Five Ways to Empower Your Remote Workforce

posted on January 14, 2022

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A recent survey of CIOs worldwide by the ETR (Enterprise Technology Research) revealed that 72% of businesses work remotely today.

This means roughly three-fourths of the global working population are running about trying to find the new normal. But, unfortunately, while some business functions have thrived in adapting to the remote setup, others have failed.

As a business owner, you might wonder if your organization needs to create a hybrid work culture and ecosystem to survive these uncertain times.

The simple answer? Yes.

To help you navigate these difficult times and build an empowered remote workforce, we’ve crafted this article to elaborate on the different ways you can help set your teams up for business success.

Let’s begin!

Five Ways Businesses Can Empower Their Remote Workforce

1. Enable Employees to Set Up Office Spaces at Home

No employees ever thought that their own homes would turn into their workspaces. So it’s only natural that they lack the needed resources to carry forth their day-to-day tasks successfully.

Businesses keen on ensuring a smooth transition from in-office to in-home workspaces need to understand that enabling employees with the proper hardware and software won’t cut it anymore. It now goes beyond that.

An excellent way to understand and help employees here would be to directly talk to them and address their challenges with remote work. For example, some of the most common challenges they may report are:

  • No power backup.
  • Bad internet connectivity.
  • No designated “office space” at home.

Globally, companies that have addressed this challenge have overcome it by giving their employees a fixed amount of money to set up an office at home. This tiny gesture goes a long way in letting employees know that you genuinely care about their well-being, remote or not.

2. Enable seamless Collaborations and Communications Across the Company

Remote work has changed the nature of in-person workflows and processes. This needs to be fixed as a priority for your business to ensure sustainability.

Inaccurate communication, when combined with undocumented conversations, is going to cost your teams. But luckily, there are several tools out there that can come to your immediate rescue.

Software like Zoom and Slack enable cross-team communications while also letting employees share files and other media, just like they’d do on WhatsApp. This makes communication more effortless than ever, and what’s more, all your information is documented with zero additional effort. The usage of such software has also shown a significant improvement in employee engagement and productivity.

3. Encourage Remote Meetings and Gatherings for Non-operational Purposes

It’s no surprise that employee engagement was much higher in an office space. Remote work has made employees and teams run around to change and standardize processes, leaving little time for them to connect personally.

Keeping aside business meetings, leaders and HRs need to encourage employees to gather for non-operational purposes. This would set up perfect situations for them to have honest conversations to develop a unique sense of bonding and friendship regardless of the physical distance.

Such bonds and relationships also enable them to navigate these complicated times to get work done in the best possible way.

4. Encourage Your Teams to Leverage the Power of Digital Technology

The pandemic has been a huge reset button for almost all business workflows, processes, and communication. As we have already seen, manual processes just don’t work anymore.

Businesses need to adapt to technology that can bridge the physical gap and address these problems efficiently.

A digital transformation enables businesses to add a layer of security, control, and accuracy over all business functions. In addition, simplifying operations frees up time for high-impact tasks that let your business grow.

A quick list of software to start with:

  • Trello: To virtually manage all your tasks and projects.
  • Notion: To thoroughly document company-wide communication.
  • Fyle: To enable a seamless expense management process.
  • Google Drive: Secure storage for all your files.
  • CultureAmp: To know the pulse of your employees.
  • TrackingTime: To track time and keep up with your team’s work.
  • LeadsBridge: To enhance your omnichannel strategy.

5. Protect Your Finances by Automating Expense Management

At the heart of every successful business is rock-solid finances. However, with remote work, the added physical distance combined with broken processes has left Finance teams working for numerous hours to get a rough estimate of the whole picture.

With remote work, manual expense management just breaks and leaves your business open to multiple financial leaks through inaccurate records, expense fraud, and much more. As a result, companies worldwide have slowly begun to shift to an expense management software to address these issues.

An expense report software effortlessly streamlines all broken financial processes and frees up time for case-sensitive tasks like fraud detection and manual verifications. This provides Finance teams with all the information they’d need to ensure that your company finances are always safe.

Conclusion

Whether in-office or remote, businesses need to adapt to change if they’re going to stand the test of time.

McKinsey revealed in a recent study that 31% of businesses have completely automated at least one core business function.

There’s no denying that change is inevitable. The only question here is whether your organization will embrace this change to succeed and scale.

The post Five Ways to Empower Your Remote Workforce appeared first on SiteProNews.

7 Steps to Take to Create Employee Training Videos

posted on January 7, 2022

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In this day and age, video has undoubtedly become the new mode of learning. According to a Pew Research study, 87% of YouTube users utilize the platform to figure out how to do things they have never done before.

Another report states that in 2021, 71% of people resorted to watching two or more instructional videos per week. The figures are not surprising as new technologies have made creating and sharing visually engaging videos easier than ever.

Interestingly, videos have also become a core part of employee training. Back in the day, businesses would play VHS tapes featuring generic training content on health and safety or compliance. However, things have changed and how!

What Makes Training Videos for Employees Effective?

In simple words, videos make training more interactive and engaging. That is especially helpful when dealing with dry subjects such as employee onboarding, product education, and compliance. Plus, it is common knowledge that pictures are easier to recall than words.

Video offers a much richer visual context and tone than text, blending multiple modes of communication into a single format. When someone can see “how” something should be done before giving it a try on their own rather than reading about it, that helps.

Lastly, videos are more cost-effective than having in-person sessions. In fact, remote training with video gained precedence due to the pandemic with 28% of companies reporting a decrease in their training budgets, while 49% said it remained the same.

Types of Employee Training Videos

Now that we know that videos have significant pedagogical value and boost learning and development in many ways, let us look at different training videos that you can create to explain various aspects of your business and operations:

1. Screencasts

A screencast is typically a recording of the computer screen, where the trainer explains or performs a task in real-time. Such recordings can also be edited to create standalone video demos. If you want to make short, quick explainer videos, screencasts are an excellent option.

Used correctly, they can be engaging and cost-effective to educate and train your employees on many things, from website walkthroughs and project deep-dives to HR explanation and technical demos.

2. Tutorials or instructional videos

Such videos help take new employees step-by-step on how to follow a process or perform a particular task in the company. Mid-video quizzes, interactive quizzes, and frequent annotations help boost engagement rates.

Tutorials are versatile, and you can cover almost any topic with them. Even within instructional videos, there are a few different approaches you can take:

  • Demos: Such videos demonstrate a process or product in action.
  • How-tos: As the name suggests, these explain how to do something, usually in numbered steps.
  • Animated videos: These work wonderfully for data visualization purposes where having a real-life person do the explaining might confuse employees.

3. Presentation captures

Nearly 90% of people put great effort into their presentations. However, getting the most out of them is still a challenge, primarily because once the person has given a presentation on a product launch or compliance policy change, one cannot go back and replay it in real life.

That is where recording it comes in handy. You can either capture the presentation in real-time as you present or do it in advance to benefit from the flipped model.

That way, your presentation can be made available on-demand for both those who could not attend and for future employees. Many screen capture tools are helpful, such as Camtasia, which lets you record your voice over your presentation directly inside PowerPoint.

