#Employee engagement # Remote working
The current pandemic scenario has challenged the global workforce to find out innovative solutions to maintain continuity of their businesses while ensuring employee engagement. This has led to increase in remote working of the global workforce with minimal in-person interactions. It is likely that the new normal way of working will remain as a core part of the way employees and businesses work in future. Hence, it is more important to rethink and understand the mental and physical implications on the workforce due to the new normal way of working.
According to Gartner’s research, employees adapted well to remote working initially and productivity remained stable. The question remains if this will be true in future since it could be adaption due to a forced scenario.
The HR Managers and Professionals have been employing various strategies to achieve efficiency with remote working in their organizations. Employee engagement has been a major challenge with the new normal way of working.
Employee engagement is important since it is directly proportional to the organization’s success. Employee retention has been a very important factor to achieve operational efficiency to avoid spending on frequent recruitment and training of employees. This can be achieved by formulating an exhaustive and well-framed employee engagement plan which can create an interesting and less stressful environment for employees working remotely.
Few tactics for improving employee engagement during remote working are noted below:
a) Establish a good communication network facilitating a smooth flow of information.
b) Design or redesign remote working practices carefully, by paying attention to ways of working, workloads and performance measures that support and engage employees.
c)Assess employee well-being through a focus on relational dynamics of individuals with immediate managers and team colleagues.
d) Design interventions that implicitly and explicitly address the challenges of remote working and the potential for isolation of employees
e) Conduct regular team meetings which should include a light agenda as well as serious focus agenda.
f) Flexible workhours for the employee without micromanagement. Forced working hours can leave employees unfocused and stressed out resulting in less engagement.
g) Focus on one to one conversation to understand the challenges employees face outside of work
h) Incorporate non-work-related extracurricular activities to improve team bonding
i)Team based learning and development activities
j) Conduct surveys to gather feedback and opinion from employees and implement suitable measures to improve employee engagement
k) Recognize, appreciate and reward good work done by employees
l) Create a friendly environment wherein the employee feels comfortable to share their innovative ideas
By taking steps to ensure that your workforce is involved and communication lines are open, HR Managers and Professionals can engage employees effectively, while maintaining continuity of businesses. It requires the right amount of attention, flexibility, benefits, and communication to increase engagement of employees which finally reflects on the organization’s success.