One of the more significant challenges with remote working is maintaining a form of visibility into the work of your remote employees. Transparency in remote working is an essential part of your business's success. By ensuring visibility into the performance of your team, it guarantees you maintain a seamless workflow.
Remote work has provided employees with the flexibility they have been craving for by allowing them to work the way they want and use their time without any restrictions. While remote work has liberated workers by increasing their freedom of movement and flexibility, it has increased the difficulty of a manager's capability to efficiently manage their team.
The transition from a physical office environment to home working on is a significant one. While remote teams will enjoy the comfort of working from home, it is easy for them to get off-track and to keep up the punctuality and efficiency expected from office work. Similarly, it is also difficult for managers to keep tabs on their remote teams at all times.
To regain some semblance of visibility and acquire insight into the working habits of their remote team, managers need to introduce transparency into remote working. Instilling transparency in remote working ensures that the manager remains on top of everything. It also ensures they have smooth communication and can track the progress of the entire team.
For this article, we are going to go over why having transparency in your remote work.
The importance of transparency in remote work.
Remote working introduces several challenges, and unless your managers are armed to deal with these problems, you won’t be able to handle these issues. Here are several reasons why remote transparency is critical in a remote workplace, whether in a hybrid remote or an entirely remote team.
Relationship development
The possible benefits of remote working are considerable, from decreasing cost to improving productivity and gaining access to a larger talent pool. Although remote working can place a strain on workplace relationships. For example, remote works in a hybrid remote model usually become disenfranchised, isolated, and depressed.
As time passes, that will take a significant penalty on workplace relationships. Improving your transparency ensures your remote employees' trust is improved. That trust is crucial when it comes to developing and maintaining robust workplace relationships.
Company culture development
Company culture is an excellent way for workers to understand what their employees value besides their contribution to the workforce. A noteworthy shift to remote working can severely impact the capability to generate social cohesion and create a common culture within a business. Companies need to define their core values and encourage a united culture for their remote working teams. Team leaders also need to achieve this by using videos, webinars, virtual retreats, team building activities, and other efforts that support team engagement and learning.
A better understanding of roles
While your business may be saving a hefty amount of money by allowing your employees to work remotely, there is not an easy way to keep your remote team as a cohesive unit. It is demanding to remain focused when working from home. Some employees could become lost without the previous office setting.
Transparency offers you the chance to foster a better understanding of roles within a remote workforce. Make sure that your remote employees understand their roles in the company’s context to ensure efficiency when working from home by introducing better transparency within your business.
Engagement is enhanced
Whether you only have a small number of remote employees or your entire staff is working from home, it takes some skills to manage all of them. For example, it can be challenging to keep employees engaged in remote working environments. However, being transparent with your employees can help with this issue.
A company that values transparency within its workforce breeds more engaged remote workers. Studies have shown that employees become more engaged when their leaders continuously update and communicate company strategy through email, social media, video conferencing meetings, and any other communication tools.
Flexibility
Another significant advantage of a remote workforce is the increased potential for flexibility in a business respective industry. At times, employees have a troubling time adapting along with the organization, especially if there is no transparency about changes made within the company. Approximately 60% of remote employees have stated that they missed out on information because it was communicated from a single person to another.
Remote workers will find it much easier to adjust to new industry conditions when they have effective communication from their managers. Information needs to be distributed promptly through communication that guarantees transparency.
Safe and security
As the employer, you must understand that people wish to feel safe and secure. When a worker comes into work, they want to know that their manager values them. They also want to be reassured that their job is safe. It can be difficult for someone to work at their best if they are constantly concerned and stress over the future of their post.
That means that a lack of clarity about a business's structure and initials can cause a worker to feel uncertain about job security. By reassuring them, the employer is transparent about the employee's job security which could make things much more relaxed.
Creating transparency
Now that you are aware of the importance of transparency in remote work let us go over what you can do to increase transparency across your remote team.
Build transparency in your company culture
If you want to improve transparency among your remote workers, you need to integrate those values into the root of your company. You need to make sure your employees are aware of the fact that transparency is one of the core values of your business.
Take the time to consider your team’s workflow. The processes behind everything you do, the ones that make or break the success of your company. Has that workflow changed since you began to work remotely?
Most people are not ready for a remote working lifestyle, and it can place a strain on their productivity. Having open and transparent communication is the key to getting everything back on the right track. Since you wish to assimilate openness and visibility among your workforce, it is imperative that you clearly state so in your value statement.
The core principles of your business should explicitly reflect your personal belief so that your employees are also transparent on those values and respect them.
Scrutinize your workflow
To make your workflow transparent, you need to check over every single aspect of them. Try to assess the crucial features of your workflow and note down each step. Keep a close eye on how the work is being transferred from one person to another, each time a tool is used, and the feedback cycle.
When you have managed to gain a clear understanding of your workflow, review it meticulously. Identify every spot that has been affected by your transition to remote work. Make sure you carefully look over the parts of your workflow that require in-person contact or where you think information is being lost.
Carefully reviewing your workflow should offer you a better idea of the places you need to double down with transparency so you can improve the efficiency of your overall workflow.
Remote work tools
When it comes to remote working, technology is necessary for ensuring everything manages to operate smoothly. A company needs tools to fill in the gap that was created when they lost all of the in-person interactions. However, the last thing you want is for information to come at a stop from one of these tools. Plus, you will need apps that are easy for everyone to use and ensures that info remains accessible for everyone.
There are several project management tools out there that are capable of updating in real-time and helps your remote workers remain on top of everything. Tasks can be set up on these project management and allow everyone to be aware of what they are doing.
When you have decided on your tools, you need to ensure that your team is transparently using them. The best way to ensure that is by keeping everything as public as possible, sharing access with everyone, and making updates frequently.
Use formal channels
You have likely heard this so many times already, but the fact that it stands true is undeniable.
Transparency can only begin when you have open and free communication. Since the liberty to speak face to face is no longer available, you need to rely on employing online tools to remain in touch with each other. You need to ensure that openness and honesty are introduced into the remote workspace.
Tools like Slack and Microsoft Team ensure that you and your team are capable of remaining in communication with each other. Since you cannot have face-to-face meetings, you need to rely on these tools for conducting official meetings. Google Drive is another excellent tool that ensures all of your files remain stored in place and accessible to everyone on the team.
Conclusion
With the growing amount of need for remote working comes the requirement for better transparency on the employer’s part. That means you need to be transparent with your workers to make sure they feel like they are part of the team and perform their tasks. It also ensures that productivity increases and makes your business flourish.
