Whether you’ve only just switched to working from home as a result of COVID-19, or you’ve been doing it for a while, you’ll be familiar with the challenges.
As an employer or manager, perhaps the biggest concern when making the switch to working from home is productivity.
But don’t worry – there are plenty of tried and tested ways to keep your teams productive while everyone’s working from home. Here are our 4 favourites:
1. Make achieving goals fun with gamification techniques
Gamification techniques can help dispersed teams feel connected. In a nutshell, gamification means using technical solutions to introduce game-like elements – such as progress bars and leaderboards – into the working day. If you have a sales team, for example, you can encourage some light competition with a race-to-the-top digital leaderboard – all accessible and viewable from anywhere. Employee rewards and recognition, like winning trophies or badges, will help boost motivation and encourage progress too.
Gamification elements, like winning badges, will boost employee motivation
2. Give teams a place to collaborate on projects
One of the first challenges to address when moving to a work-from-home model is how to collaborate digitally. It’s not practical to hold video conferences which go on all day, but thankfully there are loads of solutions that help teams collaborate from afar. With a digital workplace, you can create what are essentially chat rooms – channels where teams can come together to chat about specific projects. In this way, you’re ensuring dynamic, collaborative work can still take place even when teams are geographically separated.
3. Ensure one-to-one relationships are maintained and nurtured
The concept of the “one-to-one” meeting is a mainstay for remote working. Put simply, a one-to-one meeting gives managers and their staff the opportunity to discuss how they’re feeling about their work projects, and really anything else – including any concerns about their productivity while working remotely. Sometimes having even this small outlet (and a person to confide in) can be enough to encourage a person to feel a little more motivated.
One-to-one meetings are also a good place to discuss any motivational or productivity issues in a non-judgemental setting. Not only do these meetings help make your team more productive, but they’re also a great way to address feelings of isolation and disconnection which can crop up when working remotely.
4. Leverage productivity tracking tools (but do it transparently)
This can definitely be a bit of a tricky topic. Nobody likes to feel like they’re being spied on, so productivity tracking tools should be used with caution and complete transparency.
Your teams are likely to do their best work when they’re feeling relaxed, and not if they feel like they’re being watched too closely. Understanding what makes them feel productive will help you source the right tools, whether that’s using task management software to keep track of progress, or setting up SLA timers in your Business Process Management workflows.
