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-Chandan Kumar
Remote jobs, these two words became famous during the most depressed year of this decade, the year of COVID-19 or the coronavirus pandemic, traces of which can still be found distributed in the air according to the UN health agency’s officials. The whole nation was under lockdown and work life was disbalanced in every domain. Trying to maintain the work culture in the world because we cannot put the world at stop, the company started asking employees to start working from their homes to prevent the spread of this deadly disease. This was the time where the meaning to the word remote jobs was highlighted and was at full boom. Each and all company’s employees were doing the work sitting in their homes managing everything. This was a matter of great concern for the company as their work efficiency was gradually decreasing because after all who works from the comfort of their home, isn’t it true? Nobody wants to take laptops in their bed and work under the warm quilt. This led to many problems for the companies mainly the HR department. This was the real time to showcase their talents of leadership skills and managing team work when they can’t reach employees physically. Well seeing the present the pandemic is gone for good but the work culture of remote jobs is not just a trend but a reality. Still there are many employees working remotely which have many benefits for the company also like for e.g., if a company is yet to grow exponentially and they have enough to hire new talents but not enough to expand their offices then remote jobs really come in handy. But there are many challenges HR have to face to manage the remote army. Piktochart has been a remote first organization since 2021 and they have now become a fully remote company and according to them being fully remote is the way to move forward in the world today. According to Gartner, 90% of HR leaders believe employees will be able to work remotely beyond the pandemic.
Let’s explore the key strategies and best practices HR managers can implement to ensure productivity:
1) Right way of virtual onboarding
The HR should ensure proper onboarding of employees virtually so that employees are made comfortable with the plans and expectations of the company. Both the company and employees should be made familiar with one another during this virtual onboarding.
2) Selecting the right tool for communication
Communicating thoroughly is the best way to get the maximum output from the employees. There are many tools out there who help HR to conduct regular meetings to keep a check on the progress of work. Some of the tools in the market are Microsoft teams, Zoom, Google meet etc. Choosing the right tool is really necessary as the meeting can be used for various purposes like presentations or live editing works etc.
3) Nurturing team management
Team management is one of the very important parts of remote works. The HR’s can discuss strategies for keeping the remote teams engaged and to their full potential. Planning out the proper flow of work to the employees and setting a clear company’s expectation from the employees. The HR can practice different virtual team building activities etc so that the remote employees are familiar with each other.
4) Consistency in learning and development
The company can discuss about the importance of ongoing trainings and developments for the remote employees. How they can upscale their skills with the ongoing or yet to start virtual development programs that the organization are introducing. They can highlight about the different e-learning platforms and sites.
5) Work Security
Nothing that is on the internet is safe in today’s world so the HR should focus on telling the employees about the importance of cyber security the ways in which they can secure their online as well as offline data because data theft can be done in n number of ways.