitting. Keep lines of communication open between yourself and remote employees—good communication will boost morale and productivity.

When communicating from a distance, think about things from their perspective; what is it like for them? What can you do to make it easier for them? Then act accordingly! If you want a culture that promotes trust and growth, then embrace remote work. It takes effort, but it’s worth it in the long run.

It’s also important to remember that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. Although virtual teams don’t have to see each other every day, they still need some form of communication (like video calls) just to keep everyone connected. That said, keep meetings short and focused on goals; time together is valuable! A 30-minute weekly call is enough time for everyone to touch base and check-in with one another—if there’s more information sharing needed than usual (for example project updates), then schedule more frequent calls throughout the week or month instead.

Also read: A Complete Guide to Performance Management Cycle

2) Share Vision

If everyone is constantly looking at their own tasks or goals, then it’s impossible for your team members to see how they fit into your organization as a whole. So begin by making sure that each employee knows why they are part of your company’s vision. It should be evident from their daily activities what role they play within that bigger picture, but there’s nothing wrong with ensuring your employees know exactly how it all works. Provide examples: Show, don’t tell. Create situations where employees can experience working together towards common goals, with success being collectively achieved through individual efforts.

As you provide these opportunities, also highlight how much easier it is to work as a cohesive unit than it would be if everyone was doing their own thing. Shared Values: Once you have made sure that every member of your team understands why they are part of your organization, make sure they understand what values you expect them to carry out during their time with you. This will help them understand not only what makes up good work habits but also what makes up good character. Be consistent: As human beings, we crave consistency and routine so when there isn’t any we feel lost and out of place.

3) What type of culture do you want?

Start by creating a list of values that embodies what your organization stands for. It’s helpful to consider whether your company will have multiple offices or locations, as some cultures can be effective at one location but toxic at another. Also think about how you want employees and clients alike to feel: Are you looking for an innovative team that is forward-thinking? An environment where people are empowered? These are just some of many important things to consider when building culture—and it’s something that should evolve as your business changes.

If your business grows, it may need more structure, while if it shrinks, expect less. Make sure these factors are always included when thinking about what type of culture you want, no matter where you are or who joins your team. What behaviors do you want?

Having established a foundation of what kind of culture you’re looking for, it’s time to move on to behavioral expectations. This part is all about accountability. Once again, make sure there are clearly defined expectations around work ethic, collaboration and communication styles, customer service habits and decision-making processes. Many companies use personality assessments such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tests with their teams so they can better understand how each person prefers to work. When individuals know how they fit into the big picture—as well as others on their team—they tend to feel more motivated because they understand their role within the group dynamic and its purpose within their overall mission statement.

4) Make sure there are clear rules

When you let your employees work remotely, it’s important to make sure they’re not just doing whatever they want. Establishing clear guidelines for working remotely will help prevent your team from becoming too distracted. If you’re working for a growing company, consider allowing employees to work remotely on Fridays or only when their performance is top-notch. Just be sure that you communicate rules clearly upfront so everyone understands what’s expected of them. Before your team members set their own hours, get clear agreements about who owns what duties and how people are expected to perform them (and monitor performance).

Remote work can lead to fuzzy boundaries between life and business—make sure everyone knows where these lines are drawn. The most successful remote workers have bosses who check in regularly with them via phone calls, video calls, email, etc. No matter how good at communication someone is, regular face time with your boss should be non-negotiable.

Set specific goals: If you’re thinking about hiring remote workers but don’t know exactly what kind of role you’d like to fill, set some specific goals before making any offers. For example: Do you need someone to provide customer support? Create a process by which your remote workers can share customer feedback and concerns with other employees if needed; make sure all feedback goes through one person who’s responsible for recording it all so that no customer gets lost in translation.

Define concrete processes: You may find yourself facing unique challenges when managing remote teams.

5) Give autonomy and freedom

The main feature of Hybrid work culture is that it combines remote workers with your on-site team. This means that you don’t need to micromanage your employees. Instead, you can trust them and their judgment. Offer freedom at work; let them work from home or abroad if they want to, and allow each employee to set his own working hours. Give them autonomy over how they do their jobs—as long as it gets done correctly!

Be open about what needs to be done: If you’re working remotely, there are no walls separating your employees from one another. They know exactly what everyone else is doing, which allows for open communication between them. This also helps break down barriers between departments and offices, making communication more effective overall. Encourage your employees to communicate openly by holding weekly meetings where everyone shares what they accomplished last week and what they plan on doing next week.

You could even use tools like Slack or Google Hangouts for these meetings so that all of your teams can participate simultaneously—and you won’t have to worry about scheduling conflicts because everyone will be available at once! 

6) Foster Interdepartmental Communication

Because teams that work together do better work. In departments where managers are of similar rank, be open about your objectives for both sales and service, not just one or the other. Be transparent with each other’s metrics: Knowing your co-workers’ numbers gives you more opportunities to team up and cross-sell each other’s services.

Play friendly competitions against each other: Keep score on games like Quora (the question-and-answer platform) have fun but get you talking across departmental lines.

Start weekly interdepartmental lunches or social events: If you don’t know who people are outside of their cubicles, get to know them! It doesn’t matter if it’s lunch or happy hour, as long as you’re getting to know each other personally.

Celebrate company wins together: Don’t celebrate alone—celebrate together! Everyone wants to feel included when something good happens at work, so make sure everyone feels like they’re part of a winning team by celebrating big wins with company-wide parties and office celebrations.

Share best practices across departments: The best way to learn is from others’ mistakes—so share those lessons learned by publishing success stories from different departments on your internal intranet or sending out an email newsletter highlighting what worked well in different areas of your business. These are some shot steps to building a hybrid work culture.

