7th of April 2020 / 15 min of reading
Current epidemic forced a lot of employers to abandon traditional way of working in the office for remote work. Necessity of fast employee management change is directly connected to reorganization of communication channels within company. What to do to keep efficiency on current levels? Which tools can be used to organize work and perform faster?
Contents of the article:
- Main challenges facing managers and team leaders when coordinating and motivating employees working remotely.
- Tools and functionalities improving communication and work management in the company.
- Activities that will make employees work more efficiently.
Buffer survey conducted among remotely working employees informs that only 31% of companies can guarantee remote work for all employees in the company. 40% of respondents works in mixed teams, where some members work remotely and some work on site. During epidemic most companies had to change work organization and that creates new challenges for leaders, teams and employees. What methods and activities can be implemented to make this transition as painless as possible?
One of the most frequently mentioned concerns about working from home is the low efficiency of employees and lack of control over their tasks. We argue that the right tools in the enterprise will increase productivity and systematize both remote and stationary work mode.
Challenges that leaders of remotely working teams face
Changing operational mode requires reorganization of communication system and team management. We have selected 3 most important challenges facing team leaders to systematize and improve the quality of work of colleagues:
- control over assigned tasks
- sharing and co-authoring files
- creation of effective communication channels
Control over assigned tasks when working remotely.
The fear of non-performance by employees who are not supervised is most frequently mentioned disadvantage of remote work. This concern is truth unjustified. Data shows that most often efficiency of employees working from home is higher compared to those working in the office. This is due to lack of distracting factors like loud conversations or other background noises. Structured commissioning and overseeing tasks are key to each project. There are many applications and tools that allow you to generate task lists and monitor the progress of your work. One of them is the Projects Management app in the HCL Connections corporate social platform.
Set tasks to perform, set deadlines and assign employees
Projects Management allows you to generate a project and create task structure form main tasks to most detailed. Each task can be assigned to a specific user or group of users with a deadline for its execution. All tasks will appear in the employee’s desktop grouped by progress (completed, close deadline, overdue, etc.) The option to monitor tasks in a project allows you to control the course of work and catch delays in time. Clearly set goals and deadlines allow employees to organize their own work time and to take responsibility for the implementation of the task..
Sharing and storing files
Information that could often be provided verbally or through printed documents now needs to be accessible on the internet. Categorization, grouping, and granting access to materials is a challenge. Sending information and files through internal instant messaging services creates information noise, and emailing is problematic and takes a long time.
Collect all files you need to work in one place accessible for your employees
The internal HCL Connections platform allows you to collect files within a community of collaborators. It is one of the many functionalities of this environment. Compared to the documents kept on the company’s network drives, files in HCL Connections have an edit history, the ability to add comments and co-create by multiple users. Tags assigned to documents allow you to search for content with just two mouse clicks. The option of co-authoring and editing significantly improves remote work..
Creating proper communication channels
Remote work is also a completely different form of communication with colleagues. As the Buffer survey shows, 17% of remotely working employees indicate struggles with a communication in their team. When completing group tasks, efficient communication is the key to success.
Social communicators race to implement additional functionality and expand their offers. However, passing all information and messages through a common channel is not always the right choice. In a distributed team, the options for joint integration are very limited, and the instant messaging room can be the right channel to maintain loose conversations between team members.
Split communication channels and direct your content accordingly
Using the HCL Connections social platform, it is possible to pass information about the tasks performed between colleagues. Forums allow you to exchange views and discuss the implementation of solutions and they group content thematically. The idea can be discussed, so any co-worker will have a real impact on the project’s development.
User profiles in the internal HCL Connections platform contain information on experience and responsibilities of each user. It makes searching for an expert in each field easy.
Switching to remote work mode doesn’t have to reduce the efficiency of your employees. The key to success is to set clear goals and to create a specific action plan. Comprehensive social platforms such as HCL Connections combine many functionalities in one environment and allows your company to work more efficiently. Once you start working with this environment, your employees will use it even when they return to the office.
Contact us and try the demo environment.
