Remote work has revolutionized how people perceive their jobs. Some enjoy working from home for the peace and quiet while others enjoy not having to commute to work. While this is a great benefit for employees, working from home can also cause employees to become disengaged from their work.
Managing a remote workforce can be challenging. Ensuring that your employees are engaged is vital to maintaining a high level of productivity. Here are four ways to keep your remote workforce engaged.
Spotting disengagement
Employees can become disengaged with their work for many different reasons. Disengagement can occur from factors inside the workplace, outside the workplace, or a combination of both. Factors from inside the workplace include burnout, a disconnect from management, or boredom. A study from Indeed cites that 67% of all workers believe that burnout has worsened since the start of the pandemic.
Spotting disengagement early will help employees deal with the root cause. With HRM software, like Breeze 360, supervisors are able to identify early signs of disengagement. With Breeze 360’s dashboard view, supervisors can view time and attendance data, as well as KPIs, for each employee. Tardiness and not achieving KPIs are a couple of signs that could point to a disengaged employee.
Get to know your employees
Remote workers are not exposed to the unplanned conversations that an office provides. While some people dread small talk, these conversations still offer human interaction that is much different from a planned virtual meeting. Making time to get to know your employees is more important now than ever.
Company culture is created through a trickle-down effect. Culture stems from the senior level staff and works its way down to frontline employees. When an employee feels secure and cared for, they are much more likely to be engaged in their work. If employers aren’t doing this in a genuine way, it will show.
Understand employee workload
While working from home, employees can quickly feel like their work is going unnoticed. This can lead to employees feeling underappreciated by their superiors. To keep this from happening, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky recommends asking employees these five questions every morning:
- How are you doing overall?
- How are you feeling right now?
- What’s been interesting in your life recently outside of work?
- What’s going on in your work: what’s going well, and what are some challenges?
- What is one thing about you or the world that most other team members do not know about?
By asking these five questions, team leaders are able to build relationships with employees that go deeper than just the workplace.
Evaluate employee experience
According to a Gallup study, only 34% of the working population are engaged, and 64% are either miserable in their role or simply going through the motions.
The only way to understand what an employee is going through is to hear from the employee themselves. Employee surveys are a great tool to use to gain more consistent feedback. Engaged employees do improve productivity, but knowing what truly motivates an employee can help your workforce reach their true potential.