4. Employee-made videos

They make a great addition to the training program because by asking employees to create videos on specific topics, you can test them simultaneously. They can practice what they learned through videos and make more accessible versions for new hires.

Seven Steps to Take to Create a Compelling Employee Training Video

Creating a video can be daunting. One needs to get everything right — equipment, lighting, script, special effects, and so on.

So before you get overwhelmed, take a deep breath and simply follow these seven steps one-by-one to create engaging videos that will stay with your employees even after they have finished watching:

1. First, decide what you want to teach

You can create videos on many topics, but it is best to develop a calendar containing details of what you want to produce and when to use your resources optimally. Understand your business requirements and then focus on a topic that will benefit your employees.

You could consider a variety of topics such as professional ethics, compliance, product initiatives, diversity and inclusion, and so on. You may also divide the video into several segments to make it crisp and easier to consume.

2. Write the script and design a storyboard

When you start penning down the script, you will have a clearer picture in your mind regarding how you want the video to flow. From the layout of the scenes to the type of visuals, you can visualize the entire setup with this exercise.

When writing the script, read it aloud so that its tone and flow match the entire setup etched in your mind. Remove all the extra words and unnecessary jargon. Shorten your sentences, and make sure your message is direct and helpful to many different people.

If you produce a video without any script in place, it will show that you have worked in a disorderly fashion. Once you are done with this, create a storyboard showing a pictorial sequence of the video.

Please make use of screenshots, copy-paste pictures, and sketch stick figures to demonstrate each video scene on paper before the production begins.

3. Choose a suitable video format

Step #2 will help you decide which video format you want to opt for. Think about the types we discussed in the previous sections and try to pick one based on the kind of training you wish to provide. For instance, you can create a screencast-type training video to walk employees through the new CRM interface.

However, if you are only creating animated videos, it is best to invest in a brilliant animation video maker such as Animaker, Doratoon, and VIDDYOZE. Once you know the full scope of the video-making process, set up a project management tool like Trello to keep all the stakeholders on track. You can also track project notes and delivery timelines on a shareable Google sheet.

4. Sort out your equipment

This should not be a problem as everyone has a smartphone and laptop with built-in cameras. But if you are looking to produce videos in HD, investing in a high-end camera would not hurt in the long run — quality matters.

And if you use a screen capture tool, you won’t even need a camera. You can purchase other equipment such as a lapel microphone, tripod, and light reflectors online. In addition, please check to see if you need a license for the video editing software.

If you plan to include music in the videos, there are many paid music libraries such as Airbit and Songtradr from where you can pick beats that match the overall look n’ feel of the video.

5. Film your training video

Once the equipment is sorted, start recording your video unless you decide to go for an animated video or capture the presentation you give in real-time. Plan the date, time, and location of the shoot and coordinate the stakeholders’ schedules who will be on screen.

Choose a quiet environment such as a conference room or rent an off-site studio. Avoid busy backgrounds where objects or people are constantly on the move. The focus should solely be on the presenter.

When recording, focus on audio quality over video. Poor audio distracts more than poor visuals. Also, do not forget to capture b-roll footage. For instance, if your presenter talks about “how to work in teams,” capture extra b-roll footage of colleagues working together.

If you are recording on your screen, use tools such as Prezi to do that. The visual experience needs to be as clean as possible, so close all tabs and clean your desktop. Before recording, please ensure you know how to navigate through the process yourself.

Avoid figuring it out on the go. Practice the steps as much as possible so that your recording comes out engaging and smooth.

6. Edit the video

The biggest advantage of producing your employee training videos is that you have complete control over how it comes together. Once you have shot the video, created the animations, or recorded your screen, use any video editing software to polish the end product and add branding, music, and transitions for greater appeal. Some of the best solutions available in the market include Vimeo Create and Adobe Premiere Pro.

7. Host and distribute your employee training videos

Once the video is ready, you will need a place to host it and share it with your workforce. A good LMS helps you embed external videos from sites such as YouTube and make them easily accessible to employees.

If the video content is sensitive and you only want a specific set of people to watch them, use a video hosting solution such as Panopto to stream content in the most secure manner possible. You can also unlist videos on YouTube and ensure only select people have the links.

Over To You

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of training videos is that you can ensure every employee has the same experience, which is impossible when a real-life person trains.

When pharma company AstraZeneca wanted to train its 70,000 employees, it wanted an interactive platform and did the job well.

Uniformity was of paramount importance, so they used Facebook’s Workplace platform to inform employees about the company strategy through live videos. This training method resulted in a 35% increase in content consumption compared to when they used an intranet.

When you create and launch training videos, you engage your employees better and ensure they can rewatch them any time they need a refresher. So, are you set to create your very own series of employee training videos?

The post 7 Steps to Take to Create Employee Training Videos appeared first on SiteProNews.

How to Use Gamification to Build and Motivate Your Remote Team

posted on December 22, 2021

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Workplaces are changing, with remote teams increasing in popularity.

Remote workers don’t have the distractions of an office environment. But, they don’t have the engagement or social interaction of joint working spaces either. That can lead to unmotivated and unproductive employees.

To prevent this, companies have turned to gamification to provide engaging experiences and build a winning remote team. But what is gamification, and how can it help?

Here, we’ll go over what gamification is, how it works, and the strategies you can use to motivate your remote team.

What is gamification?

Gamification involves using and applying gaming principles to work tasks or processes to make them more appealing to employees. It could be in the form of a competition, leaderboard, achievement, or points system.

The goal of gamification isn’t to turn work into a game, but to use game-based elements to drive employees to be more productive, engaged, and motivated. It assists businesses in reaching goals, improving business practices, and better managing a remote workforce.

Why is it important for remote teams?

In traditional offices, there’s a strong sense of community, culture, and belonging. Employees can interact socially, foster strong relationships, and collaborate effectively.

In remote environments, workers can feel isolated. With fewer social interactions between employees, working relationships aren’t as strong, and communication can suffer. Groups can form, creating communication silos, and employees can be left out.

It has a massive impact on your business. With employees feeling demotivated, their productivity decreases, and business goals and success are impacted.

Additionally, unhappy employees and fragmented workspaces lead to low retention, affecting recruitment and onboarding.

Gamification can provide motivation to up productivity of employees, improve their experience, increase their satisfaction, and help them socialize.

By adding a fun gaming element, you can drive certain behaviors to enhance the abilities of your remote team.

How does gamification work?

Below are four things to consider when creating any gamification strategy to motivate your remote team.

Image courtesy of Unsplash

Define your goals and outcomes

Understanding what you want to achieve is imperative to employing the right tactics to motivate your remote workers. Additionally, it helps identify ways to track and monitor the progress of employees.

After all, gamification is about getting the best out of remote teams to boost company growth and success.

Consider your goals. Make them specific and achievable. For example, you may want to increase the number of cold calls your sales teams make.

Once you have a goal, you can look at ways to encourage your employees to hit targets. This is where defining your outcomes are important. What happens once your team hits their target? What stops them from lowering productivity? What incentives do you have to keep them motivated?

Consult employees to ensure your goals are attainable and see what incentives will boost your remote teams.

Choose game elements for your team

Consider the strategies and elements that work best in motivating your team to reach your defined goals.

