How to Improve Efficiency and Productivity in Remote Teams?

Regarding the business world, two words always pop up: productivity and efficiency. If your business is efficient and your employees are productive, you have a winning combination. Here’s how you can ace managing remote employees.  

Building such a utopian business is not easy because improving efficiency and boosting productivity must always be done retroactively. You can make plans and strategies to make workflow more efficient and use all the tips and tricks in the book to help keep your employees on task.   

However, the best method is to analyze your current efforts and strategize improvements based on your current system.  

Project Management Tools for Managing Remote Employees!

Things get messy, especially when you reach a stage where you are either expanding or facing a downturn. That mess becomes catastrophic if you have yet to put in effort towards improving your business’ efficiency beforehand.  

Here’s how you can use a project management tool to help with managing remote employees well:  

Find the Perfect Project Management Tool for Your Team  

There are many different kinds of project management tools; don’t assume they are interchangeable. Even within similar project management solutions, some stand out. They may offer more features. They may make it easy to integrate into other tools and systems so that everything can be handled from one central 

The best product roadmap software can help your teams improve their organizational efficiency.  

It can help them cut down on unnecessary delays and ensure that they deliver in the most optimum manner possible. Companies seek to obtain the highest productivity levels in a remote work setting.  

Additionally, a tool should be able to integrate with other software solutions that the business and its employees use. Thus, making managing remote employees easier!  

Can Handle Task Delegation 

Task delegation is a trademark of any project management tool and is one of the features most businesses should look for. The only time task delegation is not straightforward is when it comes to creative teams.  

Though it will be different for creative teams, each member should know what they are doing. Including the general structure of the tasks they have on their hands.  

Makes Approval and Edits a Cinch

With one creative project management system, your team and stakeholders can be involved. Forget the days of sending emails back and forth just to show the next minor update to the spread.

Today, stakeholders can view, ask for edits, and collaborate in real time with your creative team to improve and then approve the project for publication.

This real-time review and approval process means you cut down substantially on the back-and-forth edits. Around 80% of tasks are typically approved with two or fewer edits, taking a lot of stress out of the project, all thanks to one online portal.  

If those stakeholders are clients, you can vastly improve transparency and visibility. By inviting those stakeholders into the process in such a way, you can provide that extra level of value that turns one client into an ongoing relationship.  

Works with Other Systems You Use

The last thing you must remember regarding the tools you choose is integration. Using the creative suites with your creative management program should be easy.

Such a small step makes it easier and more fluid for remote teams to work effectively and productively because there is no roadblock in their creative process.  

Encourage Health and Wellbeing

An important part of managing remote employees is ensuring they are doing well. The right project management tools will help your team work collaboratively, but if they feel horrible and their mental health is in a bad place, they will not work as well as they would otherwise. It can feel like you have no control in these areas, but that is the furthest thing from the truth.  

There are many ways that you can support their health and wellbeing.  

Flextime

One of the best options is to offer flextime, which allows employees to get their work done when they can throughout the day. This is ideal for parents, those who have health concerns, and those struggling with their mental health.  

Be Compassionate

The last thing you want is for employees not to let you know of issues at home that will impact their quality of work. Be supportive and compassionate, and work together to devise a compromise.   

If they are struggling because a loved one was just hospitalized, you will get better work out of them later by supporting them now and giving them the time to properly care for their loved one, or, in the worst-case scenario, work through their grief.   

Don’t give up on a quality employee who would otherwise be with you for years just because they are going through a bad period.  

Support Their Development

People who see a future with your business tend to work harder and more productively. Employees can shine and have a real hand in changing and helping your business grow to see it as their own. You want this.   

You want them to see your success as their own because that is how you encourage motivation and dedication, even amongst remote teams.  

Either do this with raises and promotions, but continuing education is one tool many businesses don’t rely on enough. Train your team up. Help them build the skills they want to learn.   

You’ll benefit, as they’ll be inspired to work harder and in new, innovative ways. You can provide that incentive to love your business even when working from home.  

This doesn’t have to be a costly option, either. Once a month, offer one employee the chance to go on a training course, workshop, or conference as available.  

You could even sponsor and pay for them to complete an online course and receive a certification. Spread out the opportunities, and you can budget for this benefit while reaping the rewards throughout the year.  

It is important to remember that efficiency and productivity can be improved in two main steps. Firstly, to improve the morale and support amongst your staff. Secondly, to speed up workflows with the right tools.  

With this combined approach, you work to help improve the efficiency of your business from two approaches. Humans will not respond the same way as machines and vice versa. But by approaching the two sides independently, you can work to raise standards across the board.  

Other Ways to Boost the Productivity of Your Remote Workers

Here’s how you can improve the efficiency and productivity of your remote workers. The following hacks will prove to be helpful, too:  

Emphasize performance

Just because remote workers do not have to travel to and fro, they cannot spare extra hours to get work done. This is a common misconception that increases the remote worker’s probability of experiencing burnout. 

The job’s demands should be independent of the working hours one completes. It should focus on the quality of work and the remote workers’ deadlines.  

It is essential that, as an employer or even middle management, you redirect the focus on the remote employee’s ability to meet the demands of their function.  

If a remote worker faces delivery issues, try to collaborate and bridge the gap.  

Offer Wellness Stipends

Stipends are a great way to boost remote employee engagement, as it makes work interesting for them. This is from their perspective of working with more enthusiasm.  

This is similar to the employee’s bonus but specifically for their wellness. For many companies, remote work has become the norm after the pandemic.  

Moreover, since then, companies have begun offering stipends to remote employees for their health and wellbeing. Anyone who has worked remotely will know that sitting in one place takes a toll on their health. This is particularly true with remote employees, who hardly even move in comparison to on-site employees.  

This is why you must have a way for employees to keep fit so that they stay energized with this model. Wellness stipends help with the same.  

You can offer specific bonuses for gym memberships, other health activities, and diet or exercise apps. You may even provide mental wellness stipends where they can get access to mental health resources.  

Eliminate Low-Quality Meetings  

Meetings that are too frequent and lack a set agenda can hamper productivity. If you have been calling meetings where employees have to multitask while the meeting strays away from the agenda – curb those.  

Moreover, instead of calling frequent update meetings, seek feedback or responses over emails or team communications. This helps with concentration on the work at hand, thereby increasing productivity.  

These hacks can help you support remote workers and boost their efficiency and productivity.  

Wrapping It Up

Now you know how to ace managing remote employees and boosting their productivity. Handling a flexible workforce should be like clockwork. Apart from using an effective team management tool for remote employees, focusing on their needs would help.  

The article lists a few such hacks to manage and encourage remote employees. Application of these hacks can give you positive results in efficiency and productivity. A few of the fastest ways to have a enthusiastic, efficient remote team. 

What are your thoughts on flexible schedules? Tell us in the comments.

Additional Reading:

• How To Keep Remote Employees Engaged?
• How to Manage The Risk Of Remote Employees
• How to Protect Employee Relationships When Working from Home?