How we work is changing very fast.
A recent study conducted among UK businesses suggests that four-day workweeks are not a bad idea. The study discovered that contrary to entrenched concerns of lazy employees and poor delivery, most of the firms involved experienced significant productivity increases and lower stress among their employees. Many participants want to stay on a four-day work week.
A shorter work week isn’t ideal for every business. But all companies should take a closer look at how they work. The World Economic Forum even predicts that two-fifths of the world’s employees will eventually work remotely. It’s become a norm for people to alternate between the office and elsewhere.
But without the proper culture and support, employees can cheat the system, such as using mouse movers and even Lego to fool productivity monitoring software. Remote work can become a big problem if there isn’t a healthy alignment between the business and its employees, says Sandra Crous, MD of PaySpace.
“We’ve learned a lot over the last year of what works well and what doesn’t for hybrid work. You manage remote teams completely differently from a face-to-face environment where everyone works in the same building. It is very, very different.”
PaySpace has discovered that remote working offers significant advantages and makes it a strategic priority. During this transition, Crous and her management team learned several essential insights. They elevated employee engagement in several ways, working harder to reinforce the company culture, finding ways to make remote employees more human, and even limiting meetings.
Collaborate with employees
In a remote and hybrid work environment, managers must pay attention and take the initiative to make their people’s professional lives easier. They should talk to their subordinates and give them ways to communicate their concerns.
“You have to give employees a platform where they feel secure, where they are honest and open about the things they struggle with in a remote world,” says Crous. “These can be confidential meetings, anonymous surveys, private Teams rooms, to name a few.
“But if you don’t know what your employees are really thinking, and you can’t see them enough in person to get a real sense of where they are at, you must give them other avenues to confidently share their concerns and opinions about their work lives.
“Also invest in tools that recognise excellence –it’s important people get the credit they deserve, publicly and in person.”
To help employees navigate their work, don’t keep them in the dark. Provide clear short term and long-term goals. Doing so will help them plan and make understand how important their role is. But foremost, it shows you trust them.
“Once you have communicated the strategy, give employees autonomy to work,” she says. “You don’t want to put stress on a person by not empowering them when they work remotely. So, trust for me is fundamental when you’ve got remote teams. You want people to feel safe and not be completely stressed out. It’s so important to set clear goals and boundaries.”
Community and culture
Most employees enjoy remote work. But some might feel they miss the human connection as they no longer spend as much time face to face with their colleagues. Community is a crucial part of keeping teams cohesive and productive, and it’s important to celebrate employees as humans.
While this happens intuitively in physical office environments, the empathic gap created by a remote meeting can be substantial.
To counter this, Crous and her team emphasise humanness. “At the office, you don’t have any pets next to your desk. But when you work remotely, there’s a good chance that you’ve got a pet around. Allow people to make that part of the activity, to introduce their furry friend to the internal colleagues on the call.
“We are all human and working remotely will mean that they are getting to know the human on the other side. It’s not just about work; we really care about the person.”
Other examples include encouraging colleagues to introduce their children on Friday afternoons or talk about exciting hobbies in their lives. Companies can provide spaces to encourage this type of bonding – PaySpace has started introducing Microsoft Viva Engage, a company-focused social network where employees can join communities and share personal interests.
Expressing humanness and joining communities helps reinforce the business culture, which is the glue holding a productive workforce together. The real challenge with remote working is how it can impact culture negatively.
The office is not a natural culture source – it just happens to create culture with less effort. To encourage an effective hybrid workforce, don’t take culture for granted. Reinforce it by providing employees channels to express their concerns and ideas, giving them support and autonomy, and cultivating trust in their abilities.
And, if you want a quick start, Crous suggests no-meeting days: “We have declared Fridays as no-meeting days. Honestly, I once thought it wouldn’t work. But it’s been one of the best initiatives we’ve implemented. Look at how to help your people connect and feel appreciated, and you’ll get a lot from remote workers.”