Every remote team is different and has different challenges. While some employees thrive in a competitive atmosphere, others prefer a stress-free environment. Which is best for your team?

For example, using hackathons in corporate innovation can inspire employees, and encourage creativity and collaborations. But, some employees work best on their own.

Choose game elements that suit your employees, bring out the best in them, and which are driving factors to increase their engagement and productivity.

Focus on the user experience

Games are based on the user experience, and your gamification should be no different.

Consider asking your employees about different gamification methods and how to implement them to promote ease of use. If you’re using apps, choose or design ones with a simple, intuitive interface. This way, employees will be motivated to get involved.

Image courtesy of TalentLMS

Track and measure

The overall aim of gamification is to motivate remote teams and drive business success. So, to know if it’s working, you need to track the progress of your gamification strategies.

Use KPIs and metrics to track and measure how your employees are doing. These will depend on your defined goals. For example, if your goal was to improve communication between employees, you could measure the number of messages sent by each employee through a chat.

It identifies areas where your tactics are working and where improvements are needed to overcome the downsides of remote work and motivate your remote team.

What can you gamify?

Almost anything can be gamified to improve the productivity and engagement of your remote teams. Some areas you may want to gamify to boost remote employee morale and motivations include:

  • Onboarding
  • Employee training
  • Communication
  • Collaboration
  • Relationships

Gamification strategies to motivate your remote team

Use badges

Badges are an ideal way to appreciate employees and provide incentives to reach goals.

For example, you could give employees badges for reaching set goals, to acknowledge their skills, or to appreciate their work ethic.

When giving badges, focus on why an employee achieved it rather than how many each employee has. It will enable you to identify employee strengths and weaknesses and track their progress over time.

Make communication fun

Communication is essential for remote employees. But remote working communication is often through a virtual phone system or formal emails.

While a workplace focuses on work, informal communication is essential to foster good relationships and build better collaboration.

Gamification can encourage more communication and important social interactions between employees.

For example, encouraging emojis or gifs in messaging apps or having a weekly show and tell can move employees away from a stiff disconnected environment to an open, welcoming space.

Image courtesy of Unsplash

As well as boosting morale, it brings employees closer, leading to greater collaboration and team-working. You can additionally track which employees are getting involved and which aren’t, allowing you to find areas of improvement.

Onboard new employees

Good employee onboarding is vital. It helps train new employees, improves employee retention, and provides an incentive for recruitment.

But onboarding can be filled with tedious tasks, like paperwork, setting up accounts, and learning about company practices. Using gaming elements will make this engaging.

There’s a couple of ways to do this. First, employ challenges, checklists, and progress bars to show employees in a visual way how far they’ve gotten in the onboarding process. Use leaderboards to promote healthy competition to get through onboarding effectively.

Secondly, use games to help new workers learn about products and practices. For example, ask sales or marketing employees to imagine aliens have landed, and it’s their job to describe a company product or service to them.

Ask your employees to present their sales pitches to the team. It’s a fun icebreaker activity that motivates new employees to learn about company products without sifting through lists of specifications.

Employing similar methods in recruitment can help attract new employees and build a better remote team.

Make employee training enjoyable

Training is necessary for business and employee growth. However, you may have a low uptake in training for remote employees.

Use gamification to train employees engagingly. Instead of just giving them training videos to watch, plan competitions or fun exercises around each video to show off their new skills.

For example, if you’re teaching a cold email masterclass, challenge employees to write compelling content to market their favorite foods and send it to their coworkers. Have the employees vote on which they think is best.

It reinforces the skills they’ve learned, encourages remote employees to work at the same pace, and provides them with a fun, social task to look forward to.

Image courtesy of TalentLMS

Offer rewards

An employee of the month scheme is an effective way to recognize and appreciate employees who perform outstandingly.

It often comes with perks, such as movie tickets or gift cards, promoting healthy competition and providing incentives for employees to be more productive.

When it comes to gamification, leaderboards can show employees how they compare. But after the initial novelty wears off, productivity can lower, and engagement can wither.

Using incentives gives employees an aim. It’s essential to drive remote employees to stay motivated and engaged.

It can also be a selling point for recruitment, as it shows you value workers that perform well, enabling you to build out your remote workforce.

Scavenger hunts

Information is shared widely in traditional offices. If a worker finds a useful document, they’ll mention it to a colleague instantly. This doesn’t happen in remote spaces.

Instead, have scavenger hunts for employees to find information in company intranets, and learn about new tools and technologies, such as what a wifi call is. Pair employees up to further facilitate engagement and collaboration.

Is it all fun and games?

Gamification fosters stronger working relationships, engages employees, and motivates your remote teams. With happier and more productive workers, it enables you to reach your goals, driving business growth and success.

It’s about bringing a new concept to the table, like with workflow improvement ideas to evolve with changing office environments.

However, finding a balance is critical to ensure productivity alongside a fun working environment. It’s vital to define your goals and identify the gamification activities that will work best for your team.

Ensure you track and measure crucial KPIs and metrics to ensure your employees are on the right track.

After all, gamification isn’t all fun and games.

The post How to Use Gamification to Build and Motivate Your Remote Team appeared first on SiteProNews.

The Top 9 Common Cloud Migration Challenges and How to Deal With Them

posted on December 6, 2021

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Cloud migration, put simply, is moving digital assets from a physical data center to a cloud infrastructure. Completing this migration process can take a long time and a lot of effort – while it can be explained in a single sentence, cloud migration is certainly easier said than done.

Although the migration process can create a lot of challenges, the rewards are certainly worth it. It’s hard to say what the biggest benefit of cloud computing is, as migrating processes to the cloud can improve everything from accessibility to cybersecurity.

If you are struggling with cloud migration, you’re not alone. We’ve listed a few of the most common challenges encountered during the migration process below, alongside some potential solutions.

1. Resistance to Change

If you’re currently working in a position that does a lot of IT troubleshooting, you’ll know that a lot of the time it’s people that cause the problems, instead of the computers. With cloud migration, it’s much the same. Some individuals in your team might see the migration as unnecessary or disruptive.

The best solution for convincing employees to buy into cloud migration is making sure the cloud service you’re using is intuitive and user-friendly. The easier your systems and applications are to use after cloud migration is complete, the more attractive the migration process will seem to workers.

This challenge may have added difficulty if your company still has many Covid-19 restrictions in place, as it’s especially hard to get everyone on the same page when you’re in a remote working environment. However, cloud computing is particularly useful for creating a collaborative remote working environment, so you should relate these benefits to remote workers who are less receptive to cloud migration.

2. Hiring New Personnel

If you don’t have any cloud experts employed, but you’re interested in cloud migration, then you’ll need to hire new personnel to help with the process.

Image Courtesy of Pixabay

The challenge here is finding someone with in-depth knowledge of how to implement a cloud migration who you can also train to have an intimate knowledge of the digital assets you’re trying to migrate. For your cloud experts to be truly useful, they must understand your company’s systems and applications as well as they understand the cloud.

Once you’ve verified their cloud credentials and trained them in your company’s applications, another challenge is ensuring that new personnel understand your company’s standard operating procedures, and work well with your existing team. However, this should be addressed in any good onboarding program and isn’t unique to cloud migration.

