Currently other forms of work which reduce the cost of employment are becoming increasingly popular. Remote work is kind of professional relation between employer and employee when the work performance is handled outside the office.
The key factor in this case is to communicate expectations and duties in very precise way – it is necessary when we need to coordinate the work of a team. Fortunately, there is an extended market of solutions that helps manage the team.
Advantages and risks
What are the key benefits and risks associated with partly and fulltime remote work? The biggest advantage for employees is skipping the necessity to travel to the office – it saves time and money. For employers decreasing employment costs is the main benefit – company don’t need to organize work place with special tools for representatives. Companies also have a chance to hire specialists who live in long distance from company and are not willing to move. Despite many advantages employers shouldn’t forget about the risks, which include, among others; difficulties in controlling employees, problems with communications between different structure levels and problems with self-control and expanding the amount of duties of particular team members. So, how easily managed team of remote workers?
Innovative technologies recipe for success
With help comes new it technologies and innovative strategic solutions. Managing a virtual team requires right tools. Communication at a distance, splitting tasks, coordinating their implementation in a fixed order can be very challenging. It is worth investing in these tools to create multiple communication channels, so that the management is able to communicate with the team members and all employees can consult their current activities with other colleagues. Useful tools are various types of messengers, public and those for professional users.
In case of managing tasks a good idea may be to implement a CRM system. Thanks to this system it is possible to improve in an easy way sharing information process and assigning specific responsibilities to team members. Another way to handle remote team is to use social media application called Yammer. This solution has its advantages and disadvantages – on the one hand allows for greater integration of the whole team and protects against access to data by third parties, on the other hand – is much less universal proposition than CRM. Regardless of the medium of communication the regular networking with employees and day by day motivating system remains the key success factor. Very important are also periodic reports – automatically generated within the CRM system, which helps to monitor and manage up-to-date sales strategy, change tasks allocation, etc.