7) Encourage everyone’s participation

There is no one right way to do hybrid work. How you run your project management software or remote teams may vary from person to person, but one thing that should remain consistent is an open-door policy. Give team members all of your contact information and encourage them to ask questions, share feedback, and discuss problems—whatever it takes. If there’s ever a discrepancy or concern within your team regarding something as simple as email etiquette or communication methods, take time on that issue immediately with everyone who’s involved (both in-person and remote) so it doesn’t snowball into bigger issues later on.

At its core, creating a company culture in a Hybrid work culture means encouraging participation from every single member of your team. Without participation, you can’t foster teamwork; without teamwork, your business will fail. Period.

Communicating clearly and regularly is key to establishing trust among co-workers (and clients). Set up weekly video calls with all employees to keep lines of communication open, regardless of location or role within the organization; even more frequent phone calls are encouraged if they make sense for each individual team member’s situation.

8) Support your employees’ growth

As workforces transition from traditional, in-office jobs to more flexible, remote ones, it’s important that managers continue to support their team members’ growth. This is especially true for employees who aren’t necessarily sitting across from you or working out of your company’s office. You’ll want to communicate with employees frequently and check in on their progress with ongoing conversations about both their career goals and how you can help them reach those goals. Even if you’re managing your team virtually or partially remotely, there are still plenty of ways for you as a manager to learn about your team members’ skill sets and how they operate within your organization.

Keep an eye out for these signs that indicate your employees need some additional guidance: They don’t have many opportunities coming up at work. Your virtual workers may not be getting enough assignments because you’re not giving them opportunities to demonstrate their skill set. While it might seem like assigning tasks will take too much time away from your other responsibilities, consider delegating more often so each employee has something new to do every week (or even every day).

They get stuck on one project and have trouble. If an employee seems stuck on one project and isn’t able to move forward with anything else, ask what’s going on.

Also read: HOW PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE HELPS IN EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT

9) Develop leaders inside your company

By placing perks on offer for employees, you can attract talent that matches your corporate culture and make sure you’re picking up folks who will stick around. We all know traditional perks like free food are a great place to start, but there’s no reason your non-traditional benefits have to be any less enticing. For example, one of our client companies is using membership badges at select fitness centers as employee perks, while another has put together an intramural softball league. A player’s lounge stocked with games like ping-pong or pool isn’t just fun—it also gives workers space away from their desks that they might not otherwise use if it weren’t available. These types of amenities give new hires something to look forward to and keep current employees happy. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

Besides perks like these, consider implementing other company culture-building initiatives into your hiring process. You could try interviewing applicants via video chat, having them complete a project instead of writing a cover letter, or asking them to submit samples of previous work. Doing so will allow you to determine how well candidates would fit into your office environment before bringing them on board full time.

If you aren’t already doing so, take some time to map out what your company culture looks like today and where it needs improvement before drawing up goals for its future state. Note both tangible things (like office layout) and intangible aspects (like attitudes). Then build hiring strategies based on those findings so you can recruit people who align with those goals.

10) Use perks that fit your brand

Whether your team is entirely remote or you have some coworkers who work from home, it’s hard to define what your company culture looks like. Since you’re not all in one place, there are new opportunities for keeping your workforce happy. Instead of offering fun food options for workers who come into the office (it’s easy enough for remote workers to just bring their own), consider offering an employee discount on healthy food items instead. Or, when it comes time for your annual company retreat, don’t make everyone fly somewhere—invite them (remotely) to dinner at a local restaurant instead.

These perks can help people feel more connected with one another while giving you brand visibility that doesn’t cost as much as travel or fancy snacks would. You could even save money by asking your employees to share their favorite restaurants. This makes it easy for everyone involved and helps spread awareness about your business as well.

When thinking about how to build and sustain company culture in Hybrid work culture, keep in mind that building connections between coworkers aren’t always based on physical proximity. By offering incentives that encourage teamwork rather than those based around location, you can build up goodwill among employees no matter where they live or how they get things done during off-hours. These were the 10 ways how to build and Sustain Company Culture in a Hybrid Work Environment.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.

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6 Ways to Effectively Manage Your Remote Talents

Managing remote teams poses many challenges, not the least of which is the constant need to get people together and ensure that everyone’s working on the right tasks. The problem is exacerbated by time zone differences, which can make it a real challenge to keep remote teams productive and on schedule.

While the road ahead of you may be tricky, it’s not entirely impossible to manage your remote talents effectively. Below, we’ve rounded up some of the best tips to keep your team efficient and on track.

1. Set Clear Expectations

It’s important to set clear expectations when working with a remote team. You’ll want to map out exactly what each member’s role entails, from their goals and job descriptions to their weekly responsibilities.

Additionally, you’ll want to let them know what’s expected of them and how much time they’ll have to accomplish specific tasks. It’s also important that you respect the roles that each person is playing in the process and don’t overload an individual team member. Working as a cohesive unit is vital for success when managing your remote talents.

Also read: 7 Reasons Why Goal Setting Is Important

2. When it’s Time to Meet, Meet

Whether it’s for your virtual corporate events or a weekly huddle, it’s essential that team members from both sides maintain a healthy level of communication and regular meetings. This will make sure that everyone is on the same page, which is essential for ensuring that everyone’s on task and productive at all times.

You’ll also want to schedule meetings with your remote team members when you’re in different time zones so they can communicate effectively.

For example, if your employees are clustered around the East Coast, consider scheduling a meeting to have everyone in sync with one another. If your team members are scattered across time zones, consider holding a weekly huddle to ensure that everyone knows how their job is progressing.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your team well-versed in virtual meeting etiquette. Some of them may not be as seasoned as others when it comes to working remotely, so it’s important to remember that there may be a learning curve for other members of your team.

3. Successful Teams Need Nice Things!

If you’re working with a remote team, it’s important to keep an eye on the morale of your group. You should never fall victim to the trap of assuming that your employees are motivated solely by money. As a matter of fact, people are often motivated by more intangible things, like recognition and encouragement.

