Before the pandemic, employees mostly worked from the office. Companies had a system for assessing employee performance. The motivation of an employee directly depended on the amount of work performed. For example, if he closed tasks with a total agreed workload of 100 hours within a month, then his/her motivation will be a derivative of this volume, even if the actual workload was 80 or 120 hours.
At the same time, employees at least once a week keep track of sheets of working time, where they distribute all their working hours to the tasks they were doing. As a result, we see the effectiveness of a specialist in the context of each task. At the same time, the employee is motivated to work effectively, since his bonus directly depends on this. But for the final executor and the project manager to act as a single team, the latter, among other KPIs, must have a motivation system aimed at effectively completing the tasks assigned to his team.
Nevertheless, having such a system of motivation and control, employers were afraid that the employee, being outside the walls of the office, would not be able to discipline himself and this would affect the efficiency of his work. But 1,5 year has passed since the transition to remote work, and we have detailed statistics for this period:
The average efficiency of employees has not changed, that is, at the end of the year, there is no negative financial effect when switching to remote work.
A significant part of employees notes that their efficiency has increased because:
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you no longer have to waste time on the road, but use it to complete tasks and get an additional bonus for this;
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the boundaries of the working day are blurring: some employees focus not on time frames, but on the volume of closed tasks.
However, we must say that we began to notice some burnout among some employees. Therefore, you should send colleagues on vacation, even though they are working from home.
Several employees have not shown high efficiency in the office. But working remotely with its task-tracking system and regular status meetings changed the situation for the better. Of course, there is also a share of employees whose efficiency decreases due to personal characteristics – they need to work in an office. But there are few of them – about 5-10%.
Now let’s talk about maintaining team spirit
If an employee does not feel like a part of a single team, then in the long run this will have negative consequences. Strictly speaking, one year spent at a distance does not allow one to speak unambiguously about all the long-term effects of the transition to such a format. But we can talk about the current results and the actions being taken. What was done?
A program of remote webinars for the exchange of experiences has been launched. Within each project, there is something that would be interesting to share. Topics vary; for example, you might host a productivity workshop on one of your projects.
A program of remote webinars on topics not directly related to professional activities has been launched. For example, we did yoga in the morning or parenting webinars. It helps to organize hobby clubs.
If all the recommended security measures are followed, some employees may come to the office once a week. They sit in a staggered manner, nevertheless, it gives opportunities for live communication. Regular status calls within project teams. It is important to communicate not only at the level of the tracking system but also by voice.
To prevent employees from working in an information vacuum, it is necessary to regularly hold information meetings and tell them about interesting news in the life of the company. Note that according to statistics the remote work did not affect the staff turnover.