Ten Genius Ways to Support Your Remote Employees

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Remote work is here to stay. Use the ten methods in this guide to better support your remote employees and make your company stronger.

Fun fact: 16% of the world’s companies are now fully remote (DataProt). What this means is that millions of employees have left the traditional office and are now doing their day-to-day work tasks at home, instead. Collectively, this has benefited both business owners and employees.

Of course, remote work does have some challenges. However, these challenges can be overcome — and it all starts here.

As the manager of a company with remote employees, you can optimize the following methods to provide the best possible support to your remote employees, whether they’re software developers or part of your cybersecurity team.

Use API Monitoring Tools

API monitoring tools are great if you want:

Productive remote employees
Happy customers

When you use API monitoring software, it collects and looks at data related to the performance of different APIs. If a problem is found, such as your website or app being down, remote employees can be notified about this immediately, which will allow them to be as efficient and productive as possible.

Similarly, API monitoring also ensures that problems are kept to a minimum. Again, this makes sure that remote employees can get more tasks done. For example, remote software engineers can release new updates and features for your applications.

Provide the Right Tools

It’s important to provide your remote workers with the right tools that they need. Naturally, the tools they need will depend on their specific roles. However, more often than not, remote workers will need a headsets, mouse, training for specific apps (such as Microsoft Teams), and more. This is especially important when you have remote employees in IT and customer service.

Hold One-to-One Meetings

Because remote employees aren’t with you in person like they would be in a traditional office, communication is automatically made harder. However, regular one-to-one meetings can help to eliminate this issue. The most popular platforms for doing this include Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet.

During these meetings, you can discuss employee targets, company goals, and give general feedback. As a result, your remote employees will be able to adapt accordingly.

Optimize Remote Employee Monitoring Software

Next, you’re going to want to optimize remote employee monitoring software. This is an excellent tool that helps to keep standards high and create trust amongst employees. Right now, Hubstaff is one of the most popular platforms that you can use for this, but there are plenty of other options on the market, too.

Organize Virtual Team-building Games

Some of the top companies around hold virtual team meetings every month. These meetings aren’t designed to be super formal or anything of that nature. Instead, they’re designed to provide remote employees with the opportunity to build stronger relationships and have some light-hearted fun — with virtual games being at the center of it all.

From virtual quizzes to virtual charades, the opportunities are endless here. At the end of it all, the most important thing is that everyone enjoys it and gets something valuable out of the team-building exercises.

Embrace the Cloud

Without cloud-based applications, modern-day remote work wouldn’t be possible. This is why you need to embrace the cloud and squeeze as much juice from it as you possibly can as cloud applications are key to remote work success.

Some of the most commonly used cloud apps among remote employees include Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Drive. The only downside to some cloud applications is that any non-experienced remote employees of your business might require virtual training first so that they can get used to them.

For example, you might find that some of your employees require training to use Salesforce, which is completely normal. Luckily, there are many different resources you can provide them with, from training courses to online videos detailing how to use Salesforce in simple and easy steps.

Collect Feedback

Whether you have ten or a hundred remote workers working for your business, it’s a good idea to collect feedback from them on a regular basis. Feedback can be done in the form of virtual questionnaires with the option to fill them out anonymously. From the feedback, you can then identity any potential trends and make positive changes based off them. For instance, some remote employees might want help with their internet connection (or something of a similar nature).

Create Remote Employee Handbooks

Remote employee handbooks (both physical and digital) are great tools for employees to have when working from home.

Whenever they have a question on their mind or need help with a particular task, they’ll be able to refer to your handbook and (hopefully) find the answer in it. This helps to speed up daily work tasks and reduce the need for conference calls.

Trust is Key

By trusting your employees and avoiding the micromanagement trap, it provides them with peace of mind and more confidence when it comes to work. Essentially, when you’re not afraid to trust your remote employees, the benefits that come with this trust are endless.

Create an Excellent Onboarding Process

This tip is specifically for future employees. When a remote employee signs up with your company, you need to have an excellent onboarding process. This should involve clear discussion of expectations, advice and information on training, a look at your company’s goals, and regular check-ups in the early days. This combined should make life much easier for all your new employees, as they’ll feel welcome and assured.

Final Thoughts

So, there you have it — you now know the ten best ways to support your remote employees.

Moving into the future, remote and hybrid work is only going to become even more widely adopted. As a result, you’ll likely find yourself hiring additional remote employees to join your business, no matter which industry you’re in.

When you’re prepared for these employees and can provide them with the best possible experience, then the potential for success is unlimited.