In order to keep your team members happy, it’s important that you give them positive reinforcement and helpful feedback. Let them know how their work is directly contributing to the success of the company. You should also be on the lookout for opportunities to reward them for their efforts and hard work.

Also read: Tips To Manage Stress Of Your Remote Team

4. Cultivate a Culture for Growth

It’s important to make sure you nourish your team’s well of knowledge. To do so, you’ll want to foster an environment of learning and development. 

For example, you should think about compiling a library of resources to help them stay up-to-date on relevant trends and techniques. Another way you could go about it is by offering your team members mentoring programs to help them sharpen their skill set.

In addition to cultivating that culture of growth, it’s also important that you allocate time for your employees to collaborate together. Encourage them to bounce ideas off one another, swap tips and tricks, and so on.

5. Be Organized, But Flexible

One of the biggest challenges with remote teams is knowing where everyone stands. To make sure you can keep a close eye on everyone’s tasks, it’s important that you create a system that works for you and your team.

This could be as easy as creating an organizational chart or weekly calendar. The goal is to have a clear picture of what everyone is supposed to be doing and when they should be doing it.

One way you can do this is by making sure you have performance management software in place. Here are a few tips you should keep in mind when looking into team management software:

  • You’ll want to make sure that your software works with all different types of devices so you can access your team members from anywhere, but you’ll also want to make sure it’s compatible with most standard operating systems.
  • It’s important that your software is flexible; this will allow you to add and remove members as they’re added or removed from the company. As a result, management software should allow you to quickly send out tasks and track their status so you can stay on top of everyone’s progress.
  • Make sure the software you choose has all the features and integrations you need. This will ensure that you can enable your team members to work from anywhere and collaborate easily.
Also read: Top 10 Performance Management Software To Use In 2022

On the flip side, it’s important that you allow yourself and your team members to be flexible when necessary. Remote teams can easily fall into the trap of over-planning, so it’s important that you allow some flexibility when it comes to assigning tasks. That way, you can avoid any unnecessary roadblocks and keep your team members on task while they work.

6. Emphasize Communication

Remote teams won’t flourish without proper communication. Since you won’t meet in the office every day, you’ll want to collaborate by email and through instant messaging if possible. As a result, you’ll want to establish a consistent communication channel that’s inclusive of everyone.

One of the best ways to ensure this is by having a chat board at your disposal. This way, you can have all members post questions and feedback on their screens as soon as they log in. This helps keep communication between members open and fair between them; it also helps prevent any misunderstandings or miscommunication that could lead to problems later on down the road.

The Takeaway

Working with a remote team can be challenging at first. But if you have the right tools and procedures in place, it can be a positive experience for everyone. You’ll need to make sure that your employees know the ins and outs of working remotely. That way, they can do their jobs effectively while working at home or on the beach.

Learn how Engagedly can make your remote talent management easy by requesting a demo with us!

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Guest blog contribution by Chatty Garrate

Chatty Garrate Engagedly Guest Blogger

Chatty is a freelance writer from Manila. She finds joy in inspiring and educating others through writing. That’s why aside from her job as a language evaluator for local and international students, she spends her leisure time writing about various topics, such as lifestyle, technology, and business.

Virtual Team Building: Making Virtual Teams Work

In the contemporary business world, a spectrum of paradigm shifts is transpiring with the ideation of a virtual work environment at the epicenter. Organizations are increasingly going remote or are embracing the culture of a hybrid workplace. In fact, even employees are more than happy to be a part of permanent remote working arrangements.

More than 95 percent of employees would prefer to work remotely for the rest of their careers. In fact, at present, more than 58 percent of Americans are working remotely as per Findstack. Moreover, Upwork concluded that by the end of 2028, 73 percent of corporate departments will have remote workers. 

Also read: What Is A Performance Management System?

Clearly, the remote working culture is thriving at a prompt pace and it would not be incorrect to say that the future is virtual. However, to ensure that your organization’s remote working or hybrid culture succeeds, you ought to focus on some critical parameters. Needless to say, in this revamped corporate world, there are new critical factors of business success to deliver on. 

Among these determinants of high-performing remote work environments, virtual team building is something you cannot ignore as an employer. After all, an organization’s growth and advancement would always have a direct correlation to workplace relationships. Having said that, it becomes essential for every remote or hybrid company to invest in virtual team building. 

In this thoughtful blog, we look at some distinguished strategies that can optimize team building in a virtual work environment. So, let us get started without further delay. 

1. Make room for candid virtual conversations

If we look at the major challenges faced by remote workers, the lack of personal connections is one of them. In a virtual work environment, interpersonal connections take a back seat and virtual interactions become all about work. So, why not promote greater interpersonal connections in the virtual space?

Your employees will have greater motivation when they feel strong connections with their colleagues. Moreover, there would be greater trust and comfort between them when they have some candid virtual discussions. As a matter of fact, casual discussions in a virtual work environment will help employees overcome communication barriers. 

To explain, as per SalesForce, inaccuracy in communication is the primary reason for project failures as per 86 percent of corporate people. Therefore, there is a need for stronger interpersonal connections among teams to promote prerequisite collaboration. 

In this context, virtual coffee breaks, virtual movie nights, and virtual celebrations on special occasions can help in bridging the gap in interpersonal connections. Your employees will definitely bond well if they have the space to improve their relationships in the virtual environment. 

Those candid, humorous, and intriguing conversations about anything and everything will help them deepen the bonds. As a direct outcome of that, you will see the team collaboration improve dramatically.

Also read: Crucial Conversations: Strengthen Relationships & Contribute Better

2. Engaging virtual onboarding

So glorious is the saga of technological advancements that even onboarding has gone virtual. It’s amazing how remote work is helping the corporate world overcome geographical constraints. For instance, a company based out of Chicago can virtually hire a web developer in Tokyo and that is amazing. 

