Load One - Blog #employee engagement

Important Tips For Handling Employee Attendance Issues [2020]

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0800

Your employees are a vital part of your business. An engaged team can do wonders for your company, and helps maintain morale as successes pile on top of each other.

But especially in challenging times like now, it can be a challenge to maintain morale and momentum. Many companies have allowed employees to work remotely, but have not updated their policies to match.

Now that we are living in a pandemic, it's even more important to take employee attendance and engagement seriously. Ignoring issues does not only mean possible loss of revenue for the business, but can seriously lower the whole team and company's morale. Consider:

Other employees can't ignore excessive absenteeism in a colleague, because they are stuck picking up the slack for them.
Deadlines may be missed and additional costs/fines incurred for the company.
Seeing no action done for excessive absenteeism may lower team morale and risk alienating your working employees.

While you should not be tying your staff to their desks during working hours, neither should you ignore attendance issues like this -- both for the business and the employee's benefit.

It's a challenge that needs to be addressed. We have some important tips for you if you have to address issues like this.

Ensure Your Attendance Policy is In Writing

Make sure you put your attendance policy in writing. This may be in the employee handbook, the intranet documentation, or other channels.

Make sure this is accessible to your employees, so that they are aware of what repercussions are there for excessive absenteeism. They also need to be aware of what process to follow if they need to report their tardiness or leave-taking.

For 2020: Now that many employees are working remotely and physical offices may be empty, make sure that your policies are digitized, whether in PDF form for employees to browse, or in your company intranet.

Don't have a document sharing platform? Try putting your documents on Google Drive. But make sure that permissions are set correctly so access is controlled.

Track Employee Attendance Well Reliably

Make sure you are tracking attendance reliably and well. Of course, your employees must know the company process and internal system, too. This helps maintain information integrity and means less work for everyone overall.

While it might be tempting for leaner companies to postpone formal attendance tracking to a later date, make sure someone is doing it, even if manually. This data will be important when addressing any attendance concerns.

For 2020: Many workforces have resorted to morning "check-ins", whether via a team chat or other medium, now that many people are working from the safety of their homes. But make sure that someone is taking note of these check-ins to ensure proper tracking.

An alternative is using a cloud-based attendance tracking software like Load One's solution (ask us about it!), to formalize the process and free up your managers' time from needing to manually track and report attendance.

Express Your Concern

For first-time offenders, it's all right to breach the subject more casually. Either way, make sure employees are aware that you have noticed, and emphasize that their welfare is important to you. After all, especially in the current climate, many people are struggling and may have understandable reasons for absenteeism.

For 2020: It's a challenge when teams are not able to meet face to face. Make sure you address issues with a phone call at the very least--a video call would be better. Many subtle cues can get lost with a voice call, much less an impersonal email. It's also good to remember that there are unique challenges in today's world. Leading with understanding and kindness can help you maintain your employees' loyalty and morale.

Work With Them On a Solution

Work on a plan of action or improvement plan with the employee. Depending on their reasons for tardiness or absences, work with them to come up with a solution or improvement plan.

Perhaps they have extra workload they may need to address at home before they get to work, or a personal issue they are dealing with currently. Perhaps they need temporary adjustment of their working hours. Some employees may need a more formalized leave of absence to take care of their health.

Discuss your employee's needs with them and work out what they need from you so that they can address the issue and continue contributing to the team.

Take Care of Your Team

Remember that it's important to find out the root cause of your employee's excessive tardiness or absenteeism. While it might sometimes be tempting to write it off as a flaw or negative mark in their record, many times there are underlying issues that can be easily addressed with an honest conversation.

Taking care of one individual will help the team. Additionally, it's generally easier to work with an employee on a solution rather than letting them go and finding a new team member. A successful improvement plan can leave your employee feeling extra grateful and loyal to you and your company, as well.

While there is no silver bullet when it comes to tackling attendance issues, communicating with your team will help. Starting with the basics can help you improve employee attendance and engagement, and therefore uplift your business.

3 Things You Can Do to Create the Right Remote Office Culture

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 09:00:16 +0800

Remote work is, by now, a staple of doing business in this pandemic-affected world. We're all waiting for the day when we can all go out and things "go back to normal", but this truly is the "new normal".

