Working remotely, telecommuting, or even work from home signifies any work that does not mandatorily mean working from the office. Employees can work remotely from any location during working hours.
Some employees are fully remote, working for the company at a client’s location or site, some employees are given the facility to work from home for one or two days a week, and there are some freelancers who always work remotely for their clients.
However, due to the recent pandemic attack, all the companies have been forced to work remotely in this digital age, companies are reconsidering various advantages of executing work through remote teams.
Particulars of Remote Teams
Remote teams are the virtual teams or distributed teams, in which the members are the group of individuals who work together for a team remotely from different geographical locations. These team members rely on different methods of digital technology for their communication such as calls, messages, emails, and video conferencing.
They are liable to perform activities and tasks in a virtual work environment which is created and maintained with the help of information technology and software development. Companies should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Companies should maintain autonomy for team management. It is beneficial for taking correct decisions in a small period by the remote teams.
- Companies should not be very strict for taking permissions regarding every small aspect of the project. As the employees are working remotely they should be trusted and awarded with some amount of independence in decision making.
- The entire work process should be streamlined by chalking out the key performance indications and task metrics followed by the evaluation procedure. This helps the employees to manage their work within deadlines and enhances productivity.
- Team activities and employee engagement strategies should be a major part of employee welfare. These are important to uplift the team spirit within employees.
- Companies must arrange a one-to-one video conferencing with their employees to keep an update over their lives and guide them in all the possible ways.
Evaluation of Remote Teams
Performance evaluation is a key concept for driving productivity and growth. For measuring deliverables and innovative capabilities of an employee, performance evaluation is necessary.
For the employees working remotely, a company should analyze and evaluate various methods for analyzing their performance and productivity.
- Task Computation
Companies should keep in mind the fact that it is essential to calculate their productivity based on the work done rather than their working hours. It is very cumbersome to drive the same productivity and results from remote teams with respect to the employees working from the office. The criteria for evaluation should be on the status of work completed at the end of the day, rather than on the number of working hours.
- Consumption of Time
Modern software with extensive reporting systems is crucial for generating comprehensive results from the employees working remotely. The working hours should be stretched a little further with value comparison of the tasks consuming most of the working hours should be designated.
Managers should analyze and understand different drawbacks of working remotely and then calculate the productive time.
- Authority over Ownership
Employes should be conditioned and exemplified to take control of daily tasks and exert authority towards being work driven. They should have a sense of ownership regarding tasks assigned to them and should feel liable for task incompletion or delay. This self-control and liability should be cultured within employees.
- Result-driven Reporting
Managers should follow an ideal reporting phenomenon in which teams should be evaluated on the completion of their assigned tasks rather than hours they have worked. Apt reporting involves task completion, work status, time consumed, effectiveness, and managing deadlines.
- Both-way Feedback
Managers should provide employees with regular feedback on their tasks and performance. This will help the employee to self-evaluate and improve performance. Employees should also be asked to provide feedback to their managers in order to generate a sense of belongingness and importance being a part of the company.
Conclusion
The evaluation of remote employees is necessary for the evaluation of employees’ performance and productivity.A technical consulting expert can help you with it. It is equally important to uplift a good Return on Investment (ROI) and enhance business growth. Businesses should try to concentrate on the big picture and thereby evaluate remote teams based on their productivity and not working hours.
