Most businesses have switched part or most of their businesses to a remote model. With that comes the need to boost employee productivity despite the challenges that come with working from home. 

Working remotely became a post-COVID culture as the world slowly had to find new ways to deal with uncertain times. 

Most employers are realizing that remote work does not have adverse effects on their bottom line. What’s more? 

Statistics have proven how effective remote work can be, eliminating prior worries that existed among many.

For instance, a 2020 survey revealed that the productivity of 94% of their employees either improved or remained constant since they started working remotely.

You Still Need To Boost Employee Productivity

This doesn’t mean that remote work has been an automatic success for organizations. Far from it. Even if some functions such as digital marketing have found their ground as far as remote work goes, most others haven’t.

Therefore, without proper organization, maintaining productivity levels in employees may be hard. Remote work doesn’t come without its challenges.

Some of these include:

• Time management
• Issues with prioritizing work
• Constant distractions from family
• The need for human interactions
• Differences in the time zone

Ready for tips on how to boost employee productivity while working remotely? Here we go.

8 Ways To Boost Employee Productivity

There are numerous strategies you could implement to increase employee productivity. Some of it depends on the nature of your business. 

Take a look at these productivity tips. You’ll find something that works.

1. Allow Your Employees Flexibility

This involves switching to a more results-oriented structure, rather than constant follow-ups and check-ins. In short, you need to avoid remote micromanagement.

There are many dynamics to remote work that vary from employee to employee. For instance, some employees have families that they have to work around. Some have pets and others may live in constantly noisy neighborhoods and so on.

As such, standardized office schedules and timeframes may not be practical for every employee. 

The solution? Allowing flexible working hours and schedules that work for each person. This will help boost employee productivity.

However, it should be accompanied by setting clear goals and objectives to be met by the end of a given period. For instance, a marketing team’s performance could be measured by its lead generation efforts, and so on.

This way, you’re hands-off on how employees get their work done, just as long as they achieve set goals within set deadlines.

2. Invest in Time Tracking Tools

The distractions that come with remote work may pose challenges to employee productivity, especially if there are no firm boundaries. Depending on what type of business you run, time-tracking tools can help your employees become more grounded.

Also, as an employer, you will have a view of what your employee schedules are like. This includes the websites they visit, how often they take breaks, and how long their breaks are.

This will help you make comparisons and identify weaknesses in employees with low performance. As such, you’d know what actions to take to boost employee productivity. 

3. Help Your Employees Create A Better Work Environment

Just like in a physical office, a remote work environment needs to be conducive. You should therefore encourage your employees to have spaces in their homes dedicated specifically to work.

Also, have them create an ideal working environment in these spaces. This includes:

• Having ergonomic furniture
• Proper lighting
• Ideal positioning of furniture
• The physical appeal of their work office.

To achieve this, you could organize informative sessions where employees share tips on how to make their offices better. Or better yet, create an online course on office layout and have interested employees take it! 

Another way would be to invest in your employees’ furniture by buying them desks and office chairs for their home offices. Much like you would if they were to physically report to their workstations. 

Consider it as an investment to boost employee productivity.

4. Encourage Employees To Set Firm Boundaries 

Even while allowing flexibility, employees mustn’t integrate too much of their personal lives with work. This is especially so if it interferes with their productivity.

Therefore, you should encourage them to set firm boundaries with certain aspects of work. For instance, they could strictly set aside time for team meetings and scheduled client calls every day.

This way, they can have a healthy work-life balance.

5. Hold Virtual Interactive Events

One of the many challenges to remote work is that people miss in-person interactions. To create a sense of community, encourage your teams to have virtual team-building events.

These could be social themed events where employees take time to interact with each other outside of work. For instance, having virtual coffee dates and or informal lunch dates. 

This helps prevent burnout and boost employee productivity. You can to track performance metrics to monitor and improve the overall performance ROI of teams, as they get along even better. 

6. Checking In With Employees

Remote work means employees have less freedom to consult frequently with colleagues in case of any challenges. Whether it be about personal issues or work-related struggles.

Therefore, scheduling regular check-ins with them helps. You could also encourage team leaders to do the same with their team members. This way, in case one of your employee’s productivity is being affected by some struggles, they’ll get a chance to get past it.

This helps boost employee productivity since it shows that you not only care about work but employee well-being too. 

7. Standardize Work Processes

It’s important to clarify work processes for team members in a remote setup. Unlike in an office, they no longer have the freedom to consult with each other for work procedures.

Therefore, it’s your responsibility to update each team member on your expectations, just so they’re all on the same page. With standardized work processes, you avoid a lot of back and forth in constant consultations. 

This way you have consistent results. This helps boost employee productivity.

8. Have Centralized Communication Spaces

Here, you boost employee productivity by ensuring that the communication between remote teams is streamlined.

There should be an organized way in which teams communicate, to avoid missed deadlines or late submissions of work. Or having important information getting lost or being accessed late. 

For example, you can leverage the best sales CRM tools to centralize your sales communication process and ensure effective sales management.

Additionally, a recent report showed that 91% of businesses use only 2 messaging apps.

Remote Work Is The New Normal

The pandemic changed the dynamics of the work environment as we knew it. And to thrive in this new time, employers need to be proactive about how they boost employee productivity.

The points listed above are just a few ways to get started. There’s no single way that’s guaranteed to work with all your employees. Therefore, experimentation is the way to go, until you find what works for each section of your business.

These tips also depend on the nature of your business. Therefore, some may seem more appealing to you than others. 

All the best in maximizing your team’s productivity in this remote world!