While remote work represents an excellent opportunity for employees to save time and money commuting to work, have more control over their tasks, and manage their schedule (Kicheva, 2021), there are some factors that you need to consider when transitioning to a remote working environment. For instance, employees need access to the right resources and informal communication with managers and colleagues to share experiences that can enhance personal life and professional development (Wright, 2017). They also need to be independent and self-managing. In contrast, supervisors need to assign workload consistently and fairly, representing the individual and collective interests of the team (Delany, 2022). This paper will concentrate on three aspects of your future endeavors as a remote organization: socialization and communication, managing job autonomy and technology resources, and balancing work-life demands. Each section contains practical recommendations to consider.

Socialization and communication in a remote working environment

During COVID, remote workers' main challenges were forming spontaneous relationships while perceiving low social support from supervisors and coworkers. Isolation, loneliness, and a weaker sense of community are some of the most common effects of insufficient socialization and communication in remote workers, affecting new hires the most (Jämsen et al., 2022). In addition, virtual break rooms may not be the best way to increase socialization. Supervisors and extrovertive people can take over the time of others, making the rest of the team feel like an outsider, not to mention the challenging part of reading nonverbal language through a screen (Rudnicka, 2020). 

Employees who perceive that their communication has improved since they started working remotely agree on seeing decreased-on conflicts and better use of technology to communicate sensitive information. How did these organizations achieve optimal socialization among their employees? If meeting in person is impossible, small group conversations using apps like Kumospace, Wonder, and SocialChorus can be an option. Using remote communications systems need to offer more equal opportunities for communication for everyone, compared to meeting in person. Instant messaging applications can also express humor and build a sense of community (Jämsen et al., 2022). Finally, social media has the potential to foster social capital among employees strengthening new ties across organizations (Robertson & Kee, 2017). Some predilection channels and social media platforms are e-newsletters for specific segments or topics relevant to the employees. At the same time, LinkedIn and Twitter are sometimes useful for sharing company information and advocating for the company's brand (Ewing & O'Neal, 2019).

Managing job autonomy and resources

You must provide the right resources like technology and time management training to consolidate an effective remote workforce. Employees must be e-literate or know how to use their knowledge, skills, and abilities to work with technology. Specific training to use software will need to be delivered in an accessible and friendly way, if possible, using a Learning Management System (Zappala, 2021). According to Daniels et al. (2020), new users must practice their skills with pre-recorded videos. More autonomous users can also benefit from these materials when needed. Training sessions for troubleshooting specific problems with technology will be essential to maintain clear communication among the team and supervisors (e.g., access to unsaved work and troubleshooting apps). Finally, virtual mentorship can help you cross-train new employees, answer any training doubts, and alleviate informal office conversations (Dressen, 2020), as we mentioned in the last paragraphs.

Time management and control over tasks are fundamental skills for your employees. According to Wand and Liu (2021), remote workers' job autonomy means balancing work and rest to choose the most productive ways to do their work. Steady rhythms of work, breaks and taking time off to take care of personal responsibilities require self-discipline. For managers, it will be essential to monitor and provide employees with timely and effective feedback (Zappala, 2021). Time management training also increases the perceived control of time, decreases stress, helps to pay more attention to time value, and increases time efficiency. Some variables that should be considered in this training are: Awareness of personal time usage, goal-setting, plan-making, task arrangement, incremental step-building, and perseverance (Zhang, Liu, 2021).

Balancing work-life demands

Working at home can create home-to-work and work-to-home interference or constant interruptions from the family that can negatively affect work performance and vice versa. An imbalance in these relationships can create exhaustion and health symptoms like depression, hypertension, and higher alcohol intake (Wand, Liu 2021). According to Ritter and Jex (2014), work demands can overextend time and space at home since there is no physical barrier between them, like commuting to work. Taking care of kids or household chores can overextend, as well as take time from the one destined to work at home. In addition, stress, frustration, or irritability, can interfere in other domains aside from work, inhabiting relaxing at home from stressors at work and vice versa.

We talked about time management and timely feedback in the last section, which should be the point of assisting the employee in prioritizing tasks. Some of the recommendations to help employees to create balance is understanding firsthand the nature of their job, peace tasks, and communicating with the study should be periodized over others (Mulki, 2009). In addition, some roles may work more precisely than others, so management needs to understand the rhythm of each team and set the tone and norms to follow. This includes advising teams not to use holidays and weekends to work and encouraging disconnecting from devices with a starting connection to work, like cell phones and social media. 

References

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