8 Effective Hacks to Make Your Remote Employees More Productive

Managing a remote team comes with challenges on many levels, but the benefits of remote work can have a positive impact on productivity. 

Still, to address your global team’s productivity, you need to take a holistic approach that includes everything from technical solutions, to business culture and engagement, to their wellbeing. 

Here are the eight top tips to help remote managers increase the productivity and performance of their remote teams.

Encourage communication

The productivity of your remote employees depends on efficient brainstorming, a strong team connection, and streamlined communication. This is especially important for remote teams who rely on regular updates to keep in touch and complete their tasks. 

The best approach to build a connection here is to talk to your team about subjects other than work. However, make sure to strike the right balance because things might get out of hand easily. 

Sharing information and photos for the sake of sharing can lead to information overload that damages decision-making and ultimately impacts productivity. 

Too much business-related communication might prove even disastrous for your team’s productivity. A study by Twingate reveals that 40% of employees feel mentally exhausted after video calls while working remotely.

Document processes

It’s a responsibility of a remote team leader to make sure the processes are well documented. All team members need to be aware of where to obtain these documents if needed. 

• A bad example: You tell your team members what the aim is without giving them any clue how to meet that goal.

• A good example: You tell your team members what the aim is but also refer to a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that you’ve created together. 

As things change, so should your team’s SOPs. 

If you don't continually work on improving different processes, you’re compromising your team’s productivity. By improving the SOPs, you can easily identify time-wasters such as repetitive tasks and look for solutions to automate them.

This was the very idea that the founders of Better Proposals had back in the day when they had to create lots of proposals "manually".

Instead of wasting time with Word documents, they built a tool that automated much of the process. This allowed them to cut proposal writing time drastically while eliminating errors.

Over time, Better Proposals has evolved into a formidable proposal building platform that allows you to create, send, and track web-based proposals within minutes.

Our digital proposals also allow you to integrate your favorite CRM, project management, and payment apps to import data directly from your workflows.

The whole idea behind digital proposals is to close more deals and get paid faster -- in other words, improve your productivity.

This way your employees can have more time for high-priority tasks. As a remote leader, your job is to empower your employees to work smarter rather than harder. Burnout is one of the main issues employees face, especially when it comes to creativity and design fields.

As a result, they will be more likely to disconnect after work and get rested and recharged for the next day. When people are energized, they are more likely to give their best during the workday.

Maintain corporate culture

A dedication to the corporate culture outside of regular work is one of the most challenging aspects of remote work productivity. This is why remote team leaders need to optimize essential cultural features and make sure the team adjusts to them even if they are half-world away. 

Here are a few things you can do:

• Establish flexible work hours – It lets your employees find a better work-life balance which is a critical driver of their productivity.

• Provide physical and mental health incentives – When you encourage and support employee wellbeing, you directly boost productivity. 

• Create activities that reflect corporate values  – Employees tend to be more productive when they are engaged and dedicated to common goals. 

On the other hand, you need to create a strong work culture that you will exemplify in every aspect. 

This doesn’t mean that micromanaging your team will lead to an increase in productivity. In fact, micromanaging tends to have the opposite effect. 

Instead, focus on hiring talented employees who share similar values and give them the tools they need to do their job well. This includes measuring their employee performance by outcomes, instead of how busy employees seem.

If you're worried remote work might reflect negatively on project timelines and deliverables, you should also consider integrating project risk management software into your workflow. That way, you can preemptively identify and mitigate risks.

Watch for the signs of overload

When you’re all working in an office, it’s pretty easy to detect when an employee is overworked. They may skip lunch breaks or leave late day after day. A study by OnePoll has revealed that 29% of remote workers in the US are afraid to take any meals during work hours, fearing the loss of productivity. 

This means they have more on their plate than they can handle. With a remote team, you have no such luxury. Your employees might get overloaded without you even noticing. 

This is why you need to take steps to prevent it from happening. For example, if you need to assign urgent work to a remote employee, find out how it will affect their other processes. The employee then may give you an estimate of how much time they’ll need to spend on the task that will be slowed down.

To address these challenges effectively, consider providing resources such as project management courses online for both managers and remote employees. These courses can offer valuable insights and techniques for workload distribution, time management, and prioritization.

Also, you should advise your staff not to send too many emails to one another. If they hit the “respond to all” command, the communication may include those who are not interested. As a result, employees waste more time screening emails they shouldn’t have received.

Offer different workplace setups

Call it a lack of space, too many distractions, or too thin a line between professional and personal life – the truth is that working from home isn’t productive for everyone. 

But here’s the catch. Remote working doesn’t have to mean working from home. 

If your employees are more productive in the buzz of an office or the silence of a meeting room, consider giving them access to local coworking spaces. Some of these venues offer flexible pass options, which are far cheaper than renting permanent office space. 

For those who choose to stay at home because that’s where they’re most productive, you need to ensure they have all the equipment they need to give their best. A work-from-home stipend allows them to buy desks, chairs, second screams, or anything else that allows them to work effectively.

Deal with technical issues 

Most companies have in-house technical personnel to help employees deal with technical problems they may have. Since remote teams are most likely dispersed, you need to put in place a unique plan for dealing with technological difficulties. 

As a remote manager, you should guarantee that your team is not held back because of someone’s inability to complete their tasks due to technological issues. 

There are two ways you can do this: 

1. Identify service providers near each team member who can take care of any tech issues, including remote software installation.
2. Pay your remote employees for access to local coworking spaces where they may work until their issues are solved.

Throw team-building activities

Give your employees an opportunity to bond and get to know each other outside of the digital workplace. They can do this by taking part in weekly team social calls where they can speak about anything other than work. 

Consider after-work Meet hangs or a group lunch via video conferencing. Such activities are a great means to improve non-work contact. Other ideas include having an online game night or movie night – just as if the teams were in the same office. 

These types of activities bring employees closer together and help them deal with daily work challenges. These apart, consider doing a larger teams-meeting exercise every quarter. If you can get a budget for it, you may also sponsor a team-building excursion to a central spot of choice to motivate your teams to achieve their objectives.

Invest in your employees’ personal development

Employees who are engaged are more productive in remote positions, and one of the key drivers of engagement is professional growth. A Gallup report shows that companies with a highly-engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability. 

So to get the best results, you need to invest in your individual team members and their development.

When you provide an employee training and development budget, you automatically empower your team members to take charge of their careers. Employees can use their allocated budget to buy books, attend webinars and training courses, earn job-related certificates using the CompTIA Security+ Practice Test, etc. 

You can then meet with your team members and discuss how they can apply this knowledge to their everyday tasks. This not only boosts employee engagement but also enables your business to tap into new skills and ideas.

Wrapping up

Managing remote teams comes with its share of challenges. However, effectively managed remote teams can be significantly more productive than regular teams working on brick-and-mortar office premises. 

It’s the job of a remote manager to identify productivity bottlenecks and address them before they become a problem. 

Technical and procedural issues are the easiest to solve, especially if you have intelligent sales software that eliminates time-consuming and repetitive tasks. 

Start a trial and you’ll quickly realize how much time your remote team saves by using Better Proposals digital templates.