Remote work is slowly becoming a fixture across all industries. It benefits businesses by significantly increasing employee retention. According to an article on work setup preferences by Vox, 1 in 3 employees would quit their jobs if they were not allowed to work from home. If your business chooses to follow a remote work model, you can save money that would have otherwise been spent on hiring and training new recruits.
For your company to benefit from remote work, you must first have to maximize its potential and implementation. Here’s how:
With work-life balance, employees can rest more, enjoy recreational activities in their downtime, and then focus and be productive when it’s time for work. This is especially important in industries like healthcare, where burnout is rampant. The Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology published a study explaining that this burnout is due to occupational stress compounded by health crises and an increasingly aging medical labor force. However, the telehealth platform Wheel suggests that physicians can avoid burnout while providing quality and accessible care. This is because telehealth, a remote way of providing healthcare services, gives physicians more flexibility with their schedules. They can accommodate patients in their own time, and patients can access healthcare whenever they need it. Doctors even have the option to shorten their clinic hours on some days if they need to while still providing quality and accessible care.
Working alone can lead employees to feel detached from the company. Schedule regular calls to help them feel more connected to each other, their team leader, and their company. You could conduct a casual but professional team call or hold a quick video conference for a fun and informal conversation. This should be aside from your team’s regular onboarding meetings, should there be any. Alternatively, you can also reinforce personal connections through one-on-ones. PR and marketing company Red Javelin Communications co-founder Lisa Allocca would reach out individually to her employees, asking about their opinions to keep them involved in company affairs. These one-on-one calls can also serve as avenues to hold simple and friendly conversations about things other than work on a more personal level. This way, you can build company culture and employee retention, even remotely.
Just as employee development is a norm for on-site work, it is also a crucial part of maximizing remote setups. It keeps your employees engaged and reminds them that the company values them. The hospitality sector is one industry that’s already reaped benefits from this remote work strategy. Human Resources Online shares that hospitality workers can receive learning customized according to their profession and departments. Multinational hospitality company Marriott International does just this with their employee training program, which is designed according to an employee’s position, team, and market to acknowledge that different roles and teams have different work experiences as well as learning requirements. Though Marriott does not completely work remotely, this is one strategy you can implement in your own business. As discussed in our article “4 Examples Of Mobile Learning For Skills Training”, all you need to do is design position-specific programs and make these available on an online digital platform for your remote workers.
As remote work relies on technology, reinforcing security measures can protect company data and your employees’ personally identifiable information. You can get started by issuing encrypted company laptops that employees can use strictly for work. Equip these units with antivirus software that can detect and defend against malware and viruses. Multi-factor authentication, firewalls, and data loss prevention tools are a few other measures you can implement to ensure that your remote employees aren’t vulnerable to data breaches. You can also educate your employees about best practices that could prevent them. For example, you can advise them to strengthen the security of their home Wi-Fi passwords by not using accessible personal details like birthdays and addresses. You can also provide your employees with a company VPN connection to hide their remote work browsing data from malicious actors.
Remote work reaps benefits for companies and employees alike. With several ways of maximizing the remote setup, it only becomes imperative for companies to standardize these moving forward.