Masks and shields when outside. Once-a-week errand runs. Spray bottles of alcohol everywhere. Food delivery when possible. And working from home for many of us.

Many businesses have been forced to rush into implementing remote work programs in order to limit disruption. Between making sure staff have working computers and setting up remotely-accessed tools and online workspaces, it's easy to deem it a job well done when work is finally moving along.

But it's easy to forget that one of the most important ingredients of the remote office is the human being doing the work.

Getting a remote office set up for your employees is more than just supplying them the tools they need to do the work, but also making sure that their working environment and culture matches. A good office culture for remote workers will help your staff do better and more efficient work, too.

Is your office remote-worker-friendly? Here are 3 ways you can help your office culture evolve into one that is conducive for remote workers.

#1 - Encourage A Better Workspace

It's important to separate work and relaxation for remote workers. The brain associates certain places with certain activities, so encourage your staff to work on a table or desk, and not in their beds!

Try to budget for encouraging better workspaces for your staff. Maybe you can't spring for a new office desk for everybody, but maybe a fun remote raffle would work, or even a subsidy so they can purchase one themselves.

You can also run small contests or programs where you can encourage your staff to "show off" their workspaces. Take a page from many remote work communities who love sharing their desks to show their hard work and design skills. A little encouragement can help build a small community in your business that encourages making conducive work spaces for themselves.

#2 - Set a Schedule for Your Team

While remote work is great for flexibility, sometimes, a few rules and guidelines actually work better for us. A consistent routine helps our brains get ready for work, so encouraging your staff in maintaining a routine is great, too.

Perhaps allow them to set when they start work, so sleepyheads can get a little more sleep or people who love cooking and having hearty breakfasts have a little more time to prepare. Remote attendance tracking software like the one Load One offers can help you track when they "clock in" remotely, but can also help them--the act of checking in for the day of work can signal their brain that it's time to get busy.

#3 - Encourage Reaching Out

Remote work can easily feel very isolating. It's easy to lose track that you have a team working with you, and to feel that you are all alone. Encourage downtime socializing in your teams to help them feel more comfortable in reaching out to their colleagues.

Host fun, interactive meetings that encourage friendliness. Perhaps set a theme for your Zoom backgrounds and show off your staff's creativity. Hold a meeting in costume. Have a few drinks (perhaps give them a little budget or allowance!). These fun activities can help raise their engagement at work.

Also, remember that even professionally, it would benefit your employees to network and be part of a larger community than your business. Encourage them to attend and participate in online conferences and communities relevant to them. It can help them feel less alone and more connected to the work they do.

Conclusion

It doesn't take much to start turning your company into one that is conducive to remote workers and makes sure that they are treated as fairly as ones who head into the office.

Even after this global pandemic, businesses will be faced with an entirely new world -- one that has experienced remote work in a very real way.

It's time to make sure your business is ready to take that new world on.

Get Started Now

Raise Engagement of Remote Employees With These 5 Tips

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0800

Remote offices and working from home are now a staple of doing business in this lockdown reality. For better or worse, companies need to embrace remote working arrangements due to health, safety, and logistics concerns.

Whether your business operates on a fully-remote or hybrid setup, the biggest challenge is ensuring employee engagement.

Some managers have fallen into the pitfall of assuming they need to micro-manage and run day-long conference meetings to ensure that their team is working. The result are disgruntled managers and employees alike, both chained to their desks but with subpar productivity.

Don't let your employees run themselves ragged in a time when staying healthy is crucial. There are more ways to ensure productivity and engagement than looking over employees' proverbial shoulders when they are working remotely.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Provide Context and Define Goals

Oftentimes, we take for granted that our teams understand the company’s goals and where they fit into it. Unfortunately, only 40% actually know what the goals of the company are. 60% of your employees are investing time and effort into doing their jobs but possibly aren’t contributing to the company focus.

This is a bigger issue for remote employees, where sometimes, the adage “out of sight, out of mind” applies. Make sure your employees know what your business’ long-term and short-term goals are.

