Remote jobs are increasingly appealing. The prospect of working from home and effectively removing the need to commute is very attractive. Studies have shown that remote workers are happier, more engaged, and more productive when compared to their in-house counterparts.
However, this also has its downsides. The same study mentioned earlier also shows that 27% of remote workers have difficulties when working due to the fact that they are not in the same place as their team members. Of course, due to being separated from the rest of your team means that remote workers have a lower quality of relationships with their coworkers. There are many factors that influence and could affect the remote working experience.
Like any workforce, remote working brings its own set of challenges when it comes to keeping in touch with your employees. As such, there are many things to consider when hiring, and keeping a healthy working relationship, remotely.
Trust
When you hire someone, that usually means that they’ve met your expectations and requirements, and that you have gotten a feel for their personality; if they are the type to take a task head-on when assigned to them, or if they are the type to wait for feedback before progressing on a project. Remote work brings with it a level of ambiguity, someone is working on a project, that you have assigned to them, from their home, and the idea of a person taking advantage of this ambiguity is not far from the minds of employers. However, when assigning tasks to remote workers, it is important to have a certain level of trust with them. When you choose your team, it is crucial that you have enough trust in them to get work done. Of course, your guidance and direction are necessary for much larger and more significant tasks.
Trust is a key point in building and maintaining a good working relationship with your remote workers. As an employee, knowing that your employer or supervisor trusts you to accomplish a task can be a big boost in morale.
Communication
When the person you work with isn’t in the same room as you, and only reachable through messages and calls, good communication is essential. Oftentimes it is easier to discuss ideas in person rather than through screens because we can gauge others’ reactions and custom fit the conversation for others to better understand our point. This factor works hand-in-hand with the technology available, with capabilities like instant messaging and video chat, expediting the need to check up on team members’ desks and calling for meetings to just pinging the chat, and ringing for a video conference.
This being said, communication can make or break a remote team. The possibility of a member who lives in a different time zone can make scheduling meetings quite tricky. Keeping your team members in the loop and involved in the project is vital to the success of remote work.
Technology
Working with people from another country on a day-to-day basis would be impossible without access to today’s technology. Imagine relying on mail to collaborate with someone who might be halfway across the world, either nothing would be accomplished, or both of you would create wildly different things than discussed.
It is today’s technology that makes remote work possible, and it would be a gargantuan misstep if you did not take advantage of the various technologies to ease the communication process between people living in different countries. The addition of applications such as the RSSC system also greatly assists in keeping track of team members’ progress throughout the day. Now with applications offering the ability to contact one another in a select group, or to host a group video chat, granting the ability for more in-depth conversations as most human communication relies on facial expression and body language to convey reactions.
These factors have a huge effect on the success of remote staffing, they are also an integral part of why remote work is even feasible. The combination of today’s technology with age-old business practices and cultures makes remote work, not only appealing, not just beneficial to both employees and employers, but lasting.
