As the country shifts towards a work from home culture more and more employers are questioning their readiness for it. If this sounds like you, you are not alone. There are still a lot of employers who are holding back from doing this until absolutely necessary, this is because of the fear that their business will suffer. When you’re used to having staff under one roof where you can see them working, being asked to let employees work from home can seem like a utopian fantasy. Some employers feel like they are losing control by having to let go of the reigns and trust that their staff will get the job done when no one else is watching them.

Of course, there is still email and employees can make phone calls to communicate with each other. But there is still the issue of ensuring that tasks get done, that they are completed on time and making sure everyone is up to date with the latest knowledge. This can pose a difficult challenge when everyone is working from their house in various locations across the country. So if you’re one of thousands of employers who are left wondering how can I keep productivity high when working from home, we are here to help.

What are some of the biggest challenges I should think about when letting my staff work from home?

When letting your staff work from home it’s important to know all of the challenges which you might come across. This will help you plan out how to tackle them when they come up.

1 . Not being able to quickly contact all of your employees at once

When you are in the workplace word gets around fast. If you need to get an urgent message out you can tell your managers, who can then tell all of the employees who they are working with. But what happens when the employees are not in close proximity to a manager anymore? You have an issue. ‘But I have WhatsApp’ is a common answer to this. Whilst WhatsApp is good for social communications outside of work, it’s not suitable for a professional workplace. This is for many reasons:

It’s not GDPR compliant, it holds information of its users, even their Contacts in their address book who haven’t downloaded WhatsApp.
It’s not built for transferring sensitive information.
You can’t delete messages after a certain time-period.
You don’t have easy access to analytics about who has read your messages.
You need everyone’s mobile phone number to contact them which you may not even have.
You can’t just target certain employees quickly, without having to manually add every single person to a group. When you have hundreds or thousands of employees this could take hours.

Digital internal communication platforms allow you to send instant alerts to employees. You can target users by role or locations so only the right people see the right message, all you need is their email. Perfect if you need to let your entire sales department know about a training module they need to complete which no other department needs to know about.

Simply do this by checking a box when you create your message. You will be able to link your alert to an article, news post or website. This makes it easy to guide your employees to what you want them to see or do.

All alerts will show up in the user’s notification centre so they can keep on top of all communications. You can set an expiry date for any alert which you send out, this is great for sensitive information that you don’t want hanging around for too long.

1.1 Pick up the phone

You should also encourage staff to pick up the phone and to not being afraid of video calling even if it’s for something small. The aim is to keep communication high to ensure the smooth flow of work. Do this by writing a work from home policy. In this policy, you can state the importance of calling and video calling colleagues and emphasise the need to keep communication levels high.

2. How can I make sure that employees are reading content which I am sending them

Productivity can slip when employees are working from home because they can read your communications as and when they like. There is no one to check that they are staying up to date which can sometimes mean that things don’t get read at all.

To combat this you need to keep track of what’s being read and by who. By having the data and analytics for this you can keep a close eye on which employees aren’t engaging with your comms. You can then pick up the phone, send an email or use alerts to nudge them when they’re not paying attention.

For example, if you work in customer service and you need to send an update of all the latest customer activity and conversations. You need to know that everyone is up to date or else you could look incompetent to your clients.

To combat this you need to set up Google analytics on your content or ensure that you are watching the number of page views on your company intranet. Certain employee platforms allow you to set acknowledgements on every article or news item that you post. Simply tick if you want an article to be acknowledged and employees will be notified. Users will have to scroll to the bottom of an item before they can click that they have read and understood what you have sent them. This will give you peace of mind that everyone is staying up to date on everything going on in your business. For messages that you want to keep fresh in everyone’s minds, you can set articles to be acknowledged daily, weekly or monthly.

3. How can I make sure that daily checks and routines are being completed and on time?

If your workforce is working from the comfort of their own home, you need to keep your business ticking over. You should know what’s being done, by who and how long things are taking. This can seem like an impossible task when you’re miles away from anyone. Employers can run the risk of staff putting off tasks, taking too long to do them or not doing certain tasks at all. This is because it’s hard for employers to track what their staff are doing when they’re not there.

To prevent this you need to track and analyse all actions which are being taken in your business. A great way to do this is to have a checklist for your employee to complete for the day, ask them to complete it online and email it back to you at the end of the day or week. This will help you and your managers to keep a check over exactly what is being done each day, and it will help your employees stay on track too.

Another alternative is to use digital checklists. These allow you to set checks to be completed at certain times and any checks not done will immediately be escalated to you.

For example, say your business has a daily routine of updating your customer database and carrying out customer audits. You can create a digital checklist outlining every detail which needs to be completed for the customer audit, you can set this checklist to be completed every day by 10 am. You will then be clear on who has done what and you can check your database to ensure that employees are being truthful. As soon as an employee starts the checklists it will be timed so you can see how long tasks are taking them to complete. You will be notified of anyone that has missed the deadline to finish it.

4. How can I make sure that tasks are being completed?

If you’re wondering how to keep productivity high when your staff are working from home, you’ll be wondering how to make sure things get done. You can’t just quickly ask someone to do something, you’ll need to try to ring them, or send messages and wait for them to answer. This can add hours to your day. It can also mean that fewer tasks are completed. This is simply because people don’t want the aggravation of having to try and get someone to do something who they can’t see or communicate with properly.

This is one of your biggest obstacles when staff work from home because it does have the power to destroy productivity in your business. Luckily, there are solutions which can prevent tasks from slipping away into the abyss.