3. Training Current Personnel

Although you’ll need a core team of experts working on the migration process, it’s important that all relevant employees are appropriately trained and educated.

This can be a particular challenge in two areas. First, you need to educate executives in your company. It’s important they understand that cloud migration is a valuable initiative and is worth the cost in time and money.

Secondly, you need to train the people who will be using the newly-migrated applications so that they adopt the new cloud-based system welcomingly. A good idea is to reinforce the usability and convenience of the system, as we suggested in our first section on Resistance to Change.

Make the cloud a focus of the training, but don’t forget about the details that are vital to the standard training process as well. Ensure you’re training the right people, make sure your trainers understand the topic well, and (if anyone is working remotely) make certain that you’re using a suitable communication tool.

4. A Lack of Planning

Although you may be impatiently waiting to enjoy the benefits of cloud computing, cloud migration is not something you can walk into blindly. It requires a lot of time, effort, and money, so make sure you have a financial plan and a good understanding of how the migration will affect your operations.

With that in mind, it’s smart to try processes mapping before you begin the cloud migration. This will allow you to see what the most integral processes in your business are, so you can decide what can be delayed while cloud migration occurs and what must continue.

You also need to analyze the current state of your IT team, any ongoing issues with your day-to-day operations, and your budget before you even begin to plan for cloud migration. The impact of the process will be wide-ranging, and although it will be a huge improvement once finished, the more you prepare, the less disruption you’ll face while the migration occurs.

5. Financial Costs

In the long run, cloud computing saves your company money by improving efficiency and lowering hardware costs. However, the migration process itself can be expensive. You need to budget for training and hiring staff, bandwidth costs, and the cost of any new automation tools you might need. If you don’t, you might run out of money before you can enjoy the benefits of a cloud-based system.

Image Courtesy of Unsplash

Spreading your money too thin is one of the more common mistakes. Don’t undertake a big process like cloud migration if your finances are still recovering from the computer telephony integration service you’ve just installed or the new equipment the shipping team ordered.

A good solution to costs is to migrate in increments. Not every asset needs to be cloud-based immediately, so migrate systems in order of importance. This turns one huge, expensive project into a series of smaller, cheaper tasks.

6. A Lack of Documentation

A lack of documentation is an enormous hurdle when it comes to cloud migration. “A lack of documentation†in this instance refers to a lack of information regarding how the app you’re trying to migrate actually works.

Say you’re trying to host your business VoIP system on the cloud, but the features were designed or installed by a team that is no longer with the company. You’ll need to spend some time looking into how the system works, and more importantly, how you can migrate it from your legacy infrastructure to the cloud.

Automation can help greatly with this. If you’re struggling with a lack of documentation, invest in discovery tools – these are specialized kinds of software that can scan your network to identify and categorize all the hardware and software that you’re currently using. Discovery tools also map out how each of these assets interacts with one another, a must-have for cloud migration.

7. Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity should always be a concern if your company has important data stored. When you’re migrating to cloud computing, you need to make sure that you maintain the same level of security.

Luckily, there are many, many different security solutions you can implement to protect your data – everything from data encryption to artificial intelligence can improve your cybersecurity. Protecting a cloud network is similar in many ways to protecting your data center. Measures like two-factor authentication and malware protection are still very useful.

Image Courtesy of Pixabay

The first thing people tend to think of when cybersecurity is mentioned is protecting your company files from hackers, but with the cloud, you also need to be aware of the security risk posed by employees. One benefit of cloud computing is that it can be accessed off-site, so you need to make all relevant employees aware of how to keep their passwords (and therefore any sensitive data) safe.

8. Going Live Without Testing

As with any new technology, you need to test your systems thoroughly after migrating to the cloud. You need to make sure that all the features you used previously are still working, and you need to ensure that any new functionality that’s available due to the cloud migration is working too.

Testing is vital because of the scale of cloud migration. If you go live with a system after it has been migrated, and problems emerge that you didn’t test for, fixing them is much more disruptive than it would be before taking the system live.

If you and your staff don’t have a lot of experience in software testing, consider hiring a specialist to make sure all of your systems are in working order. If you do intend to undertake the testing yourself, make sure you’ve done your research – there are a lot of software testing myths that could have serious ramifications if you aren’t aware of them.

9. Underusing Automation

Considering the quality of the available tools for process automation, there is no good reason for not automating at least part of your cloud migration. RPA (robotic process automation) is fantastically useful for cloud migration, considering the number of repetitive and rules-based tasks involved.

The software testing we mentioned in the previous section can be automated, as you can automate processes like workload testing. The discovery tools discussed previously are also a hugely useful form of automation.

Image Courtesy of Unsplash

Automation is handy for reducing the human labor needed for repetitive tasks, but it can also take care of some of the technical parts of migration for you like optimizing your network. This removes some of the need for human cloud experts and can cut down on training and hiring costs.

Difficult, But Far From Impossible

We won’t lie – successful cloud migration is tough. As we’ve shown in the article, there are a lot of potential challenges. However, we’ve also laid out a ton of solutions. There are innumerable resources online discussing the best way to approach cloud migration and a ton of tools for cloud migration that help automate and streamline the process. If you hit a stumbling block, don’t be afraid to search around – there is sure to be a solution.

The post The Top 9 Common Cloud Migration Challenges and How to Deal With Them appeared first on SiteProNews.

Recruiting Young Talent Remotely: Best Practices

posted on November 26, 2021

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Innovation is key to business sustainability, and talented young people are the valued commodities inciting innovation. In a competitive race to secure talent, employers find they struggle to source creative fuel for their business through virtual recruitment methods. In desperation to recruit, employers will find benefit in knowing the best practices and tips to find and hire the best young talent.

Why Talented Young People are so Valued

Young talents promote fresh perspective and creativity. You can find the younger generation are more in tune with shifts in culture and they tap into this to inform their creativity. Recruiting the best young talent is a big benefit in staying current in the market, and another perk is that their skills in digital literacy tend to be high. A shortage of digital literacy skills over the coming decade makes talented young people stand out to employers, with their tech-savvy abilities. Being digital natives and exposed to online etiquette and systems early in their careers, young talent is also more adept with skills using tools such as Zoom, slack and other common office tools nowadays, making them the more attractive choice for employers looking to hire.

The Challenges behind Remote Recruitment

A virtual recruitment process can be difficult for employers to gauge a candidate’s skills and how they work. Time is also money, and when met with a pool of candidates it is difficult for an employer to use time efficiently to distinguish the ideal candidate. Young talent can also be more anxious or nervous about starting a role than more mature talent. This stage of anxiety by young recruits usually makes way for more favourable excitement which can be very powerful. However, with less ability to support and help onboard them due to the remoteness, it is more difficult to assure the new person can adapt to the position and is familiar with how everyone and everything works.

Some Tips to Recruiting Young Talent Remotely

Be Upfront About Your Business

Always strive to be open and transparent and let your values shine through, especially when recruiting young talent. If you do so, you can save time by being sure to attract the right candidate who is a perfect match for your company. Young people will engage more if they feel like they will belong or fit in with your culture, so it is best to establish your values to the talent pool before posting opportunities. It is also important to note that young talent from Gen Z are attracted to authentic businesses with strong moral compasses. If you do any sort of giving back work, look after the environment, sustainability etc. these are all causes the rising generation care about and want to support in their work too. Strive to stress qualities that appeal to them.

