Up until a couple of decades back, working from the comfort of your own home every time you wanted seemed like a fantasy. Not to mention, of course, the ability to perform great-quality, profitable work with the breathtaking backdrop of Canggu one year, Sydney Harbour the next, and a bustling cobble street in Rome the one after.
But since the introduction of the Telework Enhancement Act in 2010 and, ten years later, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work and digital nomadism have been experiencing an upward trajectory in uptake and popularity.
This is all great for employees willing to swap the rat race for slower, more mindful mornings and a better work-life balance. How about, though, managers and employers? When all (or most) of your team is scattered around the globe, ensuring that everyone stays on track becomes a real challenge.
Keep reading our guide to discover how to overcome it, with the expert and trusted time-tracking support of your new remote work partner: WebWork Tracker.
What Are the Main Types of Remote Work?
Before delving into the core of our topic, let’s quickly define the three main types of remote work.
Fully remote work
When an individual has gone “fully remote”, they have embraced a working arrangement that enables them to perform the entirety of their duties remotely. In this case, the person may be employed by a company or working as a freelancer.
Similarly, they might be required to work during specific hours (such as the standard 9-5) or enjoy more flexibility when planning their working day.
Hybrid work
Hybrid work refers to work that’s performed partly from home, and partly in-person. Usually, individuals following this approach are employed by a company, as opposed to working as freelancers.
Most companies that offer hybrid work to their employees also provide them with digital tools and resources to make their jobs (and lives) easier and more productive. These could be anything from a Vonage toll-free number to call whenever remote assistance is needed, to apps that let them book a desk in the office on the days they’re supposed to work in person.
In terms of the split between remote and in-person work, different companies have different guidelines, with some requiring at least a 50% in-office presence from the employee, whereas others allowing for more flexibility.
Digital nomad work
In recent years, the expression “digital nomad” has become predominant when discussing remote work, especially in the context of tech startups. As the name may suggest, a digital nomad is someone who not only works on a fully remote basis, but who is also not geographically stable.
By leveraging the use of digital technologies, these people are free to spend varying amounts of time in the city or country they prefer, moving on to the next one at will.
One month, for example, they might be logging in from Qatar using their .qa domain from OnlyDomains, while the next they might be in San Francisco, combining their love of traveling with their coding skills.
Remote Work: The Three Core Challenges for Employers and Managers
In the next section, we’ll explore the three main obstacles that you might face when managing a remote team, and how you can overcome them.
1. Supervising productivity levels
One of the biggest challenges you face as a manager of a remote team is, undoubtedly, the ability to supervise your employees. Even if you personally know some of them and could swear by their hard-working nature, how sure can you be that they are actually performing to the best of their abilities when left to their own devices?
The situation is even more complicated when it comes to new hires. In this case, you may not even know the person and simply need to trust that they will be doing a good job, regardless of where they are in the world.
So, how can you tackle this issue? Well, you need to strike the right balance between being available to your employees whenever they need and ensuring that you’re not too intrusive. This is easier said than done, particularly when you think you may have spotted someone who’s not performing well when working remotely.
How WebWork Tracker can help
Thankfully, a tool like WebWork Tracker can help you monitor the performance and productivity of your remote team, whether you sell business domain names or minimalist furniture. How? It’s simple. With our tool, you can categorize your employees’ activity levels – high, medium, and low – and track them in real-time and in a fully transparent way.
Additionally, you can also view when an employee has checked in, checked out, and left early, alongside the reasons for doing so. But there’s even more! The tracker also enables you to check on your employees’ wellness levels by tapping into specific metrics. This is a great addition, as it encourages better overall well-being and demonstrates to your employees that you truly care about them.
2. Encouraging social interactions, communication, and collaboration
Employee engagement can plummet considerably when managing a remote team, and that’s largely down to the lack of social interactions and in-person communication and collaboration. These factors can also negatively impact your workforce’s mental and physical health, which can have harmful consequences for your business as a whole.
Low engagement rates can also easily translate into low employee retention – a situation you need to avoid at all costs. Therefore, it’s best to be prepared and find ways to keep your remote workers as engaged and motivated as possible. After all, it’s been proven time and again that happy and committed employees make for a more profitable business, so this should really be a no-brainer.
How WebWork Tracker can help
What if you could both monitor your remote employees’ productivity and also offer them a safe, welcoming, and easy-to-access space that fosters a sense of community? With WebWork Tracker, you get the best of both worlds.
Our tool enables your remote team to do pretty much everything they need to collaborate quickly and proactively, while also allowing them to chat and send direct messages to their coworkers literally at the touch of a button and all from the same platform.
And because your messages on WebWork Tracker are fully encrypted, you don’t need to worry about sharing sensitive files or information: everything you do is in safe hands. Keep an eye on our website, because we’ll soon be launching our Video Meetings feature (which you can try now in beta version) and give your remote team an extra helping hand when it comes to working collaboratively and interacting meaningfully.
3. Paying for billable work
Knowing exactly how much each of your remote employees is owed in terms of monthly salary is another challenge for remote team managers. This is particularly true if your employees are paid by the hour.
In some cases, freelancers are even paid weekly, which can hugely increase the amount of financial transactions that you need to oversee. And with a higher number of transactions comes a higher risk for cyber threats, which makes following the CMMC compliance framework paramount.
How WebWork Tracker can help
With WebWork, you can add an hourly rate section to your contract’s setting, making it easier to bill for hourly work. This feature lets you convert the tracked time into a specific amount so you can view your final reports in both hours and amounts, and for each of your employees.
You can also choose to authorize specific people within your team to access these documents by setting up specific visibility features. For example, if you set “Show Hourly Rate”, you will be able to show the authorized person a list of all the financial information related to a particular employee.
Conversely, people without permission can’t access this data or generate invoices, which keeps security and confidentiality tight.
Start Overcoming These Remote Work Challenges Today
While the benefits of remote work are now clear to most employers and employees, it’s important to also spend some time considering its related challenges. In this guide, we started off by describing the main types of remote work, followed by the three main challenges that a manager or employer may face when dealing with remote employees.
Despite these significant obstacles, you can succeed at managing a productive, profitable, and satisfied remote workforce with help from tools like WebWork Tracker. With our platform, you can handle anything from employee monitoring to billing and payment, while also creating a real online community that boosts communication and collaboration within your team.
Check us out today, and get in touch to try a demo of our upcoming features’ release!