However, any new employee coming into an organization remains nervous and reluctant at first. In due course of time, they begin to blend into the team environment while having meals together and in-person interactions with teammates. However, that is not going to happen in a virtual work environment in the absence of in-person communication. 

So, to ensure that your new virtual hires feel a sense of belonging in a virtual environment, the onboarding process has to be more welcoming and engaging. A great way to do that would be to bring in more personalization in the whole process of onboarding. For instance, you can send a personalized mail welcoming your new employees and enquiring about their well-being.

Furthermore, the HR department should introduce every recruit to each of their team members individually. Even a five-minute conversation with each team member will give newcomers a great head start to build great relations in the future.

Besides, it is interesting to pay heed to the fact that great onboarding experiences can boost employee retention by a whopping 82 percent. This vital inference from the research carried out by Brandon Hall Group makes an even stronger case for engaging onboarding policies. 

Again, a virtual coffee break can be conducted to welcome new employees on their first day. Besides, such welcoming onboarding will also have a great impact on the confidence and motivation of the new employee. 

3. Gamify employee training

What could be better than your employees in fostering great relationships on the sidelines of gamified learning experiences? In fact, gamified training modules are gaining great traction in the corporate world. You would be amused to know that the corporate sector is the largest consumer of gamified learning solutions. 

If we look at it statistically, the market size of gamified learning solutions is anticipated to reach USD 30.7 billion by the end of 2025 as per MarketsandMarkets. Now, if we look at it in the context of corporate training, 80 percent of American employees find gamification far more engaging. Also, as per FinancesOnline, gamified learning solutions have been successful in driving engagement levels 60 percent higher than usual. 

Having said that, in your virtual organization, gamification in employee training can be an incredible way to optimize team building and engagement. Besides, of course, the effectiveness of gamified learning in terms of employee development too will be priceless to your company. Higher engagement will definitely facilitate better team participation, collaboration, and learning outcomes.  

4. Identify signs of workplace conflicts

In any kind of work environment, conflicts pose recurring threats to the overall organizational morale. Having said that, organizations need long-term strategies to resolve conflicts and hence sustain a positive work environment. Besides, when it comes to handling virtual teams, the top management needs to be extra cautious with handling conflicts. 

This is for the simple reason that in a virtual work environment, there would be a lack of interpersonal communication. Hence, the scope of misunderstandings or signs of conflict would be more than that in a traditional office setup. You ought to be smart enough to pick signs of conflicts and address them before they begin to affect the team morale. 

Moreover, you should look to win the trust of your employees such that they can report their issues to you without any hesitation. This is where you need to incorporate an open door policy in the workplace wherein you are accessible enough to your employees. Who says an open door policy cannot be a part of a remote working setup? 

The key is to resolve team conflicts or interpersonal conflicts before it takes a toll on the entire organization. If you feel a certain development can be conflicting, you should address it with immediate effect. The greater your ability to handle team conflicts, the better will be the state of virtual team building.

5. Encourage cross-functional collaboration

The prowess and effectiveness of cross-functional teams are quite underrated in the corporate world. However, you will be amused to know that in accordance with Stanford research, efficient collaboration across cross-functional teams can optimize success in projects by 76 percent. 

Moreover, cultivating a celebrated culture of cross-functional teams can also be a unique way to foster team building. To explain, when employees from different departments within the organization collaborate, through different webinar softwares like zoom, strong working relationships will be formed. Otherwise, in the absence of cross-functional teams, the idea of team building may remain limited to specific departments. 

However, with cross-functional teams, you can extend the idea of team-building at a macro-level within the organization. There would be more open discussions beyond the limits of specific departments when you promote a culture of cross-functional teams. The outcomes in terms of virtual team building will be incredible. 

At the same time, you also need to ensure that you support remote cross-functional teams with the best communication and project management tools. In a virtual environment, the efficiency of remote working tools will always have a great influence on the state of team building. Strategic communication holds an even greater significance in the virtual workplace. Make sure you are allocating your operating expenses to the most effective tools and software. 

Also read: 5 Common Teamwork Challenges In Workplaces

A CRM software like EngageBay is another great way to improve interdepartmental efficiency, and by extension, boost sales. With all customer data located in a centralized database, all employees can access, view, and update customer information remotely—this eliminates confusion, improves efficiency, and paves the way for exceptional customer support.

6. Introduce reverse mentoring programs

Mentoring programs have become the talk of the corporate world. Business organizations are now introducing thoughtful mentoring programs to promote employee learning and development. Thanks to technology, mentoring programs are now being implemented even remotely in organizations working virtually. Mentoring programs provide a great opportunity for employees to add more value to their impressive resumes. 

This is where reverse mentoring programs can be a great add-on to the league of mentoring programs keeping virtual team building in view. In these reverse mentoring programs, subordinates can mentor their superiors on new technologies, productivity tools, and skills of the new age.

To elaborate, it can surely be a great way to trigger greater employee engagement and bonding between virtual teams. Reverse mentoring programs will pave way for a greater sense of belonging among the young millennials and Gen Z talents that come into the workforce. 

It could be a perfect icebreaker for young talents looking to blend into the work environment. When mentoring programs and reverse mentoring programs run parallel in the workplace, the engagement and virtues of team building will certainly scale to new heights. This explains how the likes of KPMG and General Electric have reaped great success via remote mentoring arrangements.

7. Bring D&I activities to the floor 

The rising inclination of the corporate world towards diversity and inclusion is another paradigm trend of the ever-evolving business world. In fact, organizations are embracing remote and diverse cultures simultaneously. In a diverse remote workplace, the team-building activities need to be inclusive of D&I activities. 

There is a wide spectrum of enticing virtual D&I activities to choose from that can make a significant difference in team building and employee engagement. These fun and engaging activities promoting diversity and inclusion will give a great boost to team building. To elaborate, they will facilitate better association between employees from diverse social or cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, they will help you create a positive and productive work culture. 