Embrace Social Recruiting

When recruiting it can be beneficial to utilise social media platforms that amplify your talent searches and generate interest. Social media channels can increase the visibility of your brand, particularly to younger audiences who commonly interact with them on a daily basis. The main drive of social media as a tool is in delivering valuable information about your company and culture to entice your young audience’s interest. While social media means some good exposure to creative talent of your young demographic, the platforms can also be a useful tool for employers as a way to research talent and network with potential candidates. Social recruiting can significantly lessen the amount of time it may take to undergo the hiring process by bringing interested parties directly to the table, cutting out wasted time and enabling your business to move faster.

Partner With Universities

Universities can also be a suitable means of engaging young talent. This is because a large majority of Uni students are recent high school leavers and are a part of the younger demographic. To initiate campus recruiting is an effective way to implicitly communicate to young talent that you are searching for them, promoting internships and entry-level positions that enthuse their interaction. These placements can be as motivational as they are mutually beneficial to both parties: providing valuable work experience for the talent, and injecting some highly sought innovation into the business. Issues can arise, however, when it comes to engaging in partnerships with tertiary institutions with the purpose of recruiting young talent. For one, it can be laborious to establish and maintain relationships with universities and they can ask for quite a bit in return, including constant feedback or the taxing task of hosting multiple students at one time. For another, the constant call for talent may mean you need to recruit multiple universities to be able to get access to the talent pool you need, which can suck up time and create more unnecessary work for your business.

Take Advantage of Special Platforms Catering To Talent

We all know about popular platforms used by recruiters to source talent, including LinkedIn and Seek. As much as they get the job done, the standard recruitment process is flawed in the restrictions it poses to the employer around considering the potential of young talent. With special talent-platforms such as Experlio, employers are given a chance of gaining the proof and reassurance they need to make an informed decision about recruiting talented young people. Only when met with clear examples of candidate skill put to real-life scenarios, does an employer get an authentic taste of their potential ability when it comes to future business challenges.

Young Talent Recruitment: Where to Go From Here

The younger generations thrive on virtual recruiting as it ‘equals the playing field’ by bringing the employer into the digital sphere where youth feel most comfortable. Simply put, if employers want to source the best young talents, they have to go where the talent is. Young people flock to where they feel most inspired, secure and valued, and there is no better location for that than on emerging talent platforms.

Progressive platforms, like Experlio, nurture creatives into developing important skills and exhibiting their potential to employers in a place of zero judgment, an attractive quality that makes them regular haunts for young talent. Great news for employers is that these systems are entirely online, remote, and provide online assessments in the form of challenges that verify the creative skills and thinking of talent on the platform. A diverse range of young talent is engaged and the platform’s strategy provides more cohesion for employers surrounding hiring decisions, all perks combine to make the overall recruitment process more efficient and most effective.

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14 Best Teamwork Hacks and Tools

posted on November 19, 2021

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Although the productivity of a group depends much on members’ motivations and skills, certain organizational improvements can contribute to it as well. Especially, in cases when team members work partially or fully remote. For those who want to stop bad performance – here is a practical checklist to follow.

6 Tips to Boost Teamwork

1. Avoid micromanagement

No one likes operating in a stressful environment, and a never-ending flow of commentaries and reminders is just what triggers this kind of working environment. Too relaxed or carefree management, however, is not a good option either. If you want to encourage employees to take charge of work results and be proactive, you should find a perfect balance between supervision and independence. Consider doing the following:

  • delegate tasks
  • hire the right person for the right job
  • clearly explain what you expect to get
  • collect feedback from employees

2. Don’t overdo it with meetings

It may seem that all problems can be solved during round-table discussions. But, in reality, the majority of meetings turn into protracted monologues or biased debates and don’t result in clear solutions or straightforward To-Dos.

Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself whether you can deal with the problem without one. If the answer is yes, it’s better to replace meetings with daily or weekly email summaries.

3. Set OKRs

The core idea of the “Objectives and Key Results†framework lies in the flexibility of goals. Once set, every objective should be followed up with metrics that allow measuring its progress. Also, the goal should take into account inputs from the people who are responsible for its execution.

OKRs don’t differ much from SMART goals. So, to establish them, stick to best practices:

  • set objectives for a given timeframe
  • make goals specific and measurable
  • cascade tasks
  • review and adjust original plans

4. Work in sprints

The Agile methodology is well-liked, so why not try it? Teams are more productive when they have time-boxed periods to complete a certain task, rather than when they have to scatter focus and multitask.

Although sprints are usually mentioned in the context of programming, every team can use this approach. Start with preparing a Backlog for jobs to be done and decide on a sprint length (commonly, 2 weeks). Then, fill in every sprint with tasks from a Backlog. Track team progress, and at the end of a sprint – assess performance and provide feedback.

5. What can be automated – should be

Some processes don’t bring much value to the performance but still have to be handled. So, to raise the productivity baseline – automate operations. For example, if your sales reps prepare a weekly report on new deals, you can shape a standard-format template and write a script or macro that will fill in data fields. Or – create and save a report template in your CRM.

6. Equip the team with the software

The collaboration software market is full of tools for any purpose – from project management software and cloud data storage to online icebreakers. These have many handy built-in options that ease day-to-day jobs, such as appointments scheduling, time tracking, documents sharing, etc.

8 Best Collaboration Tools for Every Team

Different software serves distinct purposes. We’ve prepared an essential kit of tools that every team should start with.

Weje

Snapshot from Wejo.io

This digital whiteboard can serve as a workspace for both solo users and teams. Once you’ve signed up with Weje, you can either start with a blank online canvas or pick up some template, e.g. a Kanban board, from the library, and then adjust it to your needs. You can invite colleagues or mates to the board so that they can contribute, as well.

The information on the Weje board is organized in data cards. The tool supports all file types, including documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, and more. You can either copy and paste data from the Internet or – upload it from your computer. Afterward, you can group objects by dragging and dropping them and leave online sticky notes and comments for others.

Trello

Snapshot from Trello.com

This is a great free alternative to JIRA from Atlassian. Trello will be beloved by creative or small teams in particular for its simplicity. The tool doesn’t require complicated settings to start. After signing up, a user can easily create a Kanban board straight away.

You can plan project team sprints and assign collaborators to specific tasks. Every time the task status changes, collaborators receive notifications. With Trello, you also can organize remote brainstorming sessions and exchange data with other apps, such as Evernote, Google Drive, and Slack.

Mattermost

Snapshot from Mattermost.com

If you were in search of some Slack alternative, Mattermost is just the right tool. This is an open-source free online chat service, meaning that you can host locally and adjust according to the team’s needs.

Mattermost offers the latest tech features for collaborators, including audio and video integrations and message archives.

Notion

Snapshot from Notion.so

Notion.so is a digital team notebook. Its repositories can be used to schedule tasks, keep and exchange documents, manage files, etc. The tool supports LaTex, so you can use it to automate text formatting. Also, you can embed content to your pages using Embed.ly.

