With borders kept closed, countries stuck in mandated lockdowns, and countless loss of lives, humans are dealing with the unprecedented effects of a pandemic. As a result of the self-isolating lockdown, many health care facilities businesses are planning or deploying remote workforces to survive and provide their services no matter what. As a result, remote teams are going visible more than ever. Given that there are more possibilities for you to build a remote team, especially during the time COVID-19, you need to get ready for success with the new work style. This guideline will help to ensure remote workers’ productivity through the pandemic and beyond.

Ask the Team to Set Office Hours

Remote work gives employees the option to be settling to work flexible hours, but then they quickly lose track of things if they don’t decide to control work hours. Let the employees of your health care facility know why setting clear office hours is essential for remote work.

First, it will let your clients know you will be available to communicate.
Second, it establishes the standard of when you should be working.
Third, it makes you productive by finishing the work in a given time frame.
Fourth, friends and family members will give you respect for following a specific work hour and routine.
Fifth, it will help to balance work and give you the freedom to enjoy life.
And sixth, it will create a professional manner inside you.

Ask your employees to set the work hours so that they can get these benefits and become productive.

The Importance of Dressing Up for Work

An advantage of remote work is that employees don’t have to wear formal dress at home, they can wear attire they feel comfortable with. Although they don’t need to stay in a professional look at home, certainly they can become more productive by dressing up for remote work. For example:

Wearing a professional dress doesn’t only help to build morale. The dress code sends a visual message about work ethics while attending meetings on video calls. Let your employees know about it.
The better you look, the better you will feel and perform. The physical experience of certain clothes and the symbolism behind them helps to increase productivity.
Professional dress helps to create an invisible boundary between work and personal matters. The line becomes blurry when someone gets rid of the dress codes. Ask the remote team members to distinguish the productive self and the leisurely self by wearing proper clothing.

Establish a Designated Work Space

The employees should carve out a distinctive spot for office work. Here’s why:

It will prevent blending personal and work life, just like the dress codes. Having a proper workday is important, and the designated workspace will help make it happen.
A designated workspace will help to store the work in one place. If someone has a shortage of space, they can establish a routine for work and personal tasks.
A blended place for work and personal space creates risks of doing housework in the office time. Unless an employee doesn’t follow a routine for office and personal work, he/she can easily convert into personal matters while doing work on projects. So, keeping a distinctive workspace is highly preferable.
Keep in mind that not every employee has the same access to space or appropriate furnishings. Consider offering a work from home stipend, which can be modest, to get everyone on the same plane and page for optimal productivity.

Maintain Remote Workers’ Productivity with “To-do” Lists

Task management is necessary for the successful completion of projects. It involves making a to-do-list, scheduling individual tasks and prioritizing them based on submission date and urgent level. Ask your team members to audit productivity at the end of the day and to take breaks in between. Remote work is changing its style, but you can ensure productivity by letting your employees follow these tricks.

Fixed Schedule to Communicate with Colleagues

The necessity of fixed time in the remote workplace comes from the involvement of teamwork. If your employees are working in small groups, they certainly need to contact each other. Employees should declare their working hours and days from week to week. It will help the remote team to be productive because:

Group members can chat about work and share ideas with each other in the given time.
It will work as an expression of professionalism even at home.
Employees from different time zones can easily collaborate and ensure productive work hours.

Update your team about your work progress

Keeping the team updated about personal work helps the team to be productive and efficient. Because:

It builds a framework for accountability.
It builds trust among team members.
It ensures help for individuals in need from coworkers.
It keeps the transparency in each employees’ work.
And overall, it will help you to decide who are the productive workers inside your team.

Schedule Catch ups and Meetings

Keeping communication while working remotely is a great way to stay visible. Tell your team to discuss work progress and schedule meetings regularly. The value it offers for productivity is highly appreciable.

It brings value to a working relationship. When an employee starts on a project, he/she can inform the manager and keep him in the loop.
It keeps everyone’s work on the same page and helps them to understand their role on a particular project.
Tracking progress becomes easy as everyone gets the same idea as an individual’s work in the team.

Use Remote Employee Monitoring Software

No matter where the employees work, as an employer you need to know whether the employees are working or not but you have to help employees how to make timesheets more efficient. As you have a barrier to meet employees in person due to the Coronavirus outbreak, you need to use remote employee monitoring software. It solves the issue of employee monitoring software in many ways.

It will let you know if the employees are working properly.
It will let you find proactive and self-proven workers.
It works as the pillar to build trust from both sides.
The work attendance time will be visible with its remote check-in system.
You will be ensured that the official data is handled by actual employees with its face recognition system.
You will see how much time an individual worker has spent on the day or week with this software.
Overall, the software will help you decide which employees are productive at work.

Deploy Employee Engagement App

In an emergency like the current outbreak, employees need to be motivated as they are stuck at home for a long time. As an employer, you need to keep them encouraged to go through this pandemic time. Your responsibility can get easier if you deploy an employee engagement app. It has benefits that will allow your employees to be productive.

It will help to keep employees motivated.
It will encourage employees to go through tough times and beyond.
It will help to achieve health goals.
As an employer, you can motivate the team to stay healthy with this app.
You can keep your employees engaged to work and increase their productivity.

Considering the outcomes, you need to use this tool inside the remote team and let them work with a healthy mind.

Engage your workers, provide updates on the coming projects and their results, arrange regular meetings, and catch up with the team in a light manner. Help your remote team to flourish in the pandemic time by using the correct tool and techniques

How to ensure remote workers productivity during COVID-19