4.1 Google docs

Use Google docs online. It’s free and anyone can access it, all they need is an email. The way it works is that you would create a document or a Google Sheet (Google’s version of Excel) and invite people to collaborate on it. Once you have invited people to the document you can all edit and write on it at the same time. This would work perfectly for task management because you could write a list of tasks and get employees to mark the tasks as completed once they have done them. Because the document is live everyone will be able to see when things are done in real-time.

4.2 Employee compliance platforms

Employee compliance platforms allow you to carry out audits and set tasks for employees to complete. You can select who needs to complete the tasks, what they need to do and a deadline for when they need to complete them by. The tasks added will show up in the selected employee’s task list with a timeframe of how long they have left to complete them by.

This can be used in a variety of ways, for example:

Use it to go through a department’s responsibilities - If you are assessing the marketing department do an audit of their paid campaigns, social channels, website and brochures. Go through them all and assess what needs improving, send the tasks to the head of marketing. The head of marketing can then use the app to delegate the tasks to their team.
Use it for individual employees. The day before, go through an employee’s responsibilities and select all the things you want them to complete by the end of the week. For example, on Monday you may want them to have made 50 phone calls to your customer base, Tuesday you may want them to complete a customer report, Wednesday you need them to write the Christmas rotas etc. you can stagger the deadlines to ensure that the employee knows what they need to get done and on what day.

5. How can I make sure the quality of work being done is up to scratch

Working from home means letting go of standards and hoping things are done properly, right? Wrong. A lot of employers are worried that standards will slip when their staff start to work from home. This can happen because you lack visibility of what’s being done. Perhaps you run a craft business and you need to be sure that your staff are still carrying out the small details which make your products so great.

An easy way to overcome this is to get your staff to upload reports of their work with pictures attached so that you can give feedback. It’s also important to emphasise the video calling here as this will be essential for checking in on work and making sure it’s done to a good standard.

Our employee platform makes it effortless to do this so that you can keep standards high and still have visibility of all tasks being done.

So how would this work?

You would create a template which outlines the criteria of what makes your high standards. The template might be broken down into the look, feel, smell or taste of a product e.g. design new foliage for the winter wedding tables. Employees can simply open the report and go through each criterion which you have set. Whilst they are in the report they can collect insights, take photos and add comments to their work.

They can then submit the report for you to check over.

6. How can I maintain a culture of productivity when everyone is working from home

One of the biggest challenges, when employees work from home, is that they can lose momentum. Without having that team environment that they’re used to and being able to see others get on with work it can worsen morale and really slow their performance. A good way to overcome this is to encourage employees to upload fun photos of themselves at home to an internal comms platform such as slack. These should be lighthearted and humorous to keep the company spirit alive, and of course, no one should be forced to upload any photos.

Our platform has an employee stats dash which empowers everyone to see their own locations’ knowledge, culture and compliance score against the regional average.

Users will be able to drill down to each section and see who’s boosting or worsening the score for their own location. This is great for boosting morale because it gives your workforce that team spirit no matter where they’re working from. It also gives them that competitive edge which they may have more of when they are in the workplace. For example, if they can see that their colleague has completed more checklists than them, it may spur them on to complete more themselves. The scores are colour coded so it will be glaringly obvious who’s doing well and who’s falling behind. This is the ultimate tool for keeping productivity high when employees are working from home.

Empower employees when working from home

6.1 Send recognition messages to let your staff know you appreciate their efforts when working from home

When everyone is working in different locations it’s not as easy as quickly letting a staff member know that they are doing a good job. Make an effort to send a quick email letting your employee know that you think they are doing a great job. On your company intranet send out comms which include star performers for the week. This not only keeps the team spirit alive, but it makes your employees feel valued and respected.

Most employee engagement platforms feature rewards and recognition which allow colleagues and managers to hand out stickers and trophies when they think someone has done a good job. These allow you to keep the team spirit alive. Perhaps your staff member has completed a record number of tasks in a day, you can send them a ‘speedy superstar’ sticker. The employee will receive a notification saying they have received an achievement but they won’t be able to view what it is until they click it in the employee app. This drives engagement, all stickers and trophies usually can be customised to make them as personal as possible.

7. Enhancing Remote Employee Skills through Adaptive Testing

As organisations navigate the challenges of remote work, ensuring that employees not only maintain productivity but also continue to develop their skills is one of the most important parts.

One of the most innovative solutions is the adoption of Computerised Adaptive Testing for remote skills assessment and training. CAT, was developed by platforms that offer a personalised, efficient, and engaging way to evaluate and enhance employee capabilities from afar.

Why is CAT good for remote workers?
Personalised Assessment: CAT adapts to the test-taker’s ability level in real-time, providing a tailored assessment experience. This ensures that employees are neither under-challenged nor overwhelmed, making the evaluation process more relevant and engaging.

Efficiency: By dynamically adjusting question difficulty, CAT can determine proficiency levels with fewer questions and in less time than traditional assessments. This respects employees' time and reduces fatigue, which is crucial in a remote work setting where maintaining a work-life balance is already a challenge.

Skill Development: The insights gained from CAT can be used to identify specific areas where an employee needs improvement. Customized training programs can then be developed, allowing for targeted skill development that directly addresses individual needs.

Don’t panic be prepared

The key to letting your staff work from home is to have plans in place to ensure that work gets done. The more prepared you are the better your productivity levels will be. If you need help and would like to know how our platform can keep your employees working as usual, click the buttons below.