The Notion.so library includes templates for pretty much any occasion – from donations management to setting OKRs.

TeamViewer

Snapshot from TeamViewer.com

This communication software is popular among remote teams. With a password-protected system, teammates can securely join devices or share their screens. Moreover, users can try augmented reality by adding 3D pointers or emojis during their live video streaming sessions in TeamViewer.

Asana

Snapshot from Asana.com

Asana is beloved for the simplicity of its Kanban boards. You can create templates for repetitive tasks and then enhance them with custom project fields, descriptions, attached files, and priority statuses.

If you want to find previous tasks, apply filters or use a convenient search option. Asana makes teamwork secure – it has an access control system that allows designating admins and restricting edits.

Sync.com

Snapshot from Sync.com

Teams can use this cloud-based storage to share sensitive information within an organization. Sync.com encrypts files and allows regulating permissions with expiry dates. Also, the tool restores deleted files, which is particularly helpful when exchanging relevant documents among the team.

ClickUp

Snapshot from ClickUp.com

ClickUp is a workspace to create and manage time spent on projects. You can record hours and see employees’ performance statistics in 15+ views. The tool has a user-friendly UI, and its features include tasks templates, goals and priorities tracking, recurring checklists, and others.

Leveraging teamwork is worth the effort. And you don’t need much for that. Well-organized processes and a couple of helpful tools – and you’ll see the team achieve excellent results and employees become more satisfied with how they function together.

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Seven Pro Tips to help Remote Teams Socialize

posted on November 11, 2021

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Through the rise of remote work, more and more people realize that there’s a lot to be gained from not being physically present. This separation poses vast challenges for collaboration, but when you don’t see your colleagues every day, it can also affect how connected you feel with them too.

We all know that distance can make things difficult. It might not be easy to stay in touch with others, important emotional context gets lost or misinterpreted in a conversation where there is no face-to-face connection between parties–relationships with colleagues weaken.

You know that socializing is an important part of building good relationships on teams. Whether you’re based at one location or across different time zones, the key thing here is that there should always be some form of connection between everyone involved!

So you want to make sure your remote working team is always connected and happy? Today, we are sharing some pro tips that can help you increase workplace socialization among remote workers-

7 Pro tips to strengthen remote work culture

1. Promote acts of kindness

You can encourage your team members to treat each other with kindness. This might seem too fluffy, but studies have shown that encouraging people to be kind makes them do kind things for others, even strangers. 

You can set up a friendly competition between your teams to see who does the most acts of kindness, or you can organize a company-wide contest where the winners get a small reward. This will make people go out of their way to say “thank you,” complement each other, and generally spread happiness.

2. Create virtual breaks and cultural festivals

Make the most of time zone differences by creating a daily 1-hour break along with a virtual festival every few weeks. In addition, set up coffee breaks and lunch breaks to help people from different time zones work together better, encouraging bonding among those who work remotely.

This is the ideal solution when you want to strengthen bonds between people who work remotely. You can also extend post-work bonding that happens face-to-face, like holding virtual games nights or watching movies together.

3. Conduct remote competitions

Conducting remote competitions is a fantastic approach to socializing and encouraging interaction. Remote team-building activities are the perfect way to foster creativity and get your employees on board with new ideas.

The best part about such competitions is that they do not necessarily revolve around physical activities but can be focused on tasks. For example, one team can take up the challenge of finishing a particular job first, while the other group has to beat them at it! The main thing you need to ensure is that all teams can participate in this competition.

4. Plan a virtual tour of your coworkers’ home offices

Why not use our nosy tendencies and schedule virtual house tours of our coworkers’ homes? You all want to look into other people’s houses, so why not put your curious minds to good use by scheduling virtual trips inside your coworkers’ homes?

A virtual tour of a coworker’s home office lets us quietly look into the most personal aspects of our teammates’ lives. You can see their books, their kids, and their pets. Even though these tours will only be virtual snapshots from a remote worker’s webcam, it might feel like you made a real connection with your remote coworkers.

5. Get started with virtual wellbeing sessions

Want to encourage your remote team to socialize more?

Virtual wellbeing sessions create a virtual hangout space and include specific exercises that will help promote togetherness and strengthen existing relationships.

Fortunately, there are several methods to make it into a fun group activity. Consider organizing remote yoga classes or virtual meditation sessions once a week.

6. Plan 1:1 meetings with remote workers

In a traditional office, you’d bump into each other in the break room and chat about what’s going on. Team members miss being able to have those casual discussions throughout the day. Plan one-on-one meetings with remote workers so they can catch up with your organization and keep apprised of news and updates outside their department.

7. Improve work-life balance

Being able to work from anywhere can be the best of both worlds, but it’s important to remember that there’s life outside of work. Being social makes you happier and healthier, not just in your professional life but with friends and family too. 

As long as you can get done what you need to do at work, that’s all that matters. And just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean your family will appreciate it if you are not giving them an equal amount of time. 

Which tool can be used for remote team management?

There are several remote employee monitoring software tools available on the market. Which one to select? It will depend on which best meets your business needs. If you need a tool that can handle all your remote workforce from a single place, then you should try WorkStatus.

WorkStatus is a workforce management software that helps you to seamlessly maintain team communication and productivity by working at the best time in the best environment. It provides neat features like daily visit reminders for dispersed teams.

The trouble with our current workplace paradigm is this simple truth: collaboration requires human contact. With WorkStatus, you can embrace digital work without sacrificing your personal touch! Workstatus can take away remote problems with just an email or phone call — that includes headaches like dealing with remote workers, helping them set up their systems correctly, or updating office equipment when they relocate without interrupting workflow.

It also has a helpful dashboard that hosts all your tasks, projects, and communications together on one screen – never miss.

Some other useful remote employee monitoring tools that you can try are-

  • Slack
  • TeamViewer
  • Zoho Projects
  • LiquidPlanner
  • Jell
  • Trello, etc.

Final Thoughts

Remote work is becoming the new norm. It’s not unusual for companies to employ remote workers or even have a remote team. But does this mean that the culture of these teams will be lost? Not so fast! There are several ways of keeping employees happy and motivated when they’re not in an office every day with their coworkers.  

The tips we’ve provided should help you start thinking about how you can cultivate strong cultures among your virtual workforce. If all of this sounds intimidating and you want help enacting these principles, let us know- our team of experts is waiting and ready to partner with you to create a stellar remote workforce management plan that can take your business to new heights without involving much effort from your side.

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Don’t worry, try the best time tracking software for designers for free. Sign up now-

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5 Best Workplace Management Tools for New Businesses

posted on September 24, 2021

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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the business landscape the world over. While existing businesses have had to move their operations online, several others already were using some form of a hybrid model. Unfortunately, however, many others businesses that didn’t have the capacity or the money to move online had to shut down. 

Now, however, any new business must be such that it can run completely online if circumstances require it to. This requires extensive online infrastructure and cloud-based software so that all the business’ employees can work from home on a common platform and collaborate if they need to. 

