💱 ❔ 🏡 Checklist: how not to lose employees by sending them to an udalenka 🙅🏿 👇🏾 🦉

Suddenly, udalenka became in demand by companies that most recently stated that they would never experiment in this direction. We have been working at “Maxilekt” completely remotely since 2015. And especially for such companies in a nutshell summarized their experience.

We present a list of important points that you should pay attention to, sending employees to self-isolation. We hope this helps to quickly establish workflows.

When sending “unarmed” workers to a remote location, it is important to understand that these are big changes not only for the company, but also for specific people. The usual processes, tools and schedules break down, the circle of communication and needs changes. Do not leave employees face to face with this unknown.

1. Explain that udalenka is different

Work from home has many pitfalls. According to our hiring statistics, about half of the interviewees really want to go to a remote location, but only 20 percent of them will be able to adapt in conditions of complete autonomy over long distances.

Among the companies urgently sending employees to self-isolation, almost no one plans to work like this always. Udalenka is a temporary measure. But even at short intervals, far from everyone is able to organize themselves outside the office. We need to prepare for the fact that there will be problems with part of the team.

With employees will have to conduct outreach. The fact that udalenka is the same job, just from a different location, should be understood not only by themselves, but also by their family. Our blog hasarticle with recommendations on what to pay attention to a newly made remoter .

Regularly conduct mini-briefings, talk about how to work remotely, and remind you about protecting corporate information (and customer data if the employee has access to them).

2. Help organize the workplace

Each employee should have a full-fledged workplace. Perhaps it is worth raising this issue precisely from the side of the company.

It is convenient to have laptops with which employees work in the office and, if necessary, can go home. So the question of resources and software does not arise. If an employee is used to working with two monitors in the office, it is better to provide him this opportunity on a remote site.

From our point of view, a good headset and camera are required to continue working online communication. The quality of communication on a remote site is extremely important. No need to save on it.

To maintain a working attitude, daily meetings are needed. By the way, the included camera at such meetings is an obligatory element. A person with the camera turned off is likely to be distracted by his affairs while his colleagues discuss a working issue. Some employees may not be ready for video calling. But after one to two weeks of constant video calls, they will get used to it.

3. Take care of access

Work requires access to corporate systems. Upgrade the technical support department in advance. Now they have the largest amount of work - they are in charge of adding remote access to the infrastructure.

To make it safe, you can use a VPN or even an eToken. RDP is not always the best option; it can annoy employees.

In our opinion, with the proper organization of the process, the remote is an even safer work format, since there are always access logs. It is clear who, when and why went into the system.

4. Set a work schedule

Formulate a work schedule for employees. Forced access to a remote site is not a transition to freelance. People should not work at night. Employees should understand that this is a full-time fulltime job, but not from the office.

And so that the interaction for everyone is predictable, it is worthwhile to establish the rules for the employee’s reaction to external requests, for example, as we did with email and Slack. We already wrote on the blog about the principles of building internal communication .

Develop the habit of fumbling the screen during the discussion of projects at rallies. This simplifies and speeds up perception.

5. Set tasks as clearly as possible.

Without a clear statement of the problem, remote communications will not be effective. Each task should have a responsible and deadline.

If you have not yet introduced this practice in your company, now is the time to learn this. Otherwise, the remote will reveal all the management problems and business processes will stop.

6. Measure by result

We do not recommend the use of employee tracking systems. It demotivates. To evaluate the work done, you need to look at the result. We wrote about how this happens in our company .

Warn about the need to create a working atmosphere and periodically hold one-on-one video calls in order to understand in time which of the employees does not suit the remote format, what and why is not enough for effective work.

In general, to manage the team, continue to use the same tools that were used in the office - Jira, Redmine, Wrike, etc.

7. Evaluate the risk area for performance

In our experience, even those who are able to organize themselves outside the office can sink in productivity due to various environmental factors. At risk:

Those who do not have the opportunity to allocate a separate corner for the workplace. Living in a one-room apartment with children (and taking into account quarantine measures in schools), it will be difficult to concentrate.
Jones who without deep diving into the team may get lost.

Give employees from this “risk zone” more attention. Have one-on-one video calls often.

8. Do not abolish corporate traditions

If your office has a tradition of internal reports, conferences or meetings, do not drop it. There are a lot of tools that will help seize this initiative online (to carry out the same events remotely). Such traditions will help employees adapt.

In the end, I would like to recommend not to be afraid of these changes. Udalenka as a format is quite viable and has its advantages and prospects. However, business should be careful about this forced experiment. The world experience here is ambiguous ( and we also wrote about this ). You will have to make efforts so that in your case it is positive.

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Checklist: how not to lose employees by sending them to an udalenka