The coming of Covid-19 has resulted in the increased popularity of online work. In fact, it’s estimated that through 2021, 26.7% of the American workforce will be working remotely.
Do you run a business? Are you running it remotely at the present time? Wondering how to make your work more efficient and improve business organization overall?
Then read on. Here are 6 tips for online business management.
1. Assess Your Team’s Capabilities
If your employees are working from home, they might have some limitations that they didn’t have while working in the office. For instance, because they’re not constantly with each other, they might not be able to collaborate on projects as seamlessly. Their capabilities might be reduced.
You need to assess these reduced capabilities and find a way to work around them. Maybe you could centralize the responsibilities of each team member so as to ensure that they’re being completed in full.
Your communication will need to be greater than ever, as you’ll need to let other members of the team know what has and hasn’t been completed. Nonetheless, it can be done.
In the end, the point is to be realistic. You’re probably not going to be as efficient as you would be if you were in the office. But if you don’t push too hard, you can still develop a smooth workflow.
2. Keep a Common Line of Communication
The hardest part of working remotely is facilitating accurate and precise communication. It’s not as simple as asking a question to the person next to you. You have to create a specific line of communication where everyone can receive relevant information.
This is where apps will come in major handy. There are all sorts of apps that will help your team to maintain communication. Some of the best of these include Slack, Trello, and Toggl, which help with direct communication, checklists, and workflows, respectively.
There are a variety of others available as well, all of which have slightly different features and functionality. Check out this list for more options.
3. Schedule Video Conferences
While using communication apps will be huge in maintaining communication between members of your team, it shouldn’t be the only communication you facilitate. You should be holding video conferences as well.
Video conferences serve several different purposes. For one, they enable you all to speak to one another in fully-formed sentences. They allow you to have natural conversations, which are important when it comes to collaboration.
For two, they remind employees that they are still, indeed, working and that they should be putting in the requisite amount of effort. Employees can forget this if they’re constantly left to their own devices.
For three, they provide employees with a bit of socialization. It can get lonely working from home and many employees appreciate the opportunity to see and speak with other adults during the workday.
There are many different video conferencing apps available to help with video conferences. However, at the present time, Zoom is the runaway favorite.
4. Make Use of a Recognition Program
Working from home isn’t the easiest of tasks for all employees. While some love it, others loathe it. And what happens when a person loathes his or her work? He or she puts in a less-than-ideal amount of effort.
For this reason, you need to do things to keep your employees invested in the workplace. One thing you can do is make use of a recognition program. This is a program wherein employees are tangibly rewarded for their good work.
Recognition programs have been known to increase production, improve employee retention, and enhance workplace innovation. If you need help developing a recognition program, click the link posted above.
5. Set Long and Short-term Goals for Employees
Working from home feels informal; like it’s not all that serious and that its responsibilities don’t hold much weight. As such, when working from home, employees can have trouble completing their tasks in a timely manner. The motivation just isn’t there.
As a manager, you need to provide your employees with this motivation. One way to do this is to set both long and short-term goals for each of your employees. This way, each employee will feel an obligation to get something done not only on the day that it’s assigned but for the weeks and months that follow.
You should be checking in with employees on a regular basis to ensure that they have, indeed, completed their tasks. If tasks aren’t completed when they should be, be sure to speak with employees about why that might be. You don’t want to punish anyone for things they can’t control, but you don’t want to let progress slow too much either.
6. Trust Your Employees
As a manager, you might have a tendency to micromanage from time to time. In the world of remote work, that’s not going to work. There’s just too much separation between employees and too little communication that’s able to be facilitated.
You have to trust your employees during this time. You hired them to do specific jobs and you have to believe in their ability to get the job done.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make corrections or let bad work slide. But it does mean there needs to be a little wiggle room. If you start micromanaging employees from a remote location, their productivity is likely to fall off substantially.
Business Organization Is Vital to the Success of Your Business
If you want your business to be successful online, you must engage in the proper business organization. Put these tips to good use and you’re sure to run a smooth operation.
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