Often, this spells the need for a workplace management system. These systems or software help organizations optimize all their resources, be it intellectual or financial. Additionally, businesses also adopt the use of the best phone tracking apps as these help them track all their employees’ and ensure maximum efficiency. Websites like CellTrackingApps.com are great resources to assess the best tracking apps. 

This guide will list five of the best workplace management systems that your new business can consider using. 

Five Best Workplace Management Systems 

Scoro

Scoro is possibly the best workforce management software in 2021. It offers all the features businesses need to track all the departments and processes in their organization. This includes quotations, project management, contact management, reporting, billing, and more. 

Given below are some of the best features of this system – 

  • Shared calendars to schedule meetings 
  • Contact management system
  • A real-time KPI dashboard
  • Reports on the progress of projects and billings
  • Effective time tracking and billing for all work done for clients

One of the best selling points of Scoro is that it combines the functions of various tools that businesses often use to carry out their work. This is a comprehensive solution that is a must-try. 

Zoho Workplace

Zoho Workplace is yet another comprehensive workplace management tool that can help you collaborate, manage, and report tasks, projects, bills, and more. It consists of a suite of apps that help you perform all these functions and more. 

Given below are some of the top features of this system – 

  • It allows you to create and save all your work in one place. 
  • You can upload documents from your email or your computer and share them with your coworkers. 
  • A combined inbox for the email and social notifications for organizations with a widespread social media presence. 
  • A cloud-based system that you can operate with your phone or tablet. 


You can integrate this software with other bundles like Finance, CRM, and Recruit to manage all the departments and processes in one place. 

Oracle

Oracle offers a web-based workplace management system that allows you to integrate all your strategies, plans, and processes in one hub. It automates various processes like time and attendance recordkeeping, allowing employees and supervisors more time to focus on key businesses processes. 

Given below are some of the best features of this popular system – 

  • It offers global employee absence tracking, which can be a great way of recordkeeping and keeping employees compliant. 
  • Analytical trends based on absence management records. 
  • Effective scheduling strategies, plans, holidays, and more. 
  • Offers workplace protection so HR managers can track illnesses and ensure safety measures and protocols. 

The system offers a sliding scale of support packages. These include Sustaining Support, Extended Support, and Premier Support. 

Odoo

Odoo offers a suite of open-source apps for businesses that provide a wide range of functionality. These include CRM, eCommerce, inventory, accounting, project management, and more. 

Given below are some of the features of this system – 

  • The ability to customize your dashboard to get crisp business insights in one go. 
  • Accurate forecasts based on records entered. 
  • Automated processes based on schedules. 
  • Real-time messaging to improve collaboration across the board. 

This tool offers you the ability to convert sales and purchase orders into invoices with just one click. Additionally, you can also tack them with their respective payments using a sales add-on.

Kronos Workforce Ready

This is a cloud-based HRM software that is appropriate for businesses of all sizes and across varied industries. The system offers various tools and features that help automate processes across departments. 

It also allows employees to manage both full-time and part-time employees and can be customized to meet a business’ individual needs. 

Given below are some of this system’s advantages – 

  • Real-time compliance checks that managers can benefit from checking for absence based on information updated into the system. 
  • The software also has a mobile app that’s compatible with Apple and Android devices. Users can access most common tasks through these apps, making it convenient to use. 
  • Customizable dashboards that users can change based on the processes and departments they need to keep track of. 
  • The embedded analytics offers performance insights that you can use to track and leverage business metrics. 

In Conclusion

Workplace management systems are a blessing for organizations that rely on an online system or even a hybrid one. This guide of the five best systems is perfect for new businesses to check out. We hope you find it helpful.

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Remote Project Management Tips for Work from Home

posted on September 24, 2021

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While the work from home concept has been around for the past two years, with the ongoing pandemic, work from home is slowly becoming non-negotiable. Over 69% of organizations have been moving more employees to work remotely, while a massive 16% have moved their entire operations to remote execution. There are several benefits to an organization moving more employees towards working remotely. These include lower onboarding costs, overheads, and investment into infrastructure.

Any organization’s success in these work-from-home endeavors is contingent on exceptional management skills adapted to the modern work environment. Ensuring professionals equipped with a PMP certification training assures any business that strong management skills can be translated to employees sitting at different locations for strong and optimized business activity execution. While work from home or remote productivity can seem intimidating for businesses to adopt, given current environmental and social circumstances, finding the best policies to adapt to the organization may differ between staying afloat or sinking during this trying time.

What is Remote Project Management?

Remote Project Management is the act of organizing a team of professionals that work off-premise. Despite the geographical differences between team members, the objective is to ensure that relevant information is shared and activities conducted to ensure the business continues as usual. Team members may be seated at a distance of a few kilometers away, but others may be located in different cities and time zones. As a result, 87% of employees claim they feel less pressure or stress within their work environment, and 30% complete more activities within less than the allocated time. In addition, the organization’s rising productivity rates and benefits in terms of costs and expenditures are moving more teams to remote management. 

There are three core types of teams that conduct business activities remotely;

  1. Flex Teams: Execution teams are offered the option to work remotely and from a unified space as needed or as instructed by the organization.
  2. Hybrid Teams: Comprised of team members that work remotely full time while the rest work from a suitable location. 
  3. Fully Remote Teams: As the name implies, fully remote teams consist of professionals that coordinate projects and activities from the comfort of their homes or separate working spaces. 

Remote Project Management offers several benefits. As previously mentioned, the need to invest in infrastructure, overhead costs month on month, and onboarding/training new employees can cost heavily without adequate returns. Remote Project Management allows businesses to invest in the bare minimum and encourage employees to institute better working practices and regulations to enjoy the perks they experience with remote working. 

Employees enjoy flexible working hours and the ability to work at any location. Spending more time with their families and building their lives outside of work allows increased productivity. This is caused by the ability to adapt their natural energy cycles to more efficient time dedication. The flexibility of working from anywhere, at any time, with the understanding of deadlines helps businesses reduce their turnover rates and achieve a better quality of performance. The reduced stress also makes for happier employees and a more comfortable corporate environment. 

Businesses are only as good as the willingness and execution abilities of their teams. Limiting professional hiring to the surrounding geographical area can often coax businesses to make rash decisions that are ultimately not as beneficial as expected. With a growing number of Generation Z professionals penetrating the workforce, their skills allow them to optimize the quality of their work with the comfort of using technology as needed. 

Efficient Remote Project Management

While there are a growing number of benefits with remote Project Management, there are also some drawbacks. Coordination across different cities and time zones can be stressful. When meetings are missed, putting activities back on schedule can be time-consuming. Additionally, building a corporate culture fostering unity can be difficult with team members who aren’t too familiar with each other and are unlikely to meet and bond. 

Therefore it is up to the Project Management professional (a project manager or business manager) to consider the best tools and practices to create strong remote management. Considerations include;

1. Giving Team Members Room and Trust

Since personal and professional environments are blurred with remote working, businesses must respect and understand the same. Working in different cities and time zones often means activities are conducted with different routines and timeframes than others. Ensure the project manager is offering adequate consideration and deadlines are set up concerning everyone’s availability. 

Attempting to micromanage can be demoralizing. Since employees are likely to be more productive in WFH environments, it is more than unlikely constant supervision or intrusion is necessary.