As stated above, virtual team building in a diverse organization needs to go hand in hand with the celebration of diversity. Moreover, the greater the inclusion of every team member in the team environment, the more cordial will be the interpersonal relationships. D&I activities can be easily blended into a virtual work environment and can become a weekly affair. 

 To conclude, virtual team building has become an essential fundamental of the modern-day workplace where people are largely connected digitally. Having said that, organizations need to rethink their approach to team building and cultivating effective collaboration. In doing so, the above innovative strategies can prove to be exceptionally effective. It is time you change the status quo to keep pace with the proliferation of new changes in the corporate world. 

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with effective virtual team building? Request for a demo with us!

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How to Develop and Sustain Employee Engagement in Remote Workplace

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in 2019, remote work was becoming increasingly popular. More and more companies realized the benefits of decentralization as well as letting people work from home. But, like with anything else, remote work comes with its own problems, mainly disengagement. It’s very difficult to keep employees engaged from a distance, but it’s also extremely vital to do so.

In the absence of proper employee engagement, your employees will become demotivated and work less effectively. Many companies already struggle with maintaining workplace engagement, but it’s especially difficult in remote work situations. But don’t worry, we’ll guide you on how to maintain workplace engagement remotely. 

What is employee engagement?

The first thing we need to tackle is understanding ‘What is employee engagement?’. The simple answer is employee engagement refers to your employee’s emotional engagement to your organization and goals. Essentially, employee engagement relates to the degree to which your employee is committed and connected to your organization. 

Employee engagement is important for your business because it’s definitive in determining the success of your firm in today’s competitive environment. Highly engaged employees devote much greater time and energy towards their work and create better value for your organization. Ideally, you want all of your employees to be highly engaged individuals so that you derive maximum benefits from them.

Engagement vs Satisfaction 

Some people confuse employee engagement for satisfaction; the two are not synonyms. Employee satisfaction is different from employee engagement. It refers to the extent an employee experiences a difference between what they expect and what they experience. 

Employee satisfaction is also important, no doubt, but it’s very different from engagement. An engaged employee could be unsatisfied, and conversely, a satisfied employee could be unengaged. 

Both employee engagement and satisfaction are subjective feelings. They often coexist, and they’re even connected to an extent. But the key difference is that employee engagement involves a relationship between you and your employee, but employee satisfaction does not.

In other words, employee engagement is dependent on the employee’s relationship with their organization. Employee satisfaction, conversely, does not depend on the employee’s relationship with their company. 

Why you need both engagement and satisfaction? 

Like we said, an employee does not need to be satisfied to be engaged, nor do they need to be engaged to be satisfied. You should approach each of these two feelings separately while understanding that both are important. 

It’s very important to understand the difference between satisfaction and engagement, and especially to understand which feeling happens when. A satisfied employee will not necessarily have to invest a large amount of effort in their work. In fact, an employee could be satisfied while performing only the bare minimum. 

As such, it’s not enough for your employees to be satisfied, but you also have to make sure that they’re engaged. When your employees are engaged, they’ll work better.

Qualities of engaged employees

Now that you’ve understood why employee engagement matters, and you are familiar with the difference between engagement and satisfaction, it’s time to talk about the qualities and benefits of engaged employees. 

Takes initiative

Engaged employees seize the initiative. Because of their faith in their company and belief that they will be properly rewarded for their efforts, highly engaged employees will strive to achieve above and beyond what’s expected of them. 

In contrast, disengaged employees will lose interest in their work. Because of their certain pessimism, disengaged employees will not want to devote any time or effort at all towards work. 

Also, engaged employees are the most productive and able to improve and learn. Their certain optimism propels these employees to devote themselves to gaining new knowledge and learning more. 

Whereas you’ll find that disengaged employees not only actively avoid learning new material or improving their skills, but over time, their existing skills grow weaker from lack of sharpening. 

Effective Communication

Engaged employees are active communicators who enthusiastically share their opinions and contribute to workplace meetings and discussions to advance company interests. 

Disengaged employees, on the other hand, will avoid every possible interaction they can with management and relegate themselves to a corner, away from everyone else. 

Engaged employees will actively socialize with team members during working hours and build strong professional relationships with others. 

Meanwhile, disengaged employees will treat their coworkers poorly, hardly communicate with them, and show complete disinterest in talking to others in the company. 

Positive Attitude 

A positive attitude is one of the best signs of an engaged worker and one of the greatest benefits of employee engagement. Having a positive attitude allows workers to invest far more energy and enthusiasm into their work, generating greater returns for your company. A positive attitude by a single employee also contributes to an overall improvement in the company morale. 

Conversely, a chronic negative attitude is one of the most telltale signs of a disengaged employee. Disengaged employees will develop a pessimistic outlook on work and view it as little more than a ‘necessary evil.’ When employees think in such a cynical manner, they’re far less likely to actively invest themselves in their work. Pessimistic attitudes by a single employee also damage company morale. 

Productivity oriented

Because of their positive outlook on life, engaged employees will devote substantial time and energy towards improving their productivity. Engaged employees fully believe that focusing on their productivity is one of the most critical aspects of their profession and that productivity improvements translate to real-world benefits. 

Disengaged employees will care little, if at all, about their productivity. Their bleak outlook on work convinces them that they will not benefit no matter how much time and effort they invest in their productivity. As such, disengaged employees will actively lose their productive abilities, and their productivity will decline over time. 

What drives employee engagement?

Employee engagement is built upon a foundation of trust, opportunity, and consistent performance. Building employee engagement requires a substantial emotional and resource investment by management. 

