Changing to Remote Work

How Business Leaders Keep Their Team Performance and Morale Up in a Remote Working Environment

In the global transition of the working environment, many alternative methods of working are coming out. Among them, working from home or a remote working environment is being adopted by many companies. With the global health and economic uncertainty looming over the corporate world, companies are adopting proposals of working from home as it follows the social distancing guidelines and in future instances could save them on expenses. Shobe (2018) discussed that managers need to assure employees or team members are maintaining their morale and should be provided with reassurance, empathy and guidance. Therefore, there are many ways a leader can keep their team members morale and performance up.

Bridging Distance through Frequent Communication

For managers, it is important they keep their communications open with employees. Onnis and Pryce (2016) added that frequent communication would help employees keep track of tasks and targeted metrics that is being set by the organization. Frequent communication from managers keep the pulse of team members up beating and engaging. Managers should make sure they make personal one on one time for their members to give or receive feedback flowing as if they would when they were in the building. Note changing to remote work could make it feel as if time goes by slower and should not be opposed to increasing one on ones for the first month or so. This reduces the hesitancy nature of team members to communicate with their managers.

Empathy and Patience

Managers should remain empathetic and patient with team members during the transition of remote work. Ward (2017) added as managers exhibit more patience towards their team members, the more their employees performance tend to increase. Providing a sense of flexibility to team members as they accomplish their responsibilities; in turn increases the employees sense of obligation to meet productivity or performance goals.

Be Available for Team Members

It is important for managers to be available for their team members who are working remotely. As being physically present is not a possibility, where an employee could before visit with their manager and resolve their question or concerns real time. In a remote working environment, manager’s need to be available during their scheduled shift or communicate timing for their team members beforehand. Further, team members should have the same feeling that they could reach their manager the same as if they were in the building. This allows transparency of managers while keeping their channels of communication open.

Appreciate and Recognize Frequently

Many managers used their physical presence to motivate their team members, with the change of the work environment their strategy will need to change. Makorere and Mrisha (2019) added that everyone craves some form of recognition and or appreciation for their work. Increasing appreciation for team members work, will help keep morale on high spirits and provide that needed sense of motivation to further accomplish responsibilities or tasks. Noting that more recognition and appreciative behaviors exhibited by managers tend to reduce distant barriers between them and team members.

Although, there are many ways managers can gear up for the recent changes. I believe that managers can quickly adapt some of these simple behaviors to their daily routines to help keep team members performance and morale up, as they all transition to remote working environment.

References

Makorere, R., & Mrisha, S. H. (2019). Approaches and Challenges of Motivating Educational Staff in Public Schools in Tanzania: Some Insights from Morogoro Municipality. Journal of Human Resource Management, 7(4), 87-92.

Onnis, L. A. L., & Pryce, J. (2016). Health professionals working in remote Australia: a review of the literature. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 54(1), 32-56.

Shobe, K. (2018). Productivity driven by job satisfaction, physical work environment, management support and job autonomy. Business and Economics Journal, 9(2), 2-9.

Ward, H. (2017). The impact that working from home has on the overall motivation and performance levels of employees working within a banking organization (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin, National College of Ireland).