Are You in the Best Position to Support Your Remote Employees Better in 2023?
Supporting your remote employees is something all companies should focus on in 2023.
Your developer is in Atlanta, your designer is in sunny Los Angeles and your copywriter in a small town in rainy Ireland, for some reason. It’s very 2023, but it can also be very hard to know what they need from you, as their employer, to support them. Can you blame remote work for that?
Not really. Let’s face it: a lot of companies weren’t good at figuring out what their employees needed, even when they were sitting right in front of them, in their cubicles.
Remote work is a relatively new way of working, yes – but what we also need, is a new way of managing employees. By looking at them as more than just that: it’s acknowledging what people need to thrive. That’s only fair if you expect them to help your company do the same.
If you already have some employees working remotely, or you’re planning on embracing this in 2023 – hurray for you! To support you, here’s some advice on how to support your employees.
Ask questions to understand and adapt
When onboarding new employees or having a one-on-one with your current staff, have a conversation – not just a checklist to go through. If you want to boost employee retention, get to know your employees, for real. Not only by making them feel more connected and heard, but by adapting to what they’re telling you.
A list of standard topics to talk about often limits people, and that’s not the vibe we’re going for with remote work. Regularly have a non-guided one-on-one or ask for input through channels like Slack or Teams. Even gathering ideas and thoughts anonymously is a great place to start.
Ask about their work habits, how they like to work and what goals they have. Figure out what blockers they encounter during the workday, whether those are coming from their company or their environment. The more you know, the better you can adapt.
Here’s some inspiration for when you’ve gone over the formalities:
Do you have a separate and suitable workspace in your home?
How easy or hard is it to switch off work at the end of the day? Why?
What three things would make remote work even better for you?
Do you have a routine you follow or do you work better taking it day by day?
How often and how long would you ideally take breaks?
You might not be able to provide everything they ask for on the spot. Still, understanding where their limitations come from can smooth out communication and workflows significantly.
Use the right tools for remote work (and use them correctly!)
It doesn’t have to be complicated: remote workers often travel lightly, and ideally, that goes for their work tools as well. But take a good hard look at what tools you will need to work efficiently. Both for employees, as the ones managing them.
Take OKR tracking software, which helps everyone to be aligned and work on what matters to your mission. If you use this right, this feels less like working too KPI-focused, but it shows more how you want to bring focus, so people don’t have to waste time on tasks that don’t matter. A tool is only as good as your intention with it!
Set up strict boundaries
There are plenty of remote collaboration challenges, but one of the biggest pitfalls of remote work is that everyone does it their way, or even in their time. Ideally, there’s a lot of overlap. In reality, though, there are a lot of clashes.
When telling your employees what you expect from them, make it also abundantly clear what you’re not expecting from them.
Unplugging after work hours is hard for 40 percent of full time remote employees. Quickly answering that message or email, or checking how that campaign is performing while watching Netflix.
Ambition and drive are great, but it’s a slippery slope toward burnout.
Gather feedback from your team and together (that’s a keyword here!), set up boundaries. That can look something like:
Checking and answering email only two days a week
Communicating maximum response times to emails in email signatures
Ditching the word ‘urgent’: realizing you’re not surgeons or firemen
Having days or hours in which you don’t have to check Slack or Teams
Not having work apps on your personal mobile phone
If everyone is aware of these rules, and they are communicated loud and clear, people won’t feel guilty when not replying to late-night messages. Ideally, they won't even see them come in!
Give your employees the work spot they want
Enabling remote work is not just about ‘not having to go to the office’. If you want your employees to thrive, optimize what that remote working setup looks like.
It helps massively if people have the option to go to a coworking office when they need it. Not just to battle loneliness, but also to boost productivity. A whopping 69% of coworking space users say they have picked up new skills there. Skills they can apply in your company, straight away.
You want your workers to be able to work in the environment that is best for them on any given day, and that might vary per day.
This also means that investing in proper home office equipment is directly investing in your business.
Focus less on hours, more on deliverables
Companies that look at remote work as a perk, are missing out – big time.
Remote work is a tool, one that comes in the toolbox for the New Way of Working. Where you work doesn’t matter as much anymore. How long you work, neither. What you should focus on, is just the work.
It can be scary to go off schedule and give your employees that much freedom. But for companies adapting to remote work, it only makes sense. If you allow your squad to work in a place that fits their needs most, but push them to do so in times that are inconvenient to them, you’re only reaping half of the benefits.
Check in with your team to see if they would prefer a flexible work schedule, and what hours overlap. Ask them how long it really takes them to do their jobs – not to put more on their plate or less on their paycheck, but to optimize their working days, making you the coolest employer on the playground.
Support your remote workers in their ambitions
Finally, supporting your remote employees means allowing them the freedom and flexibility they need in order to pursue their dreams. If you want to keep your employees engaged, remote or not, focus not only on your own business – focus on theirs.
That could mean allowing them to take on freelance opportunities or launch their own businesses while still being able to call themselves part of your team.
Scratch that. Allowing is the bare minimum: support them in it.
Giving your team members this level of freedom will not only give them more job satisfaction but will also bring new ideas into your organization which could lead to increased innovation and collaboration among teammates both near and far away from one another.
Ready to do remote the right way?
That’s a trick question: as you might have gotten from this read, there are countless ways to do remote work. Your employees have the answers to finding the best one for your business, so start asking those questions. Happy remote working!
Vicky is a freelance copywriter with more than five years of experience in copywriting and content management. Having been working remotely since before it was cool, she wants to do things differently, in every way of her work. She has been working for SaaS brands, small businesses, coaches and companies in a wide and wild variety of sectors for over five years, empowering them to adopt a tone of voice that is daring and different.