Allowing members of your company to work remotely can really play a big role in boosting morale and improving the employer-employee equation. Paying attention to your employees’ needs and real wants increases their enthusiasm to perform better for you. Emergencies or situations that prevent a person from being physically present in the workplace can arise at any time, and as a business owner, when you empathize with your employees’ call, it instills a sense of security in their employer. Many surveys have indicated that companies that promote/allow remote work for their employees receive up to eight times more job applications than companies that do not.
Let’s learn 3 ways on how you can reap the benefits of remote work:
Redefine your policies
Business owners, who are not very open-minded, have a misleading perception about remote work. Such a vision can make it difficult to adopt new concepts and work culture. The fact must be recognized that the concept of remote work is not that new, it has been around for the last decade. Many firms have outside consultants and tax preparers who offer proposals to clients. Your company’s human resources department should develop official policies based on existing remote work practices and work around your employees’ preferences and work culture. There should be parameters and limits to keep employees in check when working remotely, such as quality of work, detailed performance reporting, and time taken to complete the designated task. Remote staff should not be treated differently from on-site employees. They should also be expected to abide by company policies, including security and confidentiality clauses.
Check and update your technology infrastructure
You can get around a smooth remote work process only if you have the right technology for it. Without the right technology infrastructure, you won’t be able to do remote work collaboration. One of the key steps in implementing a remote work-friendly environment is to digitize all customer data and communication between employees so that work documents and applications for tax accounting can be accessed simultaneously in a collaborative manner. To ensure consistency, you must ensure that all of these tools and applications can be securely accessed at the same levels of performance across all systems and employees, whether on-site or remotely. The best resource to ensure consistent and tampered access to data anytime, anywhere is cloud hosting. Nearly all of their accounting, tax, and payroll software is cloud-friendly and produces better productivity when it’s in the cloud. With cloud applications, employees can access their work data from any smart device with an Internet connection. This would eliminate the need for them to be tethered to their computers and give them the freedom to work in peace, while as a business owner you get the benefit of all your tasks getting completed. When setting up the environment for remote work, an optimal factor to consider is that all remote workers should find a separate private space that is free from distractions and secure enough to store sensitive physical documents.
Update your communication tools
Collaborative digital communication plays a vital role when it comes to extracting the maximum possible productivity from employees who work remotely. This is where apps like Skype, Slack, Trello, and Microsoft Teams come into play. These applications help integrate messaging, audio and video communication, group task assignments and screen sharing, promoting interactions between employees, regardless of their location. Putting these tools to good use improves overall project management digitally and allows everyone involved in a particular project to gain access to project status, track progress, and escalate requirements, if applicable. These applications are easy to install, use and update, promoting a remote work culture and encouraging employees to do their best, even when they are not physically present on the office premises. The continuous exchange of information and collaborative work when using such tools help to deal with challenges that might otherwise have arisen.
conclusion
With millennials making up the majority of the workforce today, promoting remote work has become a growing trend. Millennials tend to keep quality of life and comfort working among their top priorities, and remote work enables just that. Companies should start by making incremental changes to promote remote work and off-site employees. With the advancement of technology, it is not an inconvenience not to have an employee physically present in the office. Modern technology allows the employer to be well connected and in sync even with remote employees. Not offering and implementing remote work can put companies in a compromised position and at a competitive disadvantage. If your company isn’t yet on the remote work trend or doesn’t have policies in place, now is the right time to get started!