Remote work is becoming increasingly common in today’s digital-first landscape. Around 70% of employees are currently telecommuting once per week, and the majority of employees are expected to adopt hybrid work in the years ahead.
On the plus side, remote working has a lot of benefits to offer both employees and employers. Business leaders get to enjoy lower overheads and more engaged staff. Team members can avoid the annoying morning commute and spend more time in the comfort of their own workspace.
Unfortunately, there are challenges associated with remote work too. For instance, when employees are working remotely, it can be difficult for leaders, managers, and supervisors to figure out how to keep those distributed teams motivated.
Fortunately, we have some top tips to motivate your remote team.
Provide Everyone with the Right Tools
It’s hard to feel motivated at work when you don’t have the resources to do your job correctly. With that in mind, business leaders should take extra care to ensure their team members have everything they need to work at their most productive levels.
Think about the kinds of tools your staff is going to need to be as effective working at home as they are in the office. You may need project management tools for tracking deadlines and tasks and collaboration tools so teams can work together on projects.
Remember, communication is also essential to keeping teams engaged and motivated. Having multiple tools available for communication, including instant messaging apps and video conferencing tools, will help strengthen team bonds.
Invest in Regular Feedback and Recognition
Teams in any environment (remote or otherwise) thrive on regular feedback, recognition, and insights from their team leaders. Unfortunately, when you’re not interacting with your employees face to face on a daily basis, it’s easy to forget to provide the essential feedback they need.
Try to make a habit of offering regular insights to your employees whenever they turn in a new piece of work or complete a project. Let them know what they did well and advise them on areas where they can improve their performance.
Most importantly, when your employees do a good job, make sure they get the recognition they deserve. Praise and commendation are excellent ways to reinforce positive behavior in your remote team members.
Experiment with Gamification
Speaking of rewarding your top-performing employees, gamification can be a powerful tool for keeping teams enthusiastic and motivated. To implement gamification in your business, all you need to do is give your employees something to compete for.
A sales company might have a competition with a prize for the group that achieves the highest number of sales in a certain period. A marketing team might reward the team member who completes the most tasks within a week.
Make sure your team members can measure their performance and progress and compare themselves to their peers. This is an excellent way to inspire some playful competition, while still maintaining a culture of camaraderie.
Set Clear Goals
It’s easier to keep your team motivated and working towards specific outcomes when they know exactly what they’re trying to achieve. When setting tasks for employees, make sure you’re 100% clear about what the deliverables of the project are and how you’re going to measure each team member’s performance.
It’s also worth highlighting how each task relates to the wider goals of the business, and how your employee’s work is going to impact the brand and other members of their team. Once you have your clear goals laid out, make sure you check in with your team members frequently (without micromanaging) to see how they’re doing.
To avoid checking in too often, you can always create an “open door” policy that allows your team members to come to you when they have any questions or want to report on a completed task.
Be Open to Suggestions
Finally, it’s worth remembering that feedback shouldn’t only be something managers and supervisors give to their employees. Today’s leaders need to be open to suggestions provided by their team members.
Your employees might discover things that could make their life easier or help them to accomplish more of their goals. Allowing your team members to suggest ways of improving the day-to-day workflow will ensure you all work together on making the remote workforce more efficient.
Allowing your team members to provide feedback and make suggestions is also an excellent way to build their engagement in the business. Staff members are more likely to stick with employers who take their suggestions seriously.