Checking in With Remote-Working Staff: A Guide

Since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, many of us have been asking our workers to perform their daily duties from home TBH. If you own a large office space, you’ll have seen it vacated in favor of the home-working new normal. And, if you’re a firm that operates with digital technology and computers, you’ll have found this shift remarkably easy to perform. But this shift to online work doesn’t mean that you should stop caring about your staff, and ensuring that they’re all happy and productive. This guide suggests the opposite: you should pay extra attention to the morale and the happiness of your staff when they’re working from home.

Personal Calls

One way to show that you care – and to check in with each and every member of staff each week or month – is to organize a personal call with them during their working day. You can schedule these one after the other on a certain day, or you can take one call a day from one member of your staff. The choice is yours. What’s important here is that you give your staff members time to share their annoyances and qualms – and you can make notes and respond to their dissatisfaction in your future planning.

Communication

Other than these one-to-one personal calls, you should also be using communication platforms constantly while you’re working from home as a business. This means getting used to Microsoft Teams or Slack or Google Hangouts – all of which can take some time for your staff to begin using effectively. Remember that your workers are social creatures – and that many of them will be starved of this social time when they’re out of the office. Creating more social time for them to enjoy, through digital communication, will help your staff check in on each other over time. Keep them actively engaged so they don’t drift away and get distracted by Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

Surveys

If you’re keenly interested to get a sweep of opinion quickly from your staff, you can do no better than emailing out a digital survey for them to complete. This is far more effective than taking the time to ask each employee what they think about a certain change that you’re planning on making to your business – and it can help you to understand what the entirety of your workforce is thinking about a certain topic. Use the employee survey wisely in order to receive great feedback about any part of your management style or business plans for the future.

Meet-Ups

While it is important, in most cases, that employees are made to feel comfortable working form home and not going into the office, you should consider organizing the occasional meetup for you and your staff – if it’s safe to do so. This will give your team morale a much-needed boost in the coming weeks, and it’ll be a chance for you all to see each other in the flesh after so many different Zoom encounters.

Use the tips outlined in this guide to create your own remote-working solutions to help your staff feel better and more satisfied in their jobs.

How can we stay in close contact with remote working staff?

Other than these one-to-one personal calls, you should also be using communication platforms constantly while you’re working from home as a business. This means getting used to Microsoft Teams or Slack or Google Hangouts – all of which can take some time for your staff to begin using effectively. Remember that your workers are social creatures – and that many of them will be starved of this social time when they’re out of the office. Creating more social time for them to enjoy, through digital communication, will help your staff check in on each other over time. Keep them actively engaged so they don’t drift away and get distracted by Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

Additional Resources:

Remote Work and Job Satisfaction

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