Remote Work: Engage and Retain Your Employees By Boosting Their Morale

A huge group of people ran out of an IT park in an  Indian city because they believed there was someone infected by COVID-19. Soon after, checks were done and the building was thoroughly sanitized. This fleet brings into perspective how fearful people are of their lives and that the pandemic is more intimidating than we gauged. 

IT tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and IBM set examples for the rest of the IT park to allow people to work from home. This would ensure the safety of individuals and help the country in tackling the virus. Slowly, everything began to shut down and finally, the Prime Minister announced a lockdown. 

For IT companies particularly, remote working was not a foreign concept. It was the traditional businesses that had the real struggle of adapting to technological advancements. However, the employees of an IT company were going through the same productivity struggle as other employees. Only 0.2% of IT employees were productive when working from home, it was found by a report. 

Apart from a few barriers, the ‘work from home’ model might be here to stay. People are forced to adapt to technology despite resistance and well, working from home has not affected the operations of the IT sector as much. While the world debates if there is a possibility of remote working becoming a permanent situation, how does a boss ensure engaging and retaining employees during this phase? 

Engage them by involving them more

When you are in a physical workplace, you have other teammates to have conversations with, there is something always happening around you, the water cooler conversations are important, and so on. To keep your employees engaged when working remotely, you have to recreate the office environment. 

Include each one of them in video call meetings which are about reports so they are up to date with their work and communication is strong. Small talk is very important even when remote working because it instills a sense of belonging and gratitude towards the team. 

Be sure that you are very clearly defining what is expected out of them, set out proper achievable goals and proactively follow up on them. Your internal communication needs to be extremely strong at this point. Don’t just rely on a messaging platform, keep aside some time for one to one calls. 

Read: Most Firms Believe That Work From Home Would Probably Be A Long Term Viable Option

Retain them by allowing them to make decisions

There is one very crucial aspect of remote working- Trust. You have to trust your employees with some work and responsibilities and allow them to do it on their own. Checking up on them once in a while is fine but micromanaging them might put them off. 

Trust is something that works both ways. If you trust them enough to do a task, they will trust you enough for their professional growth. By trusting them, you will also help them learn to take responsibility for their work and actions. This will make them want to work better for themselves and the organisation also benefits from their excellent work. 

Say things like- “It’s your call, Carla. If you think this is something we should pursue, please go ahead,” “Sure, why don’t you draft the mail and send it to the client?”. Involve them in more activities by asking for their opinions in meetings with clients and internal ones too. 

Employee morale will always be a boss’ responsibility…

As a boss, there will be many tough and complicated decisions you’ll have to take for the betterment of the organisation and also the people. Any leadership role comes with the responsibility of keeping the team’s morale in the highest form. Job dissatisfaction, inability to perform, uncomfortable situations, and more recently, a deadly pandemic on the lose, a boss must work on keeping morale high. 

Small talk and group activities unrelated to work might be one to go about it. Other than that, just be there for your employees.