Manager Employee Relationship 

Manager-employee relations is the dominant contributor to employee engagement levels. Your employees need to have a good relationship with management, which entails being given appropriate treatment and sufficient opportunity to address their concerns. Therefore, you need to prioritize developing good relationships between employees and management that are based on mutual respect and understanding. 

Intrinsic Motivation 

Every individual has a level of internal or ‘intrinsic’ motivation that they derive from their personalities and ambitions. Each of your employees has an intrinsic motivation that affects their engagement levels. 

You need to understand that you cannot always change an employee’s engagement level by as much as you want. Some employees will react better to attempts to foster engagement than others because they’re just more internally motivated. 

Leadership 

Leadership is an invaluable component of encouraging employee engagement, since employees often receive inspiration from their leaders. Good leadership offers employees hope for future improvements in addition to increased confidence in the company’s overall direction. 

Charismatic leadership can also do much to inspire and encourage employees, raising their morale and helping them stay engaged with the company. 

Performance Management 

Performance management is an aspect of management that involves measuring an employee’s performance over time. Effective employee management can raise employee engagement levels markedly since performance management allows employees to understand their position in the company better and develop the perspective they need to improve themselves.

Building and Sustaining Employee engagement For remote   

Unsurprisingly, maintaining employee engagement in remote working arrangements has become increasingly difficult for managers across the world. The loss of social interaction and organized workflow caused by remote work makes it especially difficult to maintain engagement. 

That being said, it’s not impossible to build a highly engaging remote work environment by following these steps:

Monitor Workload 

Employees with excessive workloads are the most susceptible to disengagement. As such, have your managers place a special emphasis on monitoring workload levels to make sure no employees are overburdened. It’s also important to be sure no employees are under-burdened as well, since it can lead to dissatisfaction with the workplace. 

Have a Consistent Meeting Schedule 

Having routine work meetings can be difficult in a remote working scenario. But it’s especially vital to have routine meetings with remote employees. These meetings are a valuable way for management and employees to communicate with one another and the employer and the organization. 

Make Sure Your Employees Connect

In remote work scenarios, people are far less likely to know or bond with one another. You need to correct this by encouraging all your employees to speak with one another and providing your team with time to acquaint themselves. Having positive professional relationships with their coworkers is one of the best ways for employees to develop positive engagement with their companies.

Reward Efficiency 

Sometimes, the best way to encourage workplace engagement is to provide practical benefits and incentives. Occasionally rewarding the most engaged employees with bonuses or benefits is one of the most effective ways to boost their productivity and showcase to other employees that the best way to improve their office standing is to become more engaged. 

Cultivate a Healthy Remote Work Culture 

Workplace culture has a dominating effect on people engagement at work. As such, you need to make sure your remote workplace culture is positively oriented and can provide your employees with the most positive reinforcement. 

Your employees need a work culture that positively stimulates them, convinces them of future prospects, and emphasizes the positive aspects of remote work for this company. You want to create a work environment where employees actively want to retain their position with you. 

Identify Technology Needs

Using productivity and communication tools is vital for any remote working arrangement. One of the best ways to take advantage of that fact for employee engagement is to purposefully use those applications that your employees support and give positive feedback to. 

Consistently speak to your employees about how they feel about their current tech arrangements and whether or not they need any support. Employee engagement will rise when employees see that organization gives importance to their opinions.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, maintaining people engagement at work is vital if you want to maintain workplace productivity. Engaged employees produce the best results, but engaging employees in remote working scenarios is not easy. Generally speaking, the best way to improve remote workplace engagement is to increase communication, monitor employee performance, actively take employee feedback, and carefully monitor employee performance. It will prevent employees from taking stress and overburdening themselves.

 

How To Build A Successful Upskilling and Reskilling Program

If you have been keeping your ear to the ground, upskilling and reskilling have been the buzzwords of the HR industry for a long time now. But with the pandemic changing the way everyone works, it has become a prime focus for organizations to keep the workforce agile. 

This article is a part of our two-part blog series. In our previous article, we stressed on the importance of upskilling and reskilling your employees. In this article, we will guide you on how to do so efficiently.

Career Pathing And Skill Gap Analysis

Career Path of Employees

Source: rawpixel

HR leaders and managers often end up creating complicated and disconnected upskilling and reskilling strategies for their employees. They are mostly based on business needs, and employees are rarely involved in the process. As a result, it fails to align with employees’ personal and professional goals. Ultimately, such initiatives feel forced and tend to disengage the employees.

Skill Gap Analysis helps organizations to map the skill inventory with business needs and goals. They are able to bridge the gap between the desired and current skills of the workforce and plan for the future. It helps in identifying knowledge and skills missing from the workforce. Career pathing, on the other hand, is the process by which employees chart their career progression and development within the organization. It requires a sound understanding of one’s own skills, goals, competencies, knowledge, personal characteristics, and experience.

Also Read: Giving Constructive Feedback To Peers

A proper understanding of skill gap analysis and career pathing of employees helps in designing effective upskilling and reskilling strategies. When organizations align skill training with an employee’s career path, they are more engaged and satisfied working at the organization.

Shortlist The Eligible Employees

This is one of the most difficult tasks in an upskilling and reskilling initiative. After career pathing and skill gap analysis are over, the next step involves short-listing the eligible employees. It requires thoroughly understanding the skills of each employee and asking the following questions to self as an employer:

  • Is it going to be a department/organization-wide initiative or only for a selected few?
  • Will technology changes or other factors affect any department drastically that will require employee reskilling?
  • If it is for an employee, then what impact it will have on the employee’s current team?
  • Have I identified the critical skills of the employees?
  • How to utilize the secondary and tertiary skills of the employees?
  • Do the employee’s professional goals align with the business goals?
  • Will the cost of upskilling/reskilling be more than the cost of onboarding new hires?

It will give a clear vision and a better understanding of which employees to select for reskilling and upskilling initiatives.

