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Remote Work: The Ultimate Guide
If you are reading this article then you’re probably either already working remotely to some extent or you wish to start doing that. Regardless of which group you are in, you will find here our objective opinion on remote working including opinions, examples which worked (or not) for us as well as various of materials, […]
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Remote Work: Main Challenges
Remote enabled companies can definitely benefit from it, however, in order to do it properly they have to face some challenges which come along with remote work. Challenge #1 – Communication In many cases (but definitely not all of them) it’s simply easier to approach someone sitting in the office next to you and ask/explain […]
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Remote Work: Organizational Models
Remote work is a buzzword – everyone talks about that. However, it can have many flavours. This flavours may vary depending on who can work remotely, how often, whether it’s optional or mandatory, whether remote workers share the same time zone etc. There are few basic organizational models: Model #1 – No remote work allowed […]
The idea of giving up physical control of your employees through remote working can be challenging for many business owners, especially if they were brought up with the 9-to-5 mentality. In order to benefit from remote model it’s important to organize your work in a certain matter. Following rules will help you to setup a new workflow for remote work.
Eligibility
Not all tasks can be done remotely, after all. Not everyone can become a digital nomad too. If you run a bakery, for instance, obviously your bakers have to be onsite. Make a list of all the work you need done for your business and identify which ones you can safely delegate to a remote worker.
Some of the work you can assign to remote workers include:
- Accounting
- Customer service
- Marketing and promotions
- Website development and maintenance
- Graphic editing
- Data entry
- Content writing
- Product design
- Supply management
- Payroll
- Software development
- ….and so on
Get organized
Before you send your employees home you have to prepare a new organisational structure first. You used to have daily status meeting in the morning? Now you have to rearrange it so that people who work remote could also participate. They can either call in for the meeting or you can decide to move your updates entirely to cloud and crate dedicated channel on Instant Messaging tool.
Availability
We will cover that in details in next article – Working Hours
Responsiveness
Make sure to implement specific rule on response time. When people work remote they happened to be Away From Keyboard (AFK) – this is perfectly OK. While working in the office they also don’t work all the time. The challenge
Productivity measurements / KPI’s
Speaking of productivity, remote work policies should specify how an employee’s productivity will be measured. Productivity can be measured in a number of ways, whether it be on the time spent on the project, number of cases resolved, amount of client interactions, and more, companies need to determine how they want to evaluate their employees.
Securrity
Simply put, remote work does create new security risks; 86% of C-level executives agree that telecommuting creates a higher risks of a data breach.
Big companies work on secure networks, but when information is taken out of the office, security is not guaranteed. Employees need to be extremely careful when doing work in public places.
But most of these risks and concerns can be mitigated with a right policy in place. Specifically, you should create clear protocols for accessing, changing or transmitting sensitive documents. Address how and when the public Wi-Fi connection can or cannot be used. Additionally, especially taking into account GDPR policies, provide employees with a clear protocol to follow if they believe any information has been compromised.
Tech support / equipment
Will workers be expected to provide their own equipment, or will your company supply these items? What about software? Be clear in your policy documents about this.
In our case we provide our remote employees with equipment that is essential to their job duties, like laptops, headsets and cell phones (when applicable.) . We also provide secondary equipment (e.g. screens, cables, adapters ) – everything to make sure that their work is as efficient as possible.
Our motto was always same – we don’t want our employees to be limited by any technical obstacles. If technology (equpiment) can boost your work, we will provide you with it.
Dawid Adach
Co-Founder @ MDBootstrap.com / Forbes 30 under 30 / EO'er
For years I've been working as an IT Consultant in countries like Netherlands, Belgium, Poland or India developing enterprise class systems for the biggest companies within domain.
Since 2016 I'm co-founder of MDBotstrap.com - world class UI Framework used by NASA, Amazon, Nike, Airbus, Samsung, Apple and many other Fortune 500 Companies.
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