2. Keep Deadlines Crystalline

Effective management of remote teams works aggressively with ensuring realistic deadlines are created and met. A single document outlining tasks and when they should be executed will help all team members plan accordingly. Avoid using words like “ASAP” or “At Your Convenience.” Offer firm non-negotiable end dates to activities to keep the business running as it should 

3. Clear Feedback

Ensure employees are working at the pace they should be and executing requirements as needed. If an employee is slacking, be sure to alert them as early as possible with a professional attitude. Constructive criticisms only assist businesses with better internal activities and offer employees an opportunity to reassess their approach. 

4. Introduce the Right Tools 

With many softwares and tools that assist remote Project Management on the market, picking the right fit for your organization is imperative to its success. In addition, a small Project Management tool helps automate some degree of the process for better communication and collaboration. 

Conclusion

Effective remote Project Management is heavily dependent on the professional managing the team. Ensure a certified individual sits at the helm of the remote management operation for best success. With a growing number of professionals conducting operations remotely, it is up to the organization to ensure best practices are adopted to ensure business continuity and even success in a time of uncertainty. Keeping employees motivated but safe is critical to keeping businesses afloat; remote Project Management offers a middle ground to achieve both while maintaining the trajectory towards achieving organizational goals.

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The Downsides to Remote Work

posted on August 9, 2021

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Remote working is becoming the trend for more and more companies globally. Companies are offering their employees the opportunity to work from home, often in response to employee preference.

Technological developments, like cloud-based systems and near-universal wireless internet access, provide accountability for remote workers, making it easier than ever to work from anywhere.

There are different arguments for remote working – both for and against. These typically center around how different employers perceive remote working; some embrace remote work, while others believe having employees physically in the office is what’s required for success.

The expectations for remote employees have increased since the movement’s early days when everyone was still finding their feet in this new way of working. Today, remote work is a default for millions of employees. But, just because this is the case, it doesn’t mean the practice comes with no challenges and downsides.

Below are remote work challenges and downsides that employers and employees may be facing while working remotely.

1. Isolation

Working from the office makes employees feel like part of the bigger picture and allows them to connect with coworkers every day. Remote work makes it difficult for them to feel involved with daily company activities, which may lower their motivation.

2. Decrease in Work/Life Balance

Remote working makes it more difficult to physically distinguish between an employee’s place of work and where they spend their free time. This can make it difficult for them to unplug and enjoy some time away from work.

3. Distractions

Many distractions are in homes, such as children, spouses, pets, and Netflix. In-home workspace conditions vary from one employee to another and their productivity relies upon the ability to ignore these distractions. The better they do this, the more effective their remote work will be.

4. Employee Invisibility

Remote working decreases the employee’s visibility at their workplace and, inversely, the workplace’s sight of them.

This limited visibility can make employees disconnected from company culture, recognition and inhibit relationships. It can even lead to them being overlooked for promotions.

5. Collaboration Challenges

Full-time remote workers may find it harder to solve problems and be active than their in-office peers because they miss out on the face-to-face opportunity to collaborate. Due to distance, remote working can make it harder for teams to exchange ideas, make decisions collaboratively, ask and answer questions, and be creative. 

6. Video Call Fatigue

When you face back to back video calls, Zoom fatigue becomes a real thing. Not to mention, video calls can have a lot of niggles, from joining multiple calls, finding invites, and navigating the UI of different providers. 

You also need to exert more brainpower to pick up on non-verbal cues, pay attention to tone and pitch, and keep yourself alert to jump into a conversation at the appropriate time.

7. Lack of Coworker Relationships

Physically being in the office enables employees to bond, share experience, and build camaraderie with each other. Remote working does not naturally provide room for this relationship even with Zoom/Skype calls, online chat systems, and other communication systems in place.

8. More meetings

The number of meetings employees attend while working remotely is often higher than meetings attended by their on-site workers as staff clamour to stay connected. 

It takes an average employee at least eight emails to set up a meeting. Scheduling meetings is time-consuming and tiresome. The repetitive nature of scheduling a meeting can result in decision fatigue and draw you away from doing deep work. 

9. Greater Stress

According to a study, COVID-19 and remote working have resulted in many workers having higher stress, anxiety, and emotional fatigue. While not for any single reason alone, remote work can be a contributor to this rise in stress due to the isolation and loss of work/life balance.

10. Contributing to Gender Inequity

Analysis has shown that remote working hurts women workers and worsens the existing gender imbalance. In a family with both parents working remotely, women are more often bundled with domestic chores and looking after kids, while their male counterparts focus entirely on their jobs.

Most women work late into the night and wake up earlier than usual to recover the lost time. Some may drop out of the job for good, which can further exacerbate gender imbalances. 

11. Less Personal Connection & Trust

Unlike in-person conversation, it’s more challenging to establish connections and trust when talking to a person on video calls. And in the absence of real connections and trust, it can be harder to delegate tasks, work collaboratively and provide honest feedback.

Lower trust and connection between employees and employers may produce poor business outcomes, slowing business growth. 

12. It’s Easier to be Sedentary

Remote working requires you to be intentional about moving and getting some level of exercise. On-site workers may need to walk to the train station making activity part of their daily routine. Commuters may also need to move from one conference room to another for meetings.

Working as a remote employee may see you spend the entire day in your home office. The lack of exercise can be terrible for your health. To address this issue, remote workers need to be intentional about practicing physical exercises as part of their daily routine.

13. Conflict Can Go Unaddressed Longer

Conflicts and disagreements arising while working remotely may go unsolved for longer due to distance. Problems with remote working can be caused by basic things, like a lack of communication, misunderstood cues or disconnected goals.

Detecting an issue while working together in an office can be easy; issues can be surfaced and resolved immediately. When working remotely, you may have no idea that confusion or conflict exists outside the surrounds of the office. 

Working remotely requires a level of sincerity between employees, which an office environment may not require. If you are upset or uncertain about something, you might need to be more proactive and raise the issue.

14. Technical Issues

Another issue when working remotely is that technical issues can grind your work to a halt, with no I.T. team on call. Your computer may develop technical issues which may take several days to be repaired or serviced, unlike in the office, where technical issues are addressed almost immediately. 

Setting up a computer on your own may be a confusing experience, too, when your I.T lead gives you cryptic instructions that leave you baffled. This can reduce your productivity and effectiveness towards your assigned task.

How to Overcome Remote Work Challenges

Remote working has many challenges; however, none are insurmountable, nor terminal for company success. The truth is, most remote work challenges are far outweighed by the benefit of this new way of working.

For managers, it’s about being conscious, transparent and flexible in a new remote working world. Many tenets of a high performing team will hold true. Beyond these, it’s about understanding the most pressing needs of your remote employees, and setting up systems and processes to support them.

For instance, as a manager of remote staff, it’s vital to put extra attention into collaboration, communication and recognition. Small actions like regular team building exercises, welcoming programs and recognition programs go a long way to elevating the remote work experience.

If you’ve already allowed your employees to work remotely and plan on keeping working remotely in the future, keep the above advice in mind. And be sure to employ virtual remote team working tools or remote team management software to help mitigate the associated challenges to realize maximum productivity.

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