Amidst the pandemic, companies started working remotely as workers couldn’t engage in office tasks physically. But moving forward, no one ever imagined this would remain common practice. When employees have been given this excellent way of working, why would they even miss coming into the office?
More and more workers started opting for virtual work and today we see that many companies are totally remote to support their workers and maintain their productivity. Gartner’s recent study states that 74% of employers are making plans to permanently shift toward a remote work culture. They believe that working from home cuts down a lot of expenses and is also comfortable for employees. That said, maintaining a high level of productivity throughout the year remotely is a challenge.
So, what can a positive work culture do?
- Enhance employee morale
- Lower stress level
- Increase job satisfaction
- Hasten productivity
- Reduce turnover
To accelerate the business growth upwards, some companies have already started incorporating various strategies and some are going the extra mile to keep up their virtual pace. However, everything has its pros and cons. Since employees are working from their homes, they have full control in managing their work environment daily, which is why they sometimes face work-life imbalances harming their productivity. To remove this, we’ve incorporated effective ways to build a positive workforce in this blog. Your remote team members can now get a chance to rebuild their work-life balance and boost their productivity with the help of these four ways.
1. Promote employee’s health
Taking care of your employees must be your topmost priority. In the end, your productivity will only go high if your employees are in sound health. Perhaps you can start a small wellness program in your organization or create an incentive for a team outing, or even arrange a decent meal for your employees.
Doing this will show them the supportive nature of your organization as well as bring them closer to work. So look for healthy options to make a flexible environment for your employees—like extending mid-day breaks or allowing them to take an early off to enjoy recreational activities.
2. Recruit differently
In the long run, flipping your team from physical to virtual form would require a different recruitment approach. You must set a job description that is suitable for a remote team. Since many employees are seeking virtual offices that they’re also willing to cut down their pay for this flexible work model, using HR management software can simplify your work. To manage online tasks effectively, there are many automatic solutions—Pypa HR is one such. Apart from setting employee profiles to reporting, this software has a calendar scheduling feature to arrange a perfect date and time for taking interviews. Thus, helping improve the virtual recruitment process. You can get it on the lesser expensive side, as it’s suitable for growing businesses fitting small to medium-sized companies.
3. Plan your organizational structure
Maintaining a sound organizational structure gives clarity to your workflow and helps retain more employees in your organization. But if the case is reversed, workers might look on the greener side.
So, it’s always better to create a hierarchy within the organization defining the roles of employees. Doing this will ease the process of decision-making, enhance the performance of workers, improve operational efficiency and also eliminate functional duplications. Apart from this, identifying the company resources and making changes in your virtual work culture would effectively retain old employees too.
4. Conduct weekly video calls
Text communications can fulfill the day-to-day operations of your team but if you want a personal feel while discussing virtually then video calls are the best option to choose. It can give employees a chance to interact face to face and discuss conveniently in group calls. This helps your remote team to stay focused on their work, however, many workers might not feel comfortable with video calls. For them, you might just switch to text communications at times but remember to schedule weekly calls for sure.
A face-to-face call interprets your tone and interactive nature that’s seen through the video for a better understanding of facial expressions. Some of the excellent options that you can choose for your video call communications are Skype, Google Duo, Zoom, or even MS Teams.
Summary
Having a positive virtual work culture ensures the stability of your organization and its employees. It paves the way to success by recognizing issues and fixing them whenever possible. The 4 ways discussed above might be the solution to your organization’s problems while working remotely. However, for a smoother workflow, you can make use of employee management software like Sage HR that’s award-winning and has already served the UK, the US, Canada, and 40+ countries. This might be on the expensive side but their perfect solution fits any business size with multiple features from managing timesheets to expenses.