Choose The Method

Employee learning and training

Source: rawpixel

Once the candidates have been shortlisted, the next step involves choosing the correct method for upskilling and reskilling your employees. Here are some common ways:

1) Learning and Development: It is one of the most common upskilling and reskilling initiatives adopted by organizations.

Give your employees access to online academies such as edX, Udemy, Coursera, etc. These online learning options are easily accessible from anywhere and anytime, thus making the process more flexible. It also gives them access to a wide variety of options to learn from.

Organize skill-specific trainings, workshops, seminars, etc., for your employees by industry-recognized experts. Currently, as everything is remote, virtual platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet can be utilized to conduct these events.

Also Read: 5 Tips For Building A Learning Culture In An Organization

2) Job Shadowing and Rotation: Job shadowing is a budget-friendly reskilling process in which an employee follows the day-to-day activities of an experienced employee. The new employee or the employee who wants to be reskilled follows and observes everything the experienced employee does. It helps employees to understand the daily tasks and take up a new position easily.

Job rotations are generally time bound and require employees to work in different departments of the organization. It helps them to understand how other departments function. And also, it gives them ideas on how to improve their own department. Job rotations improve employee retention as employees get more flexibility to change roles within the organization.

3) Mentoring: According to Forbes, 70% of Fortune 500 companies have a mentoring program in place.

Mentoring is an effective way for employees to connect with the seniors of the organization. Presence of a mentor in these uncertain times will be helpful for your employees. Mentoring will not only help them develop professionally but personally too. It also helps them to connect better with the senior leadership and the organization. Invest in mentoring software such as Mentoring Complete that uses their proprietary algorithm and a 3 step matching process to find the correct mentor-mentee match.

Also Read: 4 Leadership Skills To Improve In a Hybrid Work Environment

4) Form Learning Communities: Often, employees who are at a similar level or are from the same department show interest in learning the same new skills. It is a great opportunity for organizations to create peer learning platforms. Employees with similar interests can collaborate and learn together. It will give them a common platform to share learning content, guides, study materials, industry-related news, etc. Not only will it help them learn, but will also allow them to connect with others and stay engaged.

5) Digital & Soft Skills: Although this is not a method of upskilling or reskilling your employees, focussing on digital and soft skills is vital for all organizations.

When the pandemic hit, everything became remote and employees became completely technology dependent. Consequently, it is important for employees to stay continuously updated with the changes taking place in technology. As employers, train your employees on the latest software, tools, and applications that will help them work remotely efficiently. It will especially be helpful to the older generation of employees and bridge the digital gap.

Often organizations focus too much on hard skills or technical skills and tend to ignore the soft skills. Hard skills are important, but so are soft skills. Teamwork, communication, time management, leadership, etc. are some of the common soft skills which are required by employees in the long run.

Measure Success

Just upskilling and reskilling your employees is not the end. Measuring the success of the process is as important. Set up parameters and metrics to track success. Connect with your employees from time to time, learn how they are implementing their new skills and how it is helping them in their job roles. Conduct 360 degree feedback and employee surveys involving their managers and team members. It will give an accurate view of your employee’s performance. The reskilling and upskilling programs can be iterated accordingly.

Encourage Continuous Learning 

Reskilling and upskilling is a continuous process and not a one-time process. Promote a culture of learning, growth, and development in the workplace. Employees should be enthusiastic about learning new skills and improve themselves. They should be excited about and eager to choose their own learning paths and development process. When employees are open to the process of learning, implementing reskilling and upskilling initiatives will become easy.

Want to know how Engagedly can help manage your employees better? Then request for a live demo!

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Upskilling and Reskilling : Prepare Employees For The Future

When the pandemic began 1.5 years back, organizations saw a rapid change in the way they functioned. Not only this, the skill gap which was prevalent because of technology, increased after COVID hit. It became a challenge for organizations and leaders to fill the ever-increasing skill gap accelerated by the pandemic. The solution comes with upskilling and reskilling your employees. With the volatile nature of business and rapidly changing economy, now is the right time for HR leaders and employers to start these initiatives. It will not only help them in bridging the skill gap, but also help them achieve higher retention rates.

Also Read: Employee Retention Strategy – How To Retain Top Talent?

What Is Upskilling and Reskilling?

Upskilling and reskilling, although used interchangeably, have completely different meanings and significance. Both are ways for businesses to help their employees grow in the organization and improve their skills.

  • Upskilling – Upskilling involves employees improvising on the existing skill sets that help them grow in the current role. It ultimately prepares them to take up greater responsibilities and move to more senior roles.
  • Reskilling – Reskilling refers to employees learning new skills to move to different job roles in the organization. This is mainly done in two scenarios: 

i) When an employee wishes to learn new skill sets and transition to a new role in the organization.
ii) When an employer wishes to retain an existing employee and train them on new skills for a new role within the organization.

Also Read: The Top 8 Leadership Skills You Need In 2021

According to McKinsey, organizations that implemented reskilling programs were better able to address the skill gap created by technological advancement.

Skill Gap Analysis

Shrm skill gap infographic

Source

Skill Gap Analysis is a tool or process which helps in identifying and bridging the gap between the current skills and desired skills of the workforce. It helps employers and organizations to identify the training needs, uncover gaps, and help in succession planning, and career progression of employees. It serves as a tool for identifying individuals or teams suitable for upskilling and reskilling according to changing business needs.

Benefits of Upskilling And Reskilling Your Employees

LinkedIn Upskilling and Reskilling Statistics

Source

Improves Employee Retention: Employees when see that their organization is invested in their career development and growth, they tend to stay with the organization for a longer period. It shows that employers and organizations care for their employees, which helps in retaining top talent and improves the overall retention rate.

