Let's start by pointing out that, despite the challenge of working remotely, Colombian companies have successfully implemented this type of work within their labor policies:
From 2012 to 2018, the number of companies implementing teleworking in the country tripled, going from 4,292 companies to 12,912 companies. This is according to data from the Colombian Ministry of Labor.
A survey conducted by the National Consulting Center stated that in 2018 there were 122 thousand teleworkers in Colombia, that is, professionals who carry out their work activities from home or a location other than the company office.
These data indicate that although remote work represents a challenge, several Colombian companies have seen it as an opportunity to establish their work dynamics due to its benefits. Among them, the following stand out:
Less operating expenses related to paying for electricity, rent, office supplies, food, drinks, among others.
Access to a wider range of professional resumes located in diverse geographic areas.
Greater work productivity for employees, as they can take advantage of the time they spent commuting to the office to complete their assignments in a space that is comfortable for them.
Considering the benefits of the home office or teleworking , if you are considering implementing teleworking in your company, or it is already part of your labor policies, in the next lines we will give you 6 tips to keep your work team productive while working from home .
1. Invest in digital co-working platforms
Digital platforms developed to manage projects, conduct video conferences, schedule events and track online activities play a key role in remote work.
They are very useful for organizing your team according to specific tasks, setting up remote meetings via webcam, discussing reports, and tracking their performance over the course of the days.
Depending on your business model, they allow you to provide your collaborators with key information and guidelines related to how to correctly use available resources to produce goods and services efficiently.
For these reasons, digital platforms implemented in coworking are excellent for keeping your work team productive and aligned with your company's objectives.
Trello, Asana and/or Monday: These are used to manage online projects.
Google Calendar and Microsoft Planner: These are ideal for planning tasks, events, and meetings.
Hangouts, Skype and/or Zoom: These are great for making remote group video calls and sharing screens to view documents, reports and briefings in real time.
Flock : used to track the performance of your collaborators on a daily basis.
To use these platforms successfully in your company, we recommend:
Pay for annual subscription packages
Unlike monthly memberships, annual plans often come with discounts and benefits.
Teach your team to use digital tools correctly
Even though their interfaces are very intuitive, you should provide your collaborators with online training so that they learn how to use the platforms correctly, and then organize consultation sessions to clarify doubts and exchange experiences.
Make sure your employees have Internet access and the necessary equipment.
If this is not the case, we recommend that you allocate a budget for the purchase of Internet connection devices, laptops, webcams, computers, among other computing equipment.
This way, you can provide your employees with the necessary technologies to ensure productivity while working remotely .
Read also: 6 online tools to manage projects and tasks in teams
2. Centralize communication
To keep your team productive while working remotely , you need to centralize communications. In remote work, it is important that communications are clear, concise, and free of confusion or ambiguity.
Therefore, using a single channel to share data, tasks, information, activities and notifications is a way to make contact with your team more efficient.
Platforms like Gmail (email), Slack, Asana, BaseCamp, and Monday are great for this. Groups created on instant messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp can also be very useful for sharing information with your team in an organized way.
For remote communications, it is ideal to establish rules to limit interactions and protect your company's documents, including:
Determine a schedule to exchange messages.
Establish communication parameters. For example: topics that are prohibited or not relevant to work priorities.
Assign roles for managing new members and disseminating communications.
Establish confidentiality agreements with your employees, which prohibit the exchange of vital company information with third parties that are not part of the company.
3. Designate work schedules and delivery dates
Although designating work schedules and delivery dates are essential tasks in any work dynamic, when it comes to maintaining productivity under a home office dynamic , you must be more precise and communicative with delivery times so that your collaborators can better organize their time.
To achieve this, we recommend:
Organize weekly meetings in which the activities to be carried out are made clear.
Share task lists organized according to their priority level.
Establish daily work controls.
Assign hours for daily deliveries. For example, complex tasks that require more attention, concentration and effort can be delivered at noon or before lunchtime, since people are usually more productive in the mornings.
Create a calendar where delivery dates can be more clearly displayed.
Use digital coworking platforms to schedule tasks. Most of them allow you to register your team members using their email addresses. This way, when both platforms are linked, your collaborators can receive reminders in their inbox.
Make sure your team's project management is up to date with the new standards for task management and has the appropriate tools to track your team's work.
Establish job performance indicators and verify that they are telegram free number philippinesbeing constantly measured.
4. Maintain a close bond with your collaborators
Take a few minutes each day to ask your employees how they feel, both emotionally and physically; what their experience has been like working outside the office; what obstacles, limitations and advantages they perceive from teleworking; what the daily dynamic is like in their homes; what their main needs are, among other related questions.
This allows you to maintain a close relationship with your employees and detect potential problems or issues that may be affecting their productivity at home in time.
For example, if an employee needs to take time off for medical reasons, having this type of relationship will allow you to offer some type of help, if necessary, and design strategies so that said absence from work does not affect the performance of your company or the achievement of its goals.
On the other hand, being attentive to the physical and emotional state of your work team is a way of letting them know how important they are to you and to the organization. It is about continuing to cultivate an organizational culture with your employees despite the distance.
5. Offer job training
Job training consists of providing your team with theoretical and practical knowledge. One of its objectives is to boost their productivity and job performance.
To train your employees, we recommend investing in online training courses or workshops, whose content allows them to:
Optimize your work functions.
Expand your professional knowledge.
Update your handling of technological tools.
Enhance soft skills.
Acquire work habits.
Learn techniques for performing specific tasks.
There are educational web platforms that offer affordable courses with quality teachers such as Coursera, EdX, Udemy and Domestika.
You can review their academic offerings and select those courses that are useful for your employees. If the knowledge they need is very specific, you can hire consultants or experts in the area who are available to give personalized classes remotely.
In this way, you are giving your employees the tools they need to be more productive from home and enhance their resumes.
Ultimately, to keep your team productive at work, you must have the appropriate technological tools, communicate very well the tasks to be performed, as well as delivery times and priority levels.
In addition, you must provide emotional support and be aware of your employees' working conditions outside the office, in order to address any needs in a timely manner.
Last but not least, you should offer professional training to your team with content that helps them increase their productivity and enhance their knowledge and skills.