4 key ways to empower your remote workforce

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of voluntary job leavers in the US was at the end of May 2022 25% higher than before the pandemic.

This is not a new phenomenon. Are some of your employees focused only on their tasks? Do they rarely want to take the initiative or help their colleagues? When deadlines pass, do they say, “That’s not my fault!”

Remote workers often feel disconnected from the workplace culture. They may view their workplace as toxic. While trying to increase employee engagement from a distance, employers sometimes use “stalking” tactics. For example, they can see whether employees always have a green light on their Slack during working hours. They can track employees’ screen time or count the hours spent on a laptop. Even worse, they can scan clicks per minute.

Instead, they should strengthen their remote workforce.

ASQ defines employee authority as: “How organizations give their employees a certain degree of autonomy and control in their daily work. This includes process improvement, support in creating and managing new systems and tactics, and managing small departments with less oversight by senior management.”

Use timed goals

If we don’t measure an employee’s time at work, check if they’re online, and ask them to submit reports on what they’re working on, then what? Measure their performance and how they achieve their goals on a daily basis.

It is essential to make this measure transparent, time-bound and visible in organizations. There are four main principles to create a preference for independent trading.

First, team members should be supported in setting up their day-to-day processes and developing strategies to achieve their goals.

To this end, you can regularly consult with remote employees.

And if new hires are on board, talk to them and set goals for the next three months. For example, you could create a new $40,000 MMR plan for a sales manager for the next three months. Make sure you don’t restrict the employee from achieving that goal. Let them develop their tactics and strategies and collaborate with whatever department is needed to achieve the goal.

For a customer-facing role, I like the outcome measure GitLab uses: identify OKRs and KPIs from customersand measuring a variety of end-user performance metrics.

Setting long-term goals gives employees a clear understanding of what you expect from them, while also allowing you to track their performance in a less toxic way.

Empower employees to make independent actions and decisions. Put no limits on creativity. Remove hurdles and bureaucracy. Set a time frame for achieving specific goals and create a stimulating environment.

Create one source of knowledge

The second principle is inextricably linked to the first. Actions and new tactics must be informed in order to be able to work with a preference for independence. To achieve that, you create one business knowledge source: a business academy or university. Also set up a platform to track employee performance and task completion and encourage them to create a dashboard of their tasks and deadlines.

1. Ensure that all employees who work remotely and across different countries use the same knowledge and task resource.
2. Ask them to change the status when they start working on an assignment and when it is completed.
3. Ask employees to write down the ideas and strategies they want to implement in a task planner so everyone can see where the current task is and who is involved.

Also manage the knowledge source so that employees can get answers if they have questions. Plan for the unexpected and prepare younger employees by empowering them to use extreme ownership.

For example, a customer contacts your technical support with a question. The agent handling the call is still a novice and needs to learn how to help him. Instead of Googling or postponing the problem until better times, they go to a corporate university and quickly find answers. Also encourage employees to ask questions. Providing employees with links to thematic forums and contacts with their senior colleagues. Show that senior staff are always there and happy to answer questions.

Use ROIs

Once you’ve made the team favor independent tactics and strategy creation, start encouraging independent learning. Cultivate a focus on iteration. To track the efficiency of learning programs, you can use ROIs in training to measure whether a course or program is delivering value for money. Plan how you will evaluate, who you want to involve, the success criteria and how long it will take. Also ask questions such as: what are the desired results? What is the current state? What changes have occurred that contributed to long-term change in learners?

Encourage sharing of real-time achievements

Finally, consider the tactics you use to accomplish goals. I do not monitor work screens of employees in my company. Instead, I watch them progress towards their goals.

Ask them what they think are the best ways to achieve their goals. What do they do if something doesn’t work?

At my company, for example, we have a monthly meeting where all departments share their results. When all members show their presentations and talk about leads and new customers, remote workers feel a team spirit.

We also have a Slack chat where employees share their goals for the current three months and what they did in the past week to achieve them.

The results of your employees are what really matter. Let’s stop monitoring remote worker engagement on Slack or comparing it to clicks they made per day. Instead, let’s focus on results by setting the right goals measured over time, creating team spirit and implementing learning measures. We call this employee empowerment.

Vladimir Polo is CEO and founder of AcademyOcean.