Saves Costs: Hiring and training a new employee is costly! Getting a new hire onboard involves costs in terms of time and money. A study estimates that in the U.S. cost per hire is $4700, and takes about 42 days to fill a new position. Whenever an organization plans for a new hire, some of the costs involved is: 

  • Advertising for a new role on job portals
  • Short-listing and interviewing candidates
  • Readjusting budget to meet new hire’s salary expectations
  • Waiting for the new hire’s term of employment to get over at the previous organization
  • Onboarding the new hire
  • Training them

Instead of hiring someone from outside the organization, upskilling and reskilling your own employees reduces the cost significantly. Although it involves the cost of training, it is much less than what goes into hiring someone new.

Also Read: Common Mistakes That Destroy Employee Engagement

Helps Bridge The Digital Gap: The new generation of workforce is tech-savvy and cognizant of all the changes taking place in the field of AI, analytics, digital marketing, cloud computing, and so on. Upskilling and reskilling opportunities will help the older generation of employees to adapt to digital technologies easily. It will not only make them technology cognizant, but will also help them perform their roles effectively.

Builds A Culture Of Learning: Upskilling and reskilling initiatives create a culture of continuous learning in the organization. Learning becomes an ongoing process for all the employees. Employees continuously learn and hone their skills to stay updated with the latest in-demand skills in the market.

Workforce Is Resilient: Upskilling and reskilling your workforce prepares them for the future. It helps them to adapt easily and makes them more resilient to market changes. In a tumultuous pandemic-stricken business market like this, a resilient workforce is what makes a business stronger.  

Also Read: 5 Key Focus Areas For CEOs : The Post Pandemic Shift

Employees become more engaged: A continuous culture of upskilling and reskilling keeps employees engaged and motivated. They become satisfied and happy at work. It increases the efficiency and productivity of the employees and the organization.

Upskilling and reskilling have now become an integral part of organization strategy and the way to sustain businesses in the post-pandemic era. Have you identified your employees who are eligible for upskilling and reskilling yet?

(This article is part of our two-part blog series. Subscribe to our blog to get notified about ‘How To Build An Upskilling and Reskilling Program That Works?‘)

Want to know how Engagedly can help manage your employees better in the post-pandemic era? Then request for a live demo!

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Employee Recognition & Rewards: 4 Common Mistakes to Avoid For Remote Employees

When some or all of your team is working remotely, proper communication is critical. Managers need to keep remote workforces engaged and happy now more than ever. Having a plan to recognize and reward your outstanding employees makes sure they feel satisfied doing their job. 

It takes more effort to be vocal about your praises or concerns in a remote setting than in a traditional face-to-face workspace . Whether your team is working from home temporarily or is from international time zones, managers must regularly acknowledge and recognize their work. OC Tanner conducted research that found 97% of employees who quit their jobs listed lack of appreciation as a major reason.  

Here are some common mistakes to avoid in order to keep your employees happy!

Also Read: 5 Benefits of Investing in Employee Recognition Software

WAITING FOR REPORTING SESSION

DON’T WAIT until the next report to recognize employees when they do something outstanding. Call it out immediately. Avoid saving compliments to soften the blow of criticism, as keeping them separate is a better strategy. Be direct and specific about what you liked or how they helped. Not only will this help in making them feel recognized, it will reinforce these behaviors. 

If a customer praises an employee or their work, pass it along immediately. Daily micro-recognitions can help create a work culture of support. If leaders hold a habit of immediate praise, it will spread to all levels of the organization and make a welcoming work environment. Familiarize your employees with peer-to-peer recognition so as to help achieve positive 360 degree feedback.

NOT BEING GENUINE

Employee recognition should be consistent, but not automated. A short and genuine “Thank You” email or text will be more impactful than an automated, cookie-cutter recognition email. If your praise feels forced or hollow, they won’t feel value in their work. A common mistake many managers make is they have generic rewards. Instead, employee rewards and recognition should be tailored appropriately. 

Also Read: How to Support Mental Health of Your Remote Team

When you praise someone, specifically point out how they have improved. It’s also a good idea to praise them for personal achievements outside of work too. Without office small talk to mention personal praises, it is worth having a way to informally keep in touch with employees achievements. Congratulate your employees for buying their first home. Congratulate them on earning their MBA. Throw a virtual baby shower.

WHAT ARE VIRTUAL REWARDS?

Many managers don’t know how to reward their employees virtually. It was so easy in-person. You could just give them a gift card, or buy them lunch. While some of the traditional reward and recognition practices are not possible any more. But, you can still do a lot of those things with remote employees. You can email restaurant gift cards or movie ticket passes as small rewards for a good job. An Amazon digital gift card is a safe gift for anyone. 

Lets not forget about  Employee Appreciation day. Have a themed dress up day, or change your zoom background. Take advantage of the virtual setting and play games with everyone! Make a Kahoot with creative icebreakers for fun team bonding. Instead of a catered lunch, use a delivery service like Doordash, Grubhub, or Postmates to deliver a meal from a restaurant nearby straight to your employees home.

MEASURING ONLY PERFORMANCE

Many managers associate giving an employee reward and recognition when they hit a goal or milestone. There are a lot more behaviors that deserve recognition, such as effort, honesty, dependability, ambition, innovation, professionalism, or problem-solving skills. These qualities aren’t as easy to measure as tracking performance towards a specific goal. Especially in the remote workspace, managers need to take extra effort to recognize when an employee shows these values. 

One important employee measurement to consider besides performance is time management. Time management can help you see what positions are overloaded or are underutilized. Goals for different team members will need to be adjusted based on who is and isn’t making deadlines. To be the most effective, tools like Asana, Trello, or Basecamp. 

Talk to employees about more than just their results, but ask them about their overall process. Did they run into any problems? If they worked with other team members for a project, get feedback about how they worked together. It will take more investigation, but making sure virtual workers are recognized and rewarded for more than just hitting goals will make them feel more valued. 

Want to know how Engagedly can make your remote employee recognition programs easy? Request for a demo from our experts.

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