What is remote workforce management?
Workforce management is set of a series of processes that are used by any company to optimize its employee’s productivity. Workforce management makes certain that employees with the necessary skills are available to meet job requirements — whenever needed. Remote workforce management is the practice of effectively leading and managing remote employees. This typically comprises a mix of communication, processes and technology specifically designed for leading a productive remote workforce. Companies that are more fully invested in successful remote workforce management also often offer substantive training around relevant remote work topics, both for managers and employees.
Remote workforce management can be highly productive if done right. Let’s take a look at some features and practices that can efficiently help in the objective.
Guidelines for effective remote workforce management
- Clarification about guidelines and expectations: Micromanaging of employees should be avoided. There should be strict schedules, well specified work objectives, goals and performance tracking etc. so that workforce is not left at guess work. This enhances and supports the working of the taskforce into productive aspects.
- Setting up regular check-inns
- Technological advancements and investments
- Ability to analyze and listen
- Increased social interaction
- Celebrating achievements, such as presenting a crystal award to recognize exceptional contributions, and building trust in people.
Challenges involved in managing remote employees are rooted in the lack of physical, in-person interaction.
- DISTRACTION
- ISOLATION
- COMMUNICATION
In addition to these technological issues such as poor Internet connections (or outages) can also create remote workforce management challenges.
To ensure continuous communication with your remote team, using proxies like Geonode is helpful. This will help your team from different places access an IP address depending on what location you want to use and will secure good communication that will lead to a successful workforce management.
Best tools in support of the remote workforce management
- Communication
- Project making, management ,and tracking of work in progress
- File sharing and storing
- Conducting required meetings
Hi-fi: top five benefits of remote workforce management
Increased productivity
The basic and prior benefit in benefit of incorporating such type of management at your workplace is all their research and resourceful approach leads to increased productivity of your workforce. Nothing is left to the guessing work of employees. It has been observed that these remote teams have the capability of getting more work done and this directly adds to the productivity of your workforce. A recent study found that 53 percent of the remote employees are willing to work overtime.
Reduced turnovers
Using remote work options help the companies to retain their top talent. Remote workers are usually seen to have a higher level of satisfaction from their work and they are willing to stay with their respective organizations.
Increased savings
Empowering workers to engage in remote work saves both the company and employees a significant amount of money. As for companies, savings come in the form of less money spent on office real estate, furniture, janitorial services, electricity, and other overhead costs. Additionally, one of the benefits of remote workers is that companies are able to reduce spending on the purchase and maintenance of technology. Remote workers can use their own devices and manage projects through their cloud software.
Increased wellness
People who work from home also enjoy lower levels of stress and increased work/life balance, which enables them to spend more time being productive and less time taking off from work to go to the doctor. A major benefit of a remote workforce is that it allows your company to breeze through cold and flu season with significantly less absences.
Access to top talent becomes easy
Hiring only talent in your geographical area greatly limits your options, which is why so many HR managers are using video conferencing to find top talent outside of the company commuting radius. When you are open to employing remote workers, you open your company up to the opportunity to have the best and the brightest join your team for much less than you would spend to hire someone in-house. Many companies have found a flexible workforce to be a scalable solution that empowers them to stay on-budget during busy and slow times and avoid overstaffing and layoffs.
Key skills
The six key skills for a successful remote working environment are:
- Empathy and understanding
- Efficiency in problem solving collaboration
- Adaptability and flexibility in any working environment
- Efficient time management
- Digital literacy
- Better oral communication
Remote work affects management and remote workforce management affects business workings and taskforce. This is high on rise and it’s with good reason. Employees save time from getting more work done, that makes them happier with their employment situation thus, improving their work balance.
In remote workforce management systems everyone claims a win-win situation. Many companies are also investing in company monitoring software for better data collection and efficiency.
