COVID turned us all into digital nomads – or digital hermits – to be more precise. But even during those long months of lockdown, we humans once again proved our infinite adaptability. Once we’d got used to constant remote meetings (you’re on mute!) people rapidly embraced the “new normal.” Work from home wasn’t the worst thing in the world now, was it? But would there be downsides? The issue of remote employee engagement was yet to be fully understood.
Employers naturally had their doubts about WFH. They knew that while some staffers would be more productive – and put in longer hours thanks to eliminating the daily commute – other workers would succumb to the ever-present temptations of a long lunch, a mini-binge, or even a siesta. Company owners couldn’t simply get rid of their offices either. Nobody had a clue what would happen next.
The Rise of Entrepreneurs: Starting a Commerce Business
COVID sparked a wave of entrepreneurship, and many people embraced the idea of working remotely and managing their own schedules. During this time, online businesses flourished, especially online stores and services. Even small, local business owners found ways to stay relevant by selling products and managing deliveries from home.
Website creation platforms have reported a significant spike in ecommerce activity, with more people searching for ways to build e commerce website and sell a wide range of products to maintain a steady income. The digital shift has highlighted the importance of adapting to new tools and strategies. For many, embracing digital transformation and outsourcing smartly has been the key to keeping their businesses resilient and thriving.
The Shift to Hybrid Work: Balancing Flexibility and Productivity
Fast-forward four and a half years and hybrid working is firmly entrenched as a right – not just a privilege – across dozens of sectors. OK, so the world’s fifth biggest company has just called time on WFH, but for hundreds of thousands of companies, especially small to medium-sized businesses, there’s no going back to the old days and the old ways. For many prospective employees, if a company insists on five days a week in the office, it’s simply a deal breaker.
But distance can damage team spirit and collaboration. It can demotivate employees who need personal interaction to stay sane. And data clearly demonstrates that remote workers are 10-20% less productive than their onsite peers.
For entrepreneurs in eCommerce, creative services, IT, and data – and any other business with direct employees or freelancers dotted all over the country or the world – keeping remote teams satisfied, motivated, and effective is mission critical. Remote employee engagement is the name of the game and like anything worth doing properly, there are a number of distinct dimensions to address.
There’s no single metric that accurately reflects employee engagement. This isn’t an exact science. That’s why it’s a good idea to monitor multiple indicators that suggest high engagement, including:
- Productivity & Performance: track how well each employee completes tasks, meets deadlines, and delivers on personal or company KPIs.
- Employee Satisfaction (ESAT): gather your workers’ feedback through regular surveys sent out from your intranet.
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): discover the likelihood of your employees recommending your company as a good place to work.
- Employee Retention Rate: people vote with their feet and disengaged remote workers are going to “quiet quit” and then find their next gig.
Keep Everyone on the Same Page
When your tools, resources, and employee knowledge are spread across multiple documents and files and used by international teams, it can be a real challenge to locate key information and keep it all up to date. The time it takes can be one of the most significant impediments to efficiency and one of the biggest drains on your resources.
Then there’s the question of dealing with staff turnover. Every company faces this challenge. It’s part of life. What matters is capturing the “tribal knowledge” of your workforce – the tips, tricks, and hacks that your employees pick up along the way, and which are often lost when they leave. Only a robust and easy-to-use file sharing system – and a culture of knowledge-sharing – can ensure business continuity when change happens.
The bottom line is that you need to centralize your resources, rather than siloing them on different systems and platforms. And if you’re the CEO of an SME, you probably don’t have the budget for enterprise software like MS Teams. But you do know what you need from an internal portal or intranet:
- An employee directory so that everyone can put names to faces, titles and responsibilities
- Instant access to the tools and files your people require on a daily basis
- A news feed and calendar to keep everyone up to speed on important updates and events
- A messaging interface to make sure everyone’s in constant touch
Remote Relationship-building
We all know that love can grow over the Wi-Fi routers and deep-sea cables that connect our planet. And yes, most of us have collaborators on the other side of the world whom we’ve never met in person and probably won’t ever meet. But let’s be honest: IRL is always the most fun.
A vital element of remote employee engagement is compensating for a complete lack of in-person townhalls, informal get-togethers, weekly happy hours, occasional fun days, and endless birthday celebrations. There’s no avoiding it. People thrive on human contact.
For your daily huddles, weekly priorities sessions, and monthly status reviews – as well as your external meetings – you obviously need a robust video conferencing platform, likely Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, Skype, or GoToMeeting.
Whichever you use, integration is everything. Just as your employees want a one-stop shop for all their resources, your internal site has to have video calling baked in. There’s nothing worse than fumbling around with multiple windows and platforms when you start screen sharing. That’s as true for an internal meeting as for an external sales presentation. Professionalism is paramount.
Sharpen your Tools
As you set about boosting remote employee engagement, you may want to rethink various aspects of your operations, particularly how your teams collaborate on managing and leveraging your public-facing site. For that, you’ll need a number of features that allow distributed workforces to co-operate and easily as if they were sitting right down the hall:
- Site collaboration: building and maintaining your website requires constant contribution from developers, designers, and writers, and managing their roles and permissions is essential to prevent miscommunication, double work, and avoidable errors.
- Scheduling system: smooth operations are vital to any organization, and you’ll want the ability to manage bookings, pay staff, and remember appointments.
- Automations: now that AI has come of age, SMEs can dramatically reduce costs by streamlining work processes, saving time on manual tasks by instantly generating content and communications.
- File Sharing: your document library is one of your most precious assets, so the ability to securely upload and share documents from anywhere in the world is an absolute must.
- Availability management: juggling the calendars of remote workers in different time zones can be a headache – that’s why your platform needs a robust scheduling tool, ensuring that Service Level Agreements are honored and customers are never kept waiting.
Don’t Forget About You
The most mobile member of your company is almost certainly your good self. You’re the one putting in twenty-hour days, traveling to meet investors, sign up partners, and close deals with customers. That makes you the remotest of workers. And that also means you have to be the most plugged in. You need complete oversight and the ability to take direct action, wherever you happen to be. So, make sure that the platform you select gives you the ability to manage and grow your business or community right from your mobile.
In today’s global economy, remote employee engagement isn’t just a “nice-to-have.” It’s a mission-critical business strategy and having the right tools at your fingertips is your best route to executing it effectively.
