It seems that remote work has become the best solution for employers and employees. Both significantly benefit from moving outside offices to a comfortable working environment. The problem is that employees’ interest and motivation in doing their work may fall over time due to many reasons. How can an employer tune his employees on high productivity and get them motivated?

Working outside the office provides employees with more opportunities for gaining balance in life. Furthermore, they no longer need to get up early and spend plenty of time on transportation.

The positive effect from remote work is possible when employees take responsibility for their work quality and are motivated by the results. Managing remote teams requires systematization of management skills and development of a strategy on their motivation.

What Factors Influence Motivation?

There are many internal and external factors affecting the motivation of a remote worker:

• Access to information. It is about access to relevant data and tools, allowing an employee to improve his productivity.
• It allows an employee to perform the tasks in his own way and makes him more responsible for the results.
• Availability of communication with an employer or other remote workers enables the possibility of clarifying important details when it is necessary.
• Promotion opportunities. Promotion means “growth” for an employee. It gives him a new status, new responsibilities, and a higher salary.
• This factor is one of the most motivating tools for an employee as it allows him to satisfy his daily needs.
• Work for an employee is a way of satisfying his need to develop his skills as a professional.
• Skills advancement means a lot, especially for the specialist dealing with information management. Regular training allows remote employees to feel that their leaders’ care.
• Working environment. This includes a degree of comfort, adjustment to physical needs, and even relationship with colleagues.

Top 5 Ways To Motivate Remote Employees

Remote work is a new format for many employees. It may cause stress as people need to quickly adapt to new conditions and, at the same time, save productivity.

Provision of technical facilities for uninterrupted work is an important task, but it is equally important to create conditions under which remote workers will work efficiently. What measures the company’s leader should take to motivate his remote employees?

Stay in touch.

At remote work, daily communication with colleagues comes to the fore. It helps support and encourage staff; emphasizes that each remote employee is part of a large team.

To make employees understand the company’s objectives more clearly and feel certain belonging to a huge team, the leaders should communicate with them as closely as possible and treat them with trust and understanding. They should arrange regular online meetings to ensure that employees understand the key tasks and the company’s priorities.

Work on remote workers’ skills development

While working in a home office mode, employees should keep working on developing their skills and learning something new for professional growth.

To motivate their employees, company leaders stimulate and support this desire. They organize internal classes for their employees, purchase online courses and webinars, and provide materials on time management techniques and planning.

Launching a blog is another great way for the company’s leader to encourage his staff’s professional development. In his blog, he can post useful materials, tell about software that can be used to ease or automate work, etc. If you do not have time for writing content by yourself, you can contact Writing Judge to find a specialist to delegate writing functions.

Express praise and gratitude

These days, remote employees have more responsibilities, duties, and work to do due to staff shortages caused by the pandemic. The study by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ashley V. Whillans showed that praising employees for their work improves productivity.

In this case, the company’s leaders thank everyone for their work and willingness to pick up additional functionality.

Use material motivation

Material incentives also matter for remote employees. To motivate them to work better, employers provide a range of bonuses, including monthly revenues for the most productive employee, the best project, etc.

In 2018, the Cornell researchers Woolley K. and Fishbach A. published their study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It revealed that employees who received frequent bonuses for completing small tasks had the bigger motivation and greater engagement in task performance than employees who were receiving rewards at the end of a long-term project.

Develop and maintain a corporate culture

Building a corporate culture for remote employees is also important. In the office, it is much easier to maintain a team spirit, a sense of cohesion, and build a common value system.

The company’s leader can try to start small by showing his excitement about everyone’s success. He should communicate with employees on various topics, including clarifying work details and discussing problems or questions in the workflow.

Sending a monthly or weekly newsletter to each remote employee is also a good idea. Thus, you will make them aware of the company’s relevant projects, new employees or provide useful materials and resources. Writing an article may take some time. To make this task easier, you can contact Online Writers Rating to get help with writing reviews or tips.

If the company’s policy allows, one can also hold informal video conferences to let employees talk about their hobbies or talents. This will help remote employees get closer, open up, and feel the team spirit.

Learning to hear and understand employees, monitoring their work quality, and trust are no less important for an employer than structuring and control. He should help all his employees feel part of the team, show readiness to help, pursue joint goals, and support a common ideology. By motivating remote employees, one can build a dream team even at a distance!