The Covid-19 outbreak has resulted in a world-wide lockdown. With an exponential increase in the number of cases each day, government officials of every country are deploying ways to curb it. Its impact has been felt by every industry. In order to contain the spread, there’s a shutdown of restaurants and malls and the workforce is telecommuting in the corporate sector.
However, the coronavirus crisis has propelled a new way of working entirely which has caused shifts in productivity, goals, and management of the talent pool. While ensuring the safety of employees and contributing towards the containment of this disease, managers can maximize their efficiency in organizing and governing their teams. Utilizing advanced resource management tools and deploying smart ways will help them increase their team productivity.
Leverage these tips to achieve the same while you are self-quarantined:
1. Collaboration tools
When you have a distributed workforce and these world events are pushing you towards a remote working model, team collaboration is crucial to keep the projects running. It’s important for managers to know which resource is allocated to what task and their progress on the same. Not only that, collaborating with employees lets you understand their strengths and weaknesses and the challenges they are facing due to a shift in the working environment. You can tap into their potential and help them adapt to telecommuting.
However, managing multiple employees dispersed across different locations is a task in itself. Kudos to the advanced technology available today that eases collaboration. Leveraging smart tools will help you get real-time updates of your team’s work and their progress. What’s more? Coworkers can touch base with each other without any formality of an email and be a part of the workspace without even being present there.
2. Management and micromanagement
While it’s necessary to communicate with employees to track their productivity and progress, nudging them every 30-40 minutes is a waste of time for both employer and employee. There is a thin line between management and micromanagement which if crossed can lead to disengaged employees and bring down their morale. It’s true when they say, a boss who micromanages is like a coach who wants to get in the game!
When employees hover over every now and then, it erodes that trust. They lose interest in their jobs and eventually lowers their productivity. To avoid this and meet project deadlines on time, stop nitpicking on employees. Independence and decision making are vital for remote workers. Instead, manage resources efficiently to increase their work from home productivity. To make this simpler, standardize available hours and breaks so that everyone is working as a single unit even when dispersed.
3. Track progress
Employers find it challenging to track their employee’s daily activities while telecommuting. To improve work efficiency, knowing about your employee’s schedule and task’s progress is necessary. Only then can you allocate tasks based on their availability. When the work is allocated uniformly across the enterprise, you can increase team efficiency and achieve maximum productivity.
With smart scheduling and task management tools at your disposal, you can get a centralized view of your entire team’s schedule. Using this, you can gauge your resource’s progress. Furthermore, you can ensure optimum utilization of resources by delegating equal amounts of work to the workforce which in turn helps you increase efficiency. You can also take corrective measures and communicate with employees if they are lagging and their progress is not as expected.
4. ROWE mindset
Would you rather have an employee who logs in for 8 hours and accomplishes only 3 hours of work or the one who just sits for 3 hours and delivers expected results? It’s a rhetorical question! This is what ROWE means- a result-oriented work environment. Inculcating this while teleworking is useful for employee’s morale and productivity improvement. Supervisors should be concerned about the results instead of how the resource achieves it.
Inculcating ROWE lets you focus on goals and metrics and also eliminates the traditional idea of how much time was spent sitting on a desk. This gives your talent pool enough leeway to work with their comfort and deliver better results. Because, obviously, everyone follows their own way to complete tasks. Imposing yours will only lower their productivity.
5. Daily meetings
When working from home, certain distractions already disrupt productivity. If employees are not clear on daily goals and targets, it will only make matters worse. Hence conducting daily meetings before log in hours will ensure the accomplishment of high priority tasks on time. It gives clarity to the employees and they can plan their day based on these goals.
Employees can prioritize their tasks according to the targets you set for them. This helps them to be most productive for important tasks first. A well-structured plan helps you streamline project management and increases the work efficiency of your team. Regardless of where your employees are based, these meetings via tech tools will not hamper your work progress.
The gist
Amidst isolation and quarantine due to the outbreak where the economy is downsizing tremendously, keeping your company afloat is of prime importance. By following these tips for crisis management, you’ll not only get the best of your employees but will also deliver desired results to the clients. Work from home is a refreshing change that inculcates self-discipline and increases productivity. To operate your teams effectively using these tools to keep your work going and stay safe and contribute to the community by social distancing.
