Articles 9 Effective Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

9 Effective Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

Small Business Growth Succeed Remotely

Bitrix24 Team

11 min

653

Updated: September 23, 2024

Bitrix24 Team

Updated: September 23, 2024

9 Effective Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

Managing remote work challenges is essential to reap the benefits that home offices can bring.

Sure, you want to hire from all over the world, save a chunk of change on renting an office, and give your team the right conditions to keep turnover low. But if you don’t deal with the difficulties, you’ll end up suffering.

In this article, we’re going to show you nine different ways that you can guard against some of the most common issues faced by remote teams. From siloing and knowledge gatekeeping to performance management and employee wellbeing, you’ll soon be able to take on remote work like a boss.

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1. Tailor onboarding processes to individual needs and roles

Managing remote work challenges is a real start-as-you-mean-to-go-on endeavor, so what better place to begin than at the onboarding process? When team members are dispersed and don’t have the benefit of in-person support, a tailored onboarding process can meet the specific needs of each employee, make them feel welcome, and achieve a smooth transition into your organization.

Here are a few simple ways to tailor onboarding processes for remote workers:

Personalize training modules to the employee’s role and experience level. For instance, a new software engineer may need in-depth technical onboarding, while a marketing professional might require more focus on brand guidelines and tools.
Assign a mentor or buddy to help them navigate the company culture and daily workflows. Personalized support from an experienced team member integrates recruits faster and provides a reliable resource for questions and guidance.
Provide role-specific tools, documents, and resources that are directly relevant to their roles. This could include access to specific software, tutorials, and best practices that are crucial for their job functions.
Schedule regular check-ins with new hires to address any concerns and gather feedback. These check-ins should be customized to the individual’s progress and challenges.

Tailored onboarding processes promote overall team cohesion and productivity from the start, which is essential when navigating the complexities of remote work.

2. Foster a sense of belonging implementing virtual social events

Employees can sense when their company is paying lip service to team building and when it’s generous. A copy-paste approach of Friday afternoon drinks is unlikely to garner remote employee engagement in the long term, but if you take the time to see what your team actually wants, you can build a cohesive team culture.

To begin with, there are far more interesting events than a non-structured get-together using remote communication tools. You can design your own escape rooms and trivia nights without too much difficulty — or take the easy option and buy a package online. Having a focal point for the meetup increases engagement and helps to strengthen those relationships and improve communication among team members.

Interest-based clubs require very little maintenance from management, as they take on a life of their own. Instant messenger channels dedicated to books, fitness challenges, or cooking tips give employees a chance to connect over common hobbies and develop friendships that go beyond work-related interactions.

Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

3. Encourage knowledge sharing across your team

One of the simplest ways of managing remote work challenges is to create a central repository for all your company knowledge. The best knowledge bases come with searchable toolbars so employees can look up keywords and find how-to guides or short video explainers to get them out of a sticky situation.

In terms of virtual team management, a knowledge base means you won’t have an inbox full of questions and requests for how to do simple operations as it empowers your staff to find answers themselves. Although you might not see the impact immediately, it becomes glaringly obvious when you replace a long-term employee. Knowledge bases stop people from leaving and taking critical company information with them.

As well as knowing where to turn for information, remote work management also involves showing people who to look for. Intranet systems are great for forums where employees can ask questions that you can later add to the knowledge base. In addition, an organizational chart shows people all heads of departments and specialists if they need a helping hand.

4. Invest in cybersecurity to avoid costly attacks on your systems

Cyberattacks are on the rise across all industries, and a single breach could undo all the hard work you’ve managed to secure as a remote team.

Any company that values its data needs to find a secure platform. SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance are all the bare minimum for modern systems. Encrypted communication tools stop any sensitive information from leaking out of compromised transport routes and two-factor authentication stops bad actors from accessing your accounts even if they have the right login details.

However, the biggest risk to companies is simple phishing attacks where your employees are tricked into handing over sensitive information and access to your data. To prevent these scams, train your team on the latest methods and run ad-hoc tests to make sure they’ve internalized the lesson.

Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

5. Provide ergonomic workstations to prevent discomfort and injuries

With all the benefits that come from remote work strategies, there are personal telecommuting challenges of being away from a professional office setup. Being unable to directly control desks and seating arrangements makes managing remote work challenges around comfort quite challenging.

Forward-thinking remote organizations redirect the savings made on renting premises and buying office supplies by investing in working-from-home workstations to keep their employees comfortable and in good health. Stipends or discounts for items like ergonomic chairs, adjustable standing desks, and monitor stands are becoming commonplace as they improve employee well-being and productivity while reducing absenteeism due to work-related injuries.

