Many businesses will rely on office workers to keep the daily running of their company smooth. Yet they will also need the help of their remote working team to get important tasks done each day. When you have remote workers making up your workforce, you need to ensure they feel valued and important within the business. This can be a difficult task when they live far away, often in other countries. Nevertheless, there are some key ways you can maintain good relations with your remote workers, which will see some immeasurable benefits to your business.
Send a daily brief
A big part of keeping good relations is to make sure that you have an open line of communication. One of the best ways to start doing this is by sending a brief out each morning, where they will feel informed about their tasks for the day, and how doing these well will contribute to the overall success of the business. In this brief, you should always point out that if your workers need any help or resources, that they should never hesitate to get in touch.
Check in regularly
Although sending a daily brief is a great place to start, there are other ways in which you should be communicating with your workers in a way that will make them feel valued. Having regular check-ups will enable you to see how they are feeling, how they are navigating around the work that has been set, and where they are hoping to grow into the business. Although international calls can be expensive, you can look at international calling plans which offer similar rates to those you are used to at home. If calling is this cheap, you can catch up with workers in each spare moment you have, which will not go unappreciated.
Organise business trips
It could be that you have a team of remote workers scatted around the country or the globe. This means that although they are a team, they may be missing out on some of the camaraderie you see within an office. Setting up business retreats for your workers to meet and collaborate will make them feel as though they are part of a community. Not only this, but it will encourage better communication between workers, where any ideas they have can be brought to life. In some cases, you should attend these trips so that you can see first hand how your workers are getting on.
Make use of shared workspaces
Business trips are not the only places where workers should feel as though they are part of your company community. In fact, you can use many online tools to help facilitate such an environment in a virtual space. This means that any work that has been completed can be shared with editors and that design teams can collaborate across borders on important pieces among other things. It also allows you to track their performance, so if a remote worker is performing well, you can reward them for their hard work.