Nowadays there are more home based workforces than ever before. Companies have home based employees all over the country and sometimes all over the world. But how do you manage your team and encourage collaboration and communication when you’re not in the same office? Use these three simple strategies to manage remote workers with ease.
1) Create clear job descriptions and task management systems.
The more you define your employees role, the more likely they are to meet your expectations. You should not only have a clear job description for each employee, but also have automated task management systems set up to ensure that key processes are implemented smoothly.
In Insightly CRM you can create pipelines, or sets of repeating tasks, for each area of your business. Set up milestones within a project to make sure you stay on track for your deadline. You can also upload notes or files to a project to make sure that every step is properly documented, and make collaboration between team members easier.
You can also assign a person or a department to each task. For example, if there are 10 steps in the client onboarding process, you can assign each step to the proper team member. So, when it comes to hiring a new employee, Sally is responsible to advertise for the position. Sally collects the resumes and weeds out the unqualified ones and gives the rest to Jim to review and pick those they’d like to interview. Once the finalists are chosen, Deborah the receptionist reaches out to each of the applicants to schedule a first interview.
2) Create a culture of accountability.
It’s important to be able to know who is doing what and when. Insightly CRM allows you to check in on what your employees are doing anytime. Use the reporting features to see what projects they are currently working on, and what progress has been made. If it seems like they are not moving through a process quickly enough, use the reporting feature to identify if there is a particular task that is consistently taking longer than expected. If this is the case, then it may indicate a need for further training in that area.
Make sure that you also have consistent communication even though your employees are working remotely. Google Hangouts, Skype, and Zoom Meetings all allow you to communicate and have face to face meetings, even when you are miles apart. They also give you the ability to share your screen, so that you can demonstrate new procedures, or show the progress being made on a particular project.
3) Consider using a software like TimeCamp.
Timecamp runs in the background of your computer and allows you to track your employees time spent per project or just in general. This tool ensures your employees spend time working on work instead of doing other things like social media. It also integrates with Insightly, as well as Xero and QuickBooks, so you can easily add the time that is spent per project into your CRM system, or accounting software.
Set Your Home Based Business Up for Success
Talk to one of our operations team experts about how you can set up your home based business for success. We can walk you through the steps, and help you get the proper systems in place to encourage efficient home based workflow. Call us to schedule a free consultation at 801-472-6947 today.