What Are Your Top Tips For Remote Working?
The last 18 months have created a lot of new remote working experts, in HR departments all around the world. Prior to 2020, many companies had given little or no thought to the possibility of homeworking: now, there are few HR managers without an in-depth understanding of remote workers’ challenges and needs.
It’s important to reflect on, and celebrate, the innovation and resilience shown by this transformation. At the same time, with new expertise in remote working being generated at just about every company in the world, there’s a lot of information to assimilate. Forward-thinking HR professionals recognise that optimal remote working practice and policy is a fast-moving target.
Let’s look at just some of the key areas where developments show no sign of slowing down.
Remote Working and Wellbeing
Under the conditions created by the pandemic, it was a challenge for many employees to create safe and healthy working conditions at home. Remote-oriented health-and-safety training was a vital lifeline here.
Throughout the pandemic, however, there has been growing recognition that homeworking requires a bigger re-think of traditional approaches to employee wellbeing. Many companies are now shifting policy and training to reflect this, addressing issues like the challenge of preserving a healthy work-life balance, or of maintaining a supportive and inclusive company culture without face-to-face interaction.
Managing Remote Teams
Management is by its nature a complex, high-level task, drawing on deep experience and well-honed personal skills. It’s not surprising, then, that managers have often found it particularly difficult to work effectively under new and sometimes improvised conditions.
Following the lead of long-term remote organisations, a growing number of businesses have developed best practice guidelines for remote managers. Rich training resources are now available for organisations where virtual management remains a challenge. Key topics include results-based performance monitoring, asynchronous teamwork, and running virtual meetings.
Remote Teamwork
The challenge of collaborating effectively remains one of the major obstacles to optimal remote working. For many organisations, the focus has been on finding the right collaboration tools. However, more and more organisations are recognising that training employees in a new, remote-oriented communication style is vital to making the most of these tools.
Effective Training
To address all the challenges above, and other challenges besides, effective remote training is vital. Companies are increasingly looking to replicate the responsiveness and interactivity of in-person training, and many have found elearning an optimal solution. Elearning is training through a digital interface, which makes it a natural way to deliver training in remote working. It makes use of gamified interactivity, animated video, and other digital resources to compensate for the back-and-forth of in-person training.
At Real Projects, we’ve developed training courses in remote working best practice for organisations of every size, calibrated for employees at every level. Using an engaging variety of tools and formats, our courses deliver best practice across a range of topics from information security to running remote meetings. We can also help you to adapt your own training materials as elearning courses. To find out more, email us at hello@realprojects.co.uk or call us on 01603 273918
