As businesses dive into the digital revolution since last few years, both Organisation, Employers, Managers and employees are faced with challenges of remote working. The organisation who were hesitant for remote working does not have any option with this lockdown for COVID-19 crisis. Employers trying to keep their business running and employees struggling to work efficiently with this remote working.

During this current crisis, all companies have started working from home for all its employees.However all the employees are not equipped with the Work From Home Culture or Remote Working practice.

Number of employers were very hesitant to allow their employees for remote working before this Corona Virus Crisis. Since the crisis becoming more pandemic day by day, all the cities are in lockdown, so at this moment there is no other option available except working from home or to follow remote working practice.

Employees are struggling to work from Remote, while Managers are struggling to adopt the skills needed to lead the team remotely .

However the people who can not cope with this changes will be left behind. As we all know that you cannot learn swim without jumping in to the water. This situation will be a tough exam for most of the employees, managers, employers to exit or to lead and move ahead.This is avery learning experience for each one of us in the organisation. The person who can cope of this changes will move ahead.

Obstacle for Remote Working

1-Few Employers are not confident for Remote Working and they love to discuss only in person.

2-Most of the manager does not have practice to manage their remote team.

3-Few old generation employees didn’t feel that work can be done through remote.

4-Most of the employees does not have proper infrastructure for Remote Working.

The below is a note on How to Manage Remote Working Effectively.

1-Provide Proper Infrastructure for each of core employees or for all employees if possible.

2-Let the Manager reach to the Employees
As a normal practice Manager use to assign the work to the employees and Employees will update to the Manager as on when required or at the defined interval. However during Remote working its better if the employee communicate to the manager effectively. Else the Manager should reach to the employee. Manager should be very flexible to reach out by the employees through remote. Else both manager and employee will suffer and work will not be completed as per the time.

3-Set Target– Each team should have target. The target can be divided in to daily,weekly, monthly, quarterly, half yearly and yearly. The target of each team to be segregated among the team member.

4-Be Goal/ Solution Oriented instead of Effort Oriented-Few employer likes the employee when they spend more number of hours in office . However during this remote working, its not possible to track how much time they spend effectively in front of system, instead of that it’s better to be Goal / Solution oriented rather than how much effort the employee put.

5-Increase the Number of communication- On Average 3 call/ interaction per day is a good move. One call can be at the start of the day, second call is at middle of the day and the final call is at end of the day to check and ensure target is achieved.

6-Use any Video Tool to communicate with team– It’s better to communicate or interact with the team through any video call in tool like Webex, Teams, Skype, etc. instead of audio call. Interaction among the team is a vital part to make it effective.

7-Always make the employee feel that you are there for any support-The Manager can send email or communicate every day or every week that managers are there for any support needed by the employee.

8-Employees Value Addition-Make the employees feel their value and contribution for what work they do in the organisation.Make the employees feel how their contribution helps to achieve the organisation Goal in short term and in long term.

9-Follow up with the team very often-It’s always better to follow up with your team to complete the job.

10-Keep the team at Same Page- If you are taking any new initiative , please ensure all the relevant team and team members are in same page at any given point of time.

11-Since people work from home, practically the team will get disturbed during this office time. So it’s better to be practical instead of giving warning for not on Desk. You can monitor the productivity.

12-Focus on Individual Productivity Instead of how much time employee spend in front of system.

13-Focus on team productivity instead of monitoring how much time the team spoke with each other or how much time they had meeting or call.

14-Send Target Vs Actual goal for each team and team member at regular interval for each day, each week.

15-Performance Report-Send Performance Report for each employee

16-Reward and Recognition-Give Reward and Recognition

17-Thank You Note-Send a Thank you email to the people who perform best.