With most of the world switching to a new normal of remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year, making sure that your employees are satisfied has never been more important. Along with the stress and anxiety caused by the pandemic, many employees worldwide are still adjusting to working from home and dealing with all the distractions that it brings. As an employer, it’s important to be in communication with your employees and take measures to help them settle into their new routine in these strange and unexpected times.
Be Flexible
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of your employees might be dealing with issues that would not normally arise when times were normal. If your employees have children, for example, there may be times when they will need to home school if their kids are self-isolating due to a positive case in their class, or if schools are closed. Allowing more flexibility and ensuring that employees feel supported in their situation is crucial; times are stressful right now for many people and being able to work around the new situation is something that many employees will welcome.
Communicate
Most businesses that have moved to remote working over the past year were neither prepared for it nor used to it, so it’s important to communicate regularly with your employees to ensure that the measures you’ve put in place are working and get suggestions for what could make things easier. Using an employee engagement platform where your employees can answer questions about their experience and leave ideas that they would like to see implemented will help you get a clearer picture of what employees need from their place of work right now.
Provide All Resources
Most people are not used to working from home, so don’t assume that your employees have the set-up that they need at their home. It’s worth speaking to your employees to find out more about their current work-from-home setup and if there is anything that you can do to make the situation easier for them. Providing desks and chairs, for example, will be ideal for employees who’re trying to make it work from their sofa, while some employees might require the use of work laptops if the one that they have at home isn’t suitable. It can be trickier to manage employees and their IT set-ups when they are all working from different locations. Therefore, it can also be useful to hire outsourced IT support that can offer you managed services to ensure your employees never face downtime, have the best system in place, and have all the right protection they need to carry out their work.
Socialisation and Fun
Going to work isn’t always about working – since we spend most of our day there, it’s no surprise that many people develop workplace friendships and the opportunity to socialise during lunch breaks and after work is something that lots of employees have missed while working from home due to COVID. As an employer, one step that you might want to take to ensure that employees are able to continue the social side of work is to arrange virtual events after work like online Zoom quizzes and encourage the use of a platform that employees can use to chat and stay in touch with one another throughout the day just like they would while in the office.
With much of the world switching to remote working as a result of COVID, employers have more to think about when it comes to ensuring that employees continue to be satisfied and engaged while working from home.