Help your team understand where they fit into those goals: top-down memos can be lost in translation, but sitting down and talking to your team about how they contribute directly to the goals can help them focus their efforts.

Encourage Communication

Talk is cheap. But don’t just talk--communicate. Communicate company goals, communicate weekly targets, communicate roadblocks and solutions. Communication is listening and sharing, and it is important to make sure that there are open lines between all layers of your organization.

In a time when people can’t see each other regularly and nonverbal communication is challenging, ensuring approachable channels are available is important in engaging employees. Video conferencing calls are good for regular catch-ups. Chat programs might be seen as a distraction, but for remote workers, the casual, conversational vibe of a Slack channel or Google hangout is more conducive to group discussions.

It’s also important to provide more frequent feedback for employees working remotely. It may have been a practice that is relegated to annual performance reviews in more traditional settings, but when you don’t see your team on a daily basis, it’s easy to drift away and be detached from them. Frequent and regular one-on-one meetings, no matter how quick, can help keep working relationships healthy.

Provide the Tools They Need

In the past, working from home has meant limited access to the information and tools that you need to accomplish your tasks. But office tools are more than just word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications when remote offices are concerned.

While access to these are important (as well as appropriate training, if alternatives are used), other tools to collaborate and facilitate work is also important. With the necessary popularity of remote work now, this is a great time to look into tools that can help you facilitate remote collaboration.

Make sure your team is able to track tasks and projects with management tools such as Trello or Asana. Transparency on where the project is going helps with everyone’s engagement and workflow.

Trello task management board templates

Time management and remote attendance taking can help employees feel in control of their time, as well as providing important routine tasks to start off a work day.

Remote attendance tracking dashboard

File sharing platforms are also important when it comes to remote employees coordinating their deliverables. Dropbox or Google Drive are popular solutions, even allowing employees to work on one file at the same time in the cloud.

Dropbox filesharing service

Don’t underestimate setting up an Intranet site or something super simple on Google Sites or similar. Making sure that employees have access to the information that they need to do their work is important to ensure work does not stall, and they don’t waste time hunting for information.

Update Company Culture With Remote Work in Mind

It is an unfortunate fact that culturally, “working from home” was seen as an excuse to slack off in the past. No matter how well-meaning, employees have faced challenges in getting their jobs done when working remotely, and over time this has bled out into these regrettable beliefs.

But a company culture that is designed with remote employees in mind will see more success in empowering their employees to contribute more actively to company goals. Availability of tools and open communication is one thing, but actively encouraging remote collaboration and team building is important.

Some businesses arrange coworking spaces in major hubs so employees who live near each other can collaborate in person. Others highlight the remote pockets of the organization by highlighting remote teams during meetings and allowing them to present first rather than a traditional top-down approach.

Keeping remote offices in mind when planning benefits, rewards, and recognition to employees can also emphasize how seriously your company is taking remote offices. Take a look at some of these ideas some companies have started implementing:

Electricity allowances to offset employees’ higher electricity consumption due to working completely from home
Sending quality office supplies to round out their home office
Allowances for employees purchasing desks or monitors to ensure better productivity
Sending catered or delivered food to employees during company special occasions or during employees’ birthdays

Letting employees see that your company is looking out for them even if they’re not in the office pays you back by empowering and encouraging them to be more efficient at their jobs.

Remember to Review and Measure Progress

The above ideas can help you increase employee engagement, but without a way to measure progress, it will be difficult to keep them going for long, especially for programs that cost money.

Tracking employees’ Net Promoter Scores as well as taking pulse surveys can point out to you where to improve and where you are doing well in terms of engaging your employees. It can help you realign your resources to activities and initiatives that work better for your remote employees.

Conclusion

Don't fall into outdated assumptions that remote employees have to be micro-managed to ensure they get their jobs done. Focus on building an empowered workforce that has the right tools, information, and targets at hand.

Remember to:

Provide context and define goals for your employees
Encourage communication across teams and all levels
Provide the tools and information access your employees need
Update your company culture with remote work in mind
Review and measure progress to track effective initiatives and areas for improvement

If you work on engaging your employees, you won't just survive this lockdown environment: you can come out of this challenging time with an even stronger workforce.