Load One - Blog #remote office

The Year in Review: Top 5 Posts of 2020

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 09:00:00 +0800

#5 How to Attract Customers Using Online Channels

Whether you're an old hand at online businesses or transitioning from a brick-and-mortar business, attracting customers through online channels has never been more important that now. We hope our post has given you some ideas on how you can continue to do business online regardless of the quarantines.

#4 Raising Customer Loyalty with SMS and Chat

With online consumption and online shopping at an all-time high, it's even easier to stay connected to your market and build a relationship with them. SMS and Chat is a great way to stay connected through these months of social distancing.

#3 Top 5 Ways to Acquire and Retain Customers on Your E-commerce Store

E-commerce continues to be an important piece in today's business climate, and it shows, with two out of five places in our top 5 list. Customer loyalty and retention is important, especially now when customers are spoilt for choice.

#2 4 Ways to Adapt to the Lockdown Reality By Going Digital

Traditional business owners, we hear you. Transitioning your pre-COVOD-19 business to the digital world is an important undertaking, and one that so often feels like too much of a challenge. We hope this short guide can help you manage these new waters of technology.

And our top #1 post for 2020 is...

#1 5 Reasons To Take Remote Offices Seriously Now

Our top post is about remote offices, naturally. One of the biggest shifts in today's world is the move to remote workplaces and offices. Health and safety reasons called for the change, and many workplaces have had to adjust quickly. Remote work does bring many positive benefits other than health concerns, which we focus on in this post.

Conclusion

As we move into the new year, let's continue to work smartly and diligently in this new normal. Whether it's through learning more about the digital landscape of business, or continuing to make our remote workplaces a better place for our teams, let's move forward together.

Did our top 5 posts surprise you? What is your top topic for 2020?

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.