How to Manage the Remote Employees?

Amid this pandemic, it’s not easy to manage your employees, especially when they’re working from home.
On one hand, you need to make sure that the employees should do their work well.
And on the other hand, you need to ensure that you’re not too hard on your employees.
Here are the top strategies you should use for managing your remote employees –
Make sure that your employees are not in distress
For this pandemic, your employees are already going through a lot. Their job shouldn’t be a burden to them. Instead, they should be glad that you, as a leader are standing with them and showing them empathy.
Make sure that your employees feel that you care for their well-being over everything else. Offer them alternative work models, flexible work hours, ensure that their job is secured, and provide them opportunities for taking emergency leaves whenever they would require.
Shifting your attitude from trying to extract the best output from your employees to giving away the best inputs FOR your employees will make a whole lot of difference.
Encourage two-way communication
When individuals work from home, it’s difficult for them to mingle with a lot of people. And especially in this troubled time, two-way interaction is often very hard.
While they work from home (WFH), offer them opportunities for two-way communication.
From taking a top-down approach to communication, look at them as equal and allow them to express what they feel about this current scenario, the job, the leadership, their career growth, and job security.
When they’ll feel that their employers not only support them but also listens to them, they will feel more engaged in their work.
Remember, trust is the magic word
While it’s tempting to allow a tinge of doubt to appear here and there since they’re working from home, stop the doubt. And allow your trust muscle to flex a little more.
When you trust your employees, they will do the right thing all the time. You need to make sure that you provide a supportive structure for their well-being and growth. And you don’t need to worry about getting things done.
Often the best employees are left alone with the trust that they know what to do for the well-being of the organization. And when you do, you’ll be surprised to see how managing them is often unnecessary.
Channel the empathy through them for their customers
Empathy works like ‘monkey see, monkey do’.
You may give a squint stare while we’re bringing in the monkey phrase, but hear us out.
When you show empathy to your employees, your employees show empathy to your customers.
Here’s how.
A monkey does what it sees being done to them.
If you treat them well, they will treat your customers well.
And during this time, when even your customers are struggling, it’s important for your employees to show empathy and compassion for making business dealing from that perspective.
But remember, it definitely starts with you.
Offer them perks, opportunities to work from anywhere
When your employees are in a client-facing role, you may stress upon working from home instead of working from anywhere.
Your reasoning may be right because when they’re closer to the office, they could come to the office whenever there would be an emergency client meeting.
But think hard.
What if your employees need to be with their parents in a different city, in a distant state. Maybe their parents are not well due to COVID-19. Or they want to take care of their parents during this time while doing the work.
Won’t you give them the opportunity to work from anywhere? Of course, you would do.
Plus, you can also offer an office set-up cost for your employees since they’re already saving on your infrastructural cost when your employees are working from home/anywhere.
In the final analysis
Managing your employees is quite easy while they’re on the remote.
Put in more trust.
Don’t try to exploit the blurred line between work and family life.
Give them everything they need at this moment.
Yes, make profits, but think long-term, not just short-term gain.
When you help your employees thrive, your employees will take your organization to a higher realm; you don’t need to force them.
Let your employees work WITH you, don’t allow them to work FOR you.
And you’ll see a drastic difference.