5 Remote Work Best Practices That Companies Should Follow

In this guest post, Mark Dacanay of RingCentral suggests remote work best practices for maintaining an effective work from anywhere business model.

A lot of companies are augmenting their remote workforce. And it’s not hard to see why. The advantages of remote working arrangements don’t only apply to employees but also to the hiring businesses. Some of these advantages for businesses include:

However, remote work relationships are not all sunshine and roses. If not done right, it can lead to poor employee work-life balance and burnout. Why? Without a clear start and end to their workday and driven by the instinctual need to prove they are productive even without supervision, employees tend to work more than they typically do. And when they reach that breaking point, that, in turn, will affect productivity and overall morale in your company.

That is why companies and employees need to follow certain principles of remote working to avoid pitfalls that can derail and even cause remote work setups to fail. Consider these remote work best practices:

1. Not All Positions Can Go Remote

Do not go remote just for the sake of going remote. Companies and management have to work together to determine the positions that can function more effectively and efficiently remotely or on-site. In addition, companies should also determine if jobs can be fully remote, partially remote, or if they should be on-site full time.

For example, take your IT personnel; some of their functions can be done remotely, like providing remote helpdesk support. But some of their tasks, like maintaining servers, need to be done on-site. For them, a hybrid setup where they work partially remote and on-site will be the best route. By following this principle, you avoid the risk of having employees fail just because they are not on the right remote work path.

2. Micromanaging Doesn’t Work, but Remote Workers Still Need Supervision

When working with remote employees, micromanaging styles go out the window. Supervisors can no longer just pop their heads and check their employees’ monitors to see if they are doing their job correctly. There must be a balance of trust that remote employees know what they are doing and availability when they need guidance.

But while micromanaging doesn’t work for remote employees, too much independence can also hurt. Yes, you can no longer micro-manage, but it doesn’t mean you leave your employees be as long as they provide results. While results are important, the journey towards them is just as essential. That is where collaboration happens and where good ideas turn to great ideas and, in turn, churn out better results.

Supervisors have to balance their employees’ need for independence while guiding them and keeping them connected to the team and the company. As a supervisor of remote employees, you should always be aware of the following:

3. Culture Is More Important Than Ever

When you discuss company culture, people immediately think of an office setting. But it does apply, too, in a remote work environment. With employees working alone and away from their peers, it is easy to feel disconnected from the company. When that happens, an employee may feel like a freelance contractor instead of an actual employee — someone hired just to do something specific and nothing else.

As a company, you want your remote employees to feel that they have a stake in your business — that your company’s success is also their success even if they are not in the office physically. Nurturing a positive culture is one of the remote work best practices that companies are striving for recently. That’s why it’s critical to put every effort into building a great culture within your remote workforce. Consider implementing social programs and activities that can be participated in remotely. Take advantage of video conferencing and webinar technologies to get your employees in the same room virtually.

You can even encourage people working in the same cities to meet face to face while the company foots their expenses for meals and activities. There are many ways to get people engaged with your company, even if they are working remotely. You just have to be creative about it.

4. Cloud-Based Tools Are Your Friend

It’s not a coincidence that the number of people working remotely rose as cloud-based apps and software became much more available to more businesses. In the past, a lot of the business software that could elevate your business and increase productivity and efficiency needed their own infrastructure and were pretty expensive.

Now, businesses no longer have to spend as much when managing remote teams. They can simply subscribe to the cloud service they need and use it for as long as possible, then unsubscribe when they find something else better. And since users can access these cloud-based apps anywhere as long as they have internet access, it’s perfect for companies with remote employees.

The best part is that for every business need, there’s a cloud app for it. Need customer relationship management (CRM) software? There’s Salesforce. Need a phone system, messaging, and video? There’s RingCentral. Need a productivity suite that includes a word processor, slides, and spreadsheets? There’s Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workplace. Not only do these tools make your employees’ lives easier, but they also increase their productivity and efficiency while also improving their output. It’s a win for everybody.

5. Measure What’s Important

Productivity has traditionally been hard to measure even with in-office teams; it’s doubly hard when it comes to remote teams. Whether with on-premise or remote employees, companies have to realize that when you have different teams with different functions, the way you measure their productivity and performance should also be different from each other.

Here are some sample metrics that show the difference of how the employee or team’s functions dictate their key performance indicators or KPIs:

These examples show that proper measurement of performance and productivity is really based on what the remote employee is doing instead of a general metric that is applied to everyone. 

Conclusion 

With remote work dubbed as the future of work, great companies will be measured on how well they can provide a healthy virtual workplace to their employees. By considering these five remote work best practices to guide your decisions when managing your remote workforce, you will show current and future employees that you value what they bring to your organization and always have their welfare in mind.

Author Bio

Mark Dacanay is a Digital Marketing Professional who has been working with RingCentral offering business phone solutions for more than five years. He is obsessed with anything about the cloud – the technology, not the fluffy stuff in the sky.