The trend of remote work is on the rise and it will stay here for long. The business owners who want to continue work from home long should look out for different ways to foster employee engagement.
The growing impact of coronavirus has forced various companies to work remotely so that they can maintain social distance. But, the biggest problem for companies and managers is how to manage a distributed team.
If you want to retain the efficiency and productivity of employees while they are working remotely, then managers should keep track of the work progress of employees and foster employees’ engagement as well.
Here, in this article, we will describe the top five tips and tricks to foster employee engagement while they are working from home:
1.Conduct Regular Meetings
It is important to conduct a regular meeting with employees. These meetings will help in keeping track of employees’ progress and also help in discussing the problems that they are facing while working remotely. The regular check-in meetings will improve the work efficiency of employees and also increase the employee’s engagement. While working remotely, one thing that employees miss the most is face-to-face interaction.
Therefore, regular check-ins are very important for efficiently managing the employees who are working remotely. When employees are working remotely, then managers find it difficult to understand what is going on. This problem can be solved by doing frequent interaction with employees.
Managers and team leaders should organize regular and recurring meetings with team members. We recommend you use tools such as video conferencing software for meeting with the whole team and delegate tasks. By putting in these kinds of efforts, your employees will feel more connected with the organization even when they are working remotely.
2. Appreciate Employee’s Contributions
Another best way to foster the employee’s engagement is noticing and appreciating the team’s work. If possible, offer rewards for appreciating the employee’s contribution. This tip will not just help in improving employee engagement, but also help in increasing productivity, raising worker’s loyalty towards the company, and also increase the retention rate. Even your little efforts can help you to go in a long way.
Thus, the team leaders and team managers should keep in check the team member’s contributions and appreciate their efforts. Even a simple email by the manager in which the employee is appreciated for his/her efforts would help in increasing the morale and productivity of employees. By highlighting the hard work and positive behavior of the employees, productivity and employee engagement can be improved.
3. Collaborative Goal-Setting
It is imperative to set achievable and attainable goals for the success of your team. If you want to ensure that your team achieves the specified goals, then it is imperative to create collaborative goal setting. This kind of structure can help in attaining a high level of employee engagement. Consequently, it will drive a positive work environment and also increase the productivity of all employees.
To create effective goal setting, it is important to outline various small and actionable steps. Effective goal settings can help to empower team members to take responsibility and improve their skills. The biggest problem faced by the managers while managing team members remotely is low productivity.
The collaborative goal setting will help foster the employee’s engagement and increase the productivity of employees. While discussing the goals, managers or team leaders should highlight the individual efforts for achieving the specified goal.
4. Encourage Participation
Along with setting the collaborative goals, managers and team leaders should look out for various other different ways to collaborate with team members working remotely. The managers should listen to the ideas and opinions of their team members. When employees in an organization are valued, then they feel more connected, even when working remotely.
The managers should do a video conference with all team members and discuss the work progress, ask for ideas for improvements and also do some discussions not related to work. This kind of video conference will increase the participation of employees and they will feel more valued.
5. Personal Connection
Managers and team leaders should also talk to each employee personally. It will help the managers to determine the problems faced by different employees. While working remotely, the different employees face different problems.
Thus, managers should conduct meetings with individual employees and ask about their problems. This kind of effort will help in creating a positive work environment and also increase the productivity of employees. The biggest challenge for the managers is personally connecting the employees.
We recommended you choose the last working day of the week to organize meeting individual employees in the team. Through these types of meetings, managers can build a good relationship with all employees and foster engagement.
Tags: Distributed Teamfoster employee engagementManaging Multicultural TeamsRemote team