How To Increase Productivity Of Remote And Distributed Work Forces

Michael Finnigan
Jun 22, 2020

We are going through a tough time with the COVID-19 pandemic wave hitting the world.  ‘Work from home’ protocol adopted to keep ourselves safe has made remote workforces the new normal. But that hasn’t necessarily changed business goals and deadlines much. This is a challenge to the managers, as they become obliged to ensure that the remote workgroup performs just as well as usual employee groups functioned before the new work culture was adopted.

Here are 4 important steps that managers can adopt to address communication and productivity issues that could arise from the part of workgroups that are not acquainted with working remotely.

Integrations Of Communication And Management Tools

Integrations allow remote-friendly teams to connect on a regular basis with little effort. SaaS platforms that are based on communication have now become virtual offices where employees who are working in different time zones communicate one-on-one and also in groups. Microsoft Teams and Slack have become some of the important spaces to facilitate daily team interactions that contribute to building a sense of teamwork.

Progress Should Be Made Visible And Simple To Understand

Combining the methods to measure your performance with goal-setting processes is an important strategy that can be employed to motivate the employees. Through such an approach, employees gain a better understanding of how well the business is performing, figure out areas of personal improvement, and find opportunities for specialization.

To make sure the company is operating smoothl while working remotely, employees should have an unambiguous idea about prioritizing their time, sticking to deadlines and tracing task processes. Knowing individual responsibilities is not just enough. Every employee should clearly know what the tasks assigned to them as well as to their peers are. They gain this knowledge only if organizations remain transparent at all levels.  

Use Data To Increase Productivity And Check Communication Breakdowns

Data is a crucial tool that assists everyone in an organization in tracking the impact of their work on the entire business. It helps people set goals, manage them, and follow a work pattern that can bring out positive results.

Most of the organizational management and unified communications software has now begun displaying data in a dashboard format for users to draw necessary conclusions from it and make data-fueled recommendations.

Employing proper data-collection methods and putting the collected data together in an easily understandable manner helps employees working at different levels of the organization immensely. Data allows executives and managers to see the issues that have occurred and identify irregularities and performance issues if any.

Connect To Employees Personally

Working in remote platforms can be a source of frustration. Distributed working environments often make it extremely difficult to maintain coherency with even the simplest of tasks like parsing the meanings of phrases, emoticons, and punctuations in written communications becoming overwhelming for at least some employees. Comprehending communication in an in-person work environment is quite easy, as it has the advantage of context but in virtual environments, employees take some time to figure out the exact emotion behind a communication. Language differences add up to the challenge of global organizations.

To ensure that day-to-day work is done properly and bottom-line goals are met, managers can make use of the latest tools and technology but they have to keep in mind their long term goal. Ensure that your employees stay engaged, productive, and happy. Take time to call them up or leave a little reminder (it could be something like a mailed card or a link to the book they will like). It assures the employees that they are not forgotten and work is not going unnoticed. When they develop a belief that there is a bigger purpose to what they are doing, their productivity is definitely going to increase.

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