Combine physical items with education for the biggest impact. Guidelines on the importance of proper posture, screen height, and chair support help employees to set up their workstations correctly. At the same time, encouraging regular breaks and movement avoids discomfort and health issues — especially related to back and neck pain. Reminder apps and wellness programs help to formalize your advice, building healthy routines that benefit your team.

Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

6. Accommodate workers in different time zones

Although hiring a team from all over the world is one of the greatest benefits, you can’t reap the rewards without managing remote work challenges regarding time zones. To promote smooth collaboration, productivity, and inclusion, you have to implement remote work best practices that address these differences effectively.

Start by designating specific hours when all team members are online simultaneously, regardless of their location. This overlap is perfect for company-wide video calls and collaborative work, leaving the rest of the day for deep focus.

To make the most of your time outside those overlapping hours, set guidelines for how you document tasks, decisions, and workflows so nobody misses out on important information due to time zone differences. Employees need to be able to log on, glance at their tasks, and know exactly what they have to do. Asynchronous communication on task management cards is essential for seamless handovers. On a single task card, write clear updates, leave questions, and attach resources so your colleagues can hit the ground running.

Shared documents and collaborative tools that allow real-time contributions and updates are essential, enabling team members to stay aligned and informed regardless of their location. Additionally, make use of shared calendars to ensure everyone is aware of key meetings, deadlines, and overlapping work hours.

7. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify your strengths and weaknesses

Even while managing remote work challenges, you cannot lose sight of performance monitoring. In a remote setting, it can be time-consuming to identify gaps and areas for improvement.

Automated performance analytics make the process efficient and effective with very little human intervention. To get the ball rolling, identify the KPIs that align with your remote productivity goals. Task management tools will then feed analytics systems that work constantly in the background, picking up vital data to give you a picture of how your team is performing.

Set automated progress reports to inform you at specific time periods, or draw them out on an ad-hoc basis. At a glance, you can spot outliers who overshoot deadlines or bring in a significantly lower level of leads than they should. This allows you to monitor productivity effectively even when you’re physically distant from your staff.

Your KPIs are also an excellent motivator. Set personalized targets and meaningful rewards for reaching them and watch your employee performance soar.

Methods for Managing Remote Work Challenges in Small Companies

8. Get regular feedback to understand how your team is feeling

In an office environment, it’s usually not hard to see who is upset — it’s written on their face. However, when managing remote work challenges, it’s not as easy. To stop mild grievances from turning into a toxic environment, you’ve got to take the initiative and find out how people are feeling.

Use remote communication tools to conduct anonymous surveys and gather honest feedback from team members. Sure, this might be difficult in small companies with few employees, so you’ll have to work on creating an environment where people feel comfortable raising concerns. For a more personal setting, regular confidential one-on-one meetings are a great way of unearthing difficulties that people don’t want to talk about in an open forum.

It's not just about healing wounds. Feedback forms can inform your remote work policies and practices. When you're unable to see the lived experience of each of your employees, asking for their opinion gives you the best idea of what is working and what needs to be improved.

9. Offer professional development opportunities

If small business remote work is spread over a range of different locations, you can easily forget your obligations in training your team in the skills they need.

More than ensuring you’re on top of the latest remote work best practices, professional development opportunities help in managing remote work challenges by keeping people motivated and loyal to your organization. This is crucial in reducing turnover. While work-from-home solutions allow you to hire from anywhere in the world, it also opens your employees up to a wealth of tempting opportunities if they’re feeling dissatisfied.

There are a multitude of ways to maintain remote employee engagement through professional development. New recruits can benefit from an in-house people-person who knows the company well and can show them the ropes. Virtual conferences and online events are a great way of shaking up someone’s schedule, opening them up to the wider industry, and bringing back new ideas and best practices. Finally, being flexible with people’s schedules and allocating time for personal development projects or online courses upskills your team and makes them feel valued.

Bitrix24: The platform that specializes in managing remote work challenges

There are a lot of issues that come with remote work, but that’s no excuse to give up on the plan and stick to an in-office approach.

Bitrix24 is designed for teams to migrate and succeed in a remote environment, with a full range of tools and security features to make life easy.

Comprehensive communication tools integrating chat, video conferencing, and social intranet for enhanced communication and collaboration.
Robust project management with task tracking, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, automations, shared calendars and templates to help you stay on top of deadlines.
Advanced document management for sharing, editing, and storing documents, making for seamless knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Employee engagement and HR tools like time tracking, feedback forms, and employee directories to keep your remote workforce engaged and productive.
Security features, including two-factor authentication and data encryption, to protect your data in a remote environment.

So if you’ve got some remote work challenges you need to overcome, sign up for Bitrix24 today.