From flexible work, to work from home, distributed teams and virtual offices, remote work can take many different forms. Working remotely means doing work outside of a traditional office.
With Fortix, a distributed team can be an asset, and not a problem to be managed. Fortix enables every employee the flexibility to work when and where they want to—without worrying that they won’t be productive.
Here are some tips we’ve learned from the past ten years of remote experience.
Make sure your employees have the necessary tools such as fast and reliable internet, a computer, the right software, an ergonomic desk and a chair.
It’s work behaviours such as goal alignment and delivering expected outcomes through collaboration, along with connectedness and clear structures, that need to change when people start to work remotely to provide transparency.
Before you delegate tasks that need to be completed remotely, make sure you have a clear understanding of the work to be completed.
Consider the scope of work, expected outcomes, and associated deadlines.
Use a work breakdown structure (WBS) to divide a project or sales order to its smallest components, ensuring that the task is not too large to manage.
Be clear about what work needs to be done as well as the interdependence between tasks and timelines.
Part of delegating tasks is knowing when to complete that work. Determine your deadlines for each job so that you can communicate it as part of the assignment process.
An advantage of thinking about job requirements in the first step is that it identifies the right people for the job. You want to align the skills, knowledge and experience of your team members with the work you have to do.
Pay attention to reviewing the person’s priorities or with a backup team member to make sure they are not overburdened.
These challenges are not easy to achieve with clunky tools like emails and Excel spreadsheets, and home PCs that might not be secure, especially when you are in a hurry.
The ability for managers to assign work and ensure that people are busy, happy and productive is significantly reduced without the correct tools.
Fortix enables you to efficiently work remotely at any time, from anywhere in the world.
Communicating with team messages in Fortix, you can not only follow up to make sure an assignment is on track but also gain input from your team. In Fortix, team members can gain a clear overview of team and task progression via the Team messaging area. Team productivity can also be viewed transparently in graphs and reports.
Dashboards in Fortix address the issue of visibility from a distance.
Since everyone is using the same tool, you have transparency into every aspect of the business. Teams can see what their colleagues are working on, which builds trust and cuts down on confusion.
Each task within a project is assigned to a team member, making everyone’s responsibilities clear. With all tasks and responsibilities displayed transparently, project managers know each task will be seen through by the assigned person.
Proof of Work Delivery – How do you know if people are actually working?
Fortix Work module allows your team to log their hours that they do for each of your clients and your clients are able to log in as well and see tasks that have been done on their account. This provides transparency and builds trust, and any issues about productivity and performance can be addressed more easily.
With Fortix using the copy feature in work request collaboration, you can add yourself to a task as copied.
By allowing the Project manager to be copied on the task, to keep an eye on progression, the feature allows team leaders to entrust team members to get on with their tasks or projects alone while feeling able to jump in to query or help where useful. Retain an overview of team and project progress.
Now is the time to act and prepare your business to operate with a remote team.
Call 1300 426 311 to find out more about how Fortix can assist you to grow your business.