7 Tips For Hiring Best Remote Employees
Build an efficient remote workforce
Benefits of remote working and steps to build a productive remote working team
Today, employers are striving to enhance employee productivity. Statistical analysis conducted by many noteworthy institutes has proven that remote working ensures better employee efficiency, which indirectly helps employers garner more profits. Remote working options also help organizations hire the best talents across territorial boundaries. However, organizations need to have well thought out remote working setups and plans to ensure that employees are giving their best remotely. This blog will provide you with all the key steps to create productive remote teams.
Remote working allows employees to work from any convenient location. For example, a travel agency in Dubai can hire developers remotely to develop and maintain their website. The employer does not need to incur additional accommodation for employee relocation. Laurel Farrer, in her blog titled “5 Proven Benefits Of Remote Work For Companies,” has presented the combined analysis by institutes like Gallup, Harvard University, Global Workplace Analytics, and Stanford University. Remote workers are around 40 % more productive, display 40 % fewer quality defects, and show 41 % lower absenteeism than those stuck up in office setups. The statistical data indicates how remote hiring benefits employee productivity and accelerates employer profits.
7 Points to Help Set up a Remote Team
Most companies have flexible working hours for remote workers. They can work from the location of their choice without being stuck in any official setups. However, there needs to be some regulations and guidelines to ensure maximum productivity. In such situations, a remote hiring agency looks after recruitments and verifies employee backgrounds.
Hire the right people
When you decide to run an organization or a team remotely, you have the option to choose employees from any part of the world. However, make sure the employees have great verbal and written communication skills as your entire team will be running on healthy communications. Look for responsible and honest employees who will be dedicated to their tasks and deadlines no matter what. Also, employee productivity is hampered due to the lack of office socializing setups. You need to trust the people you hire and stop worrying or nagging them about their whereabouts constantly.
The right communication tools
Make sure you provide a good communication platform for all your employees. Employees can call, chat, or share screens as and when required through this communication platform. A communication tool will also indicate if an employee is away from their workstation, in a meeting, on-call, active, on leave, etc. This will help other employees who are trying to contact a particular employee. Make sure the communication tool you choose will be able to handle the whole team on a single platform at one time.
The right management tools
Equip yourself with some great project management tools. This will help your team to collaborate and work together on a single piece of work. It should also help them track the progress of the projects. Tools, where the delegation of tasks can be done efficiently, will help managers to track work progress and employees can also plan their daily work. This will ensure that work is equally distributed and no employee is sitting idle or is being overworked. Managers can also get to know how many tasks are in progress, completed, or have to be started yet.
Automate everything you can
Automation helps reduce the size of the remote working team. A smaller team would mean lesser management problems. It will also help eliminate employees by using tools that can perform redundant and boring tasks. Most automation tools will need high initial investments, but over time the profits due to automation will be higher. Automation will also help you engage employees to do more important and meaningful tasks. Employees are not going to feel happy or productive after being engaged in mundane activities.
Information Security
In offices, data would be protected due to official security guidelines. In the case of remote hiring, data security is a major concern for most organizations. Make sure you prepare a strict guideline for employees that will ensure that they take all the appropriate steps while handling the organization’s or client’s data. For example, regular password maintenance, privacy-ensuring setups, and software that will raise warnings when data is transferred into any private devices. Employees breaking these remote hiring rules will have to face immediate action as per the prepared guidelines.
Schedule daily check-ins and regular 1:1 meetings
Once the manager delegates tasks to the employees, he needs to plan a time of the day when he will contact each employee personally and ask them about the progress of their work. Sometimes, employees do not change the status of their tasks on the management tool. There are days when an employee might be working at a slow pace. When the manager asks about the progress daily, the employees will have a sense of responsibility to complete their daily work. A regular one on one meeting will also help the employer get to know about the hurdles or obstacles that employees face while performing their tasks.
Provide constant mental support through activities and games
Working from home in a non-socializing environment can become a big challenge over time. Employees may feel depressed and lonely at times. To avoid such situations from hampering work, employers need to provide timely support to the employee. Workshops and online sessions for better mental peace and stability will help the employees a lot. There can be online setups where the Human Resource department can plan games or various activities for the remote working teams.
Avoid These Mistakes While Handling Remote Teams
1. Do not take away employee holidays
Working from home does not allow employers to take away employee holidays. In cases where you need the employees to work on holidays, make sure you provide the required compensation in time or money.
2. Do not force employees to work overtime
As an employer, it is your responsibility to see to it that your employee gets proper rest. Unless an employee volunteers to work extra time, do not force them to work beyond the eight or nine-hour window.
3. Do not forget to include remote workers in all company activities and functions
Make sure you include remote workers in all social get-togethers and accommodate them during such meetings.
4. Do not constantly nag employees
Remote employment does bring about a major problem of distrust between the employee and employer. You need to trust them with the tasks and allow them to complete it in peace.
5. Do not take away remote employee privileges
A remote working team needs to have equal rights to promotions, incentives, and other benefits like any other employee working in the organization.
Make The Best of Remote Hiring
Physical office space can be eliminated in sectors where people do not need to work with heavy machinery or equipment. Reduce the number of people working in offices to save up on bigger office space rents, electricity bills, telephone bills, printing expenses, stationery, etc. The global pandemic has forced many companies to start working remotely. However, companies now have started realizing the benefits that come with remote working. Make sure you provide your remote working team with the option of flexible office hours to help them feel comfortable.
With the proper steps and precautions in places, remote working can be a great experience for employees and can help employers make more profits. However, hiring remote employees with the right skills and ethics is crucial. Most organizations do not have access to global talent pools or the experience required while remote hiring. In such cases, a remote hiring agency like ours will play a pivotal role in screening, interacting, setting up interviews for remote employees.
Alliance Recruitment Agency connects you with skilled and potential remote workers across the world. Our remote hiring agency will provide you with a streamlined process which ensures the best remote hiring experience. Contact Alliance Recruitment Agency for dedicated, quick and optimized remote hiring solutions.