For a business to grow, it is imperative to find the right team. This means finding talent that has the prerequisite skill sets and shares the vision of the business. Even after finding the right talent, it will be important to keep them happy and motivated. However, the recent Coronavirus pandemic has changed how businesses work, and it is projected to have long term effects and shape how businesses deal with their employees in the future. As governments imposed restrictions due to the pandemic, businesses were forced to allow workers to work from home. This resulted in decentralized teams and businesses had to come up with solutions to make sure this concept worked. It was imperative to come up with collaboration and communication platforms to ensure businesses functioned seamlessly. The success of some businesses has resulted in the increased use of technology that allows employees to work from home and still stay productive. Working from home has many advantages, and the future outlook is that many businesses will work towards enhancing the efficiency and productivity of decentralized teams.
Retaining and hiring new talent is essential for the growth of a business. However, travel restrictions due to the pandemic make it challenging, especially when it comes to interviewing suitable candidates. In this age of social distancing, the interviewing process is different, yet the priority of finding a qualified candidate remains the same. It thus becomes important for businesses to have a solid plan, whether doing interviews either in-person or virtually. When interviewing a candidate, it is important to research about them, prepare appropriate questions, and share the vision of your business. This is to ensure the right candidate can make an informed decision about your business.
Even before COVID-19 started disrupting lives, many businesses were considering and even implementing the idea of remote work. When it comes to the process of onboarding remotely, the issue of creating trust arises. This is because workers may not be able to engage with each other. However, technological advancements now mean there are effective communication and collaboration tools to create touchpoints to create a trust relationship. For example, conferencing tools such as Zoom allows new employees to train remotely, get to know more about a company, and even meet their colleagues.
As the world goes through these stressful times of the COVID-19 epidemic, one of the challenges facing businesses is keeping employees motivated. It is important for businesses to ensure employees working remotely have everything they need to boost productivity. This means using tools to constantly check on their employees to address any issues they may be having and check on their wellbeing. Since working remotely has a plethora of benefits, employees are able to work harder, leading to an increase in productivity. However, there is a danger of burnout if employees are working remotely and thus cost you the best in your workforce. According to research by Monster, over 69% of employees working from home experience burnout. Holding virtual meetings such as Zoom makes workers tired faster since they have to work harder to communicate their ideas than when in-person. A solution to this is to reduce virtual meetings and rely more on project and collaboration tools where possible. It is important for managers to engage their remote workers about their well-being and workload, and not just asking for projects. It is important to engage them in candid conversation to truly understand their needs and feelings to make them feel treasured. Simply asking them how they are doing is not enough since the most common answer you may get is ‘im doing fine.’ However, when you engage them in how their family is doing, their health, or even talking about their favourite hobbies such as playing in gaming sites as seen here, then you will likely know how they are truly doing.
For remote work, it is important to ensure your communication and collaboration strategies are working. One way to do this is to collect feedback from workers and conduct surveys. This will enable you to determine the productivity and wellbeing of your employees and make the necessary changes if required.
COVID-19 pandemic has been a learning point for many businesses. As it disrupted life, businesses that managed to adapt had better chances of survival. The pandemic also accelerated the development of tools to make it easier to work remotely. For example, Zoom saw its usage multiply 30-fold in April last year as governments started enforcing travel measures and restrictions. Running an effective remote team not only allows businesses to lower overhead costs, but also presents them with a wider pool of talented employees to choose from.