According to a report recently published by Nemertes, 36% of organizations would like to continue offering full-time work-from-home arrangements once offices open back up, while 41.8% say they will support employees who would like to work from home on a part-time basis. Offices certainly aren’t a thing of the past, then, but many companies will clearly be making remote work a viable long-term option for their employees. But this means management will have to do more than simply subscribe to a video conferencing service. Implementing a successful work-from-home culture is an ongoing process. Here are a few tips for making it work.
Home-Friendly Solutions
It can be difficult to leverage on-premises solutions to meet the needs of your remote employees. This is why it is important to implement a cloud-based video conferencing and collaboration solution like StarLeaf Cloud, an intuitive platform accessible to all, no matter where they happen to be working. The last thing you want to do is troubleshoot IT issues from a distance. User-friendly cloud-based solutions take the guesswork out of getting up and running, and your remote workers won’t have to struggle with difficult interfaces or connectivity issues.
Video First
Since pretty much everyone with an office job is working from home these days, you really have no choice but to cultivate a video-first company culture. But when your workforce is eventually split between on-site employees and remote workers, you should do everything you can to continue to uplift video as the de facto communication and collaboration method, as it is the only tool at your disposal capable of bringing everyone together. Do not treat your video collaboration solutions as support or backup, but as crucial components of your communication strategy. This will ensure that your remote employees remain as engaged as your on-site workers.
IT Support
Your remote employees might be mostly out of sight, but they should never be out of mind. They deserve the same level of IT support enjoyed by employees who work in the office. And by IT support, we mean more than just regular updates of your video conferencing and collaboration solutions. You should be providing remote workers with the tools they need to turn their work space at home into a full-fledged office. This includes but is not limited to: office furniture, headsets, cameras and reliable WiFi services. You wouldn’t expect your on-site employees to show up to work with everything they need to outfit their office, right? Right. So why should your remote workers?
More Than Conferencing
Think about the way your employees interact at work. They do more than sit in meetings and work at their desks. A productive office environment is one that encourages more informal idea-sharing and socializing, and you should provide your remote employees with video collaboration tools that make these connections as seamless and easy as they are for their on-site counterparts. And video solutions should be put to use for a little bit of fun too. Encourage your employees to use their video capabilities to socialize outside of work (or during work, even) by providing engagement opportunities like special classes, birthday parties and happy hours.
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