As the novel coronavirus outbreak spreads throughout the world, more and more countries are taking precautions against its onslaught. NBA games have been cancelled, schools are suspending classes, and while workplaces cannot shut down completely, they can instead opt to have their employees work remotely. This not only ensures that business operations continue rather than cease, but more importantly, this ensures that your workers are safe and secure.
Not all businesses have measures in place to help them manage a remote workforce. It’s for these businesses that this article is geared to help. So, what are the things you need to keep in mind in order to handle your remote workers effectively?
Use Team Collaboration-Oriented Programs And Apps
The very first concern you need to address is on how you’re going to maintain collaboration with your team while you’re working remotely. Communication tools such as Skype and Slack are going to help you maintain communication with your team, while cloud-based apps such as Google Docs and Google Sheets can help maintain a semblance or cohesiveness as you work online.
Establish Online Payment Systems
It’s also important to establish alternate payment methods, especially if you won’t be able to hand out cheques to your employees. Bank transfers are fine, but if you want to be more secure, you might also want to consider online payment methods like PayPal, or you might even want to outsource finance functions for maximum convenience.
Set Clear Expectations
It’s difficult to maintain discipline over a remote team. You have to expect that they aren’t going to perform exactly the same way that they do in an office setting. But be that as it may, it’s still important to make your expectations known so that your team knows what their roles are, and what is expected of them. When working with remote teams, the only thing that matters is that results are achieved, so long as the means to get those results do not damage the business in any way.
Set And Update Project Milestones
It’s also important to set deadlines and a schedule of milestones for your team. This not only helps keep your team goals in mind, but it also ensures that members of your team have a definite schedule to follow. This allows them to allocate their time properly, which is often the most challenging aspect of working remotely.
It’s also important to give regular updates as well as to ask for regular updates on progress so that the members of your team are aware of how a particular project is going and so they can make the necessary adjustments to minimize the risk of failure. This ensures that you team members know that there are tasks to complete, and this will allow them to dedicate their time and resources to accomplish the task.
Even when your business is not affected by the epidemic, you might want to consider implementing a contingency plan where your employees would still be able to keep operations running, even from their homes. The coronavirus won’t be the only situation where you might want your team to work remotely. We have the technology to run businesses online, we might as well make good use of that technology.