Remote team management: are you ready to take the plunge?

Do you have ambivalent feelings about remote working, or telecommuting, for your employees?

This is understandable, but we want to reassure you that the positive aspects of telecommuting far outweigh its potential problems.

That said, it is important to take these issues into account. This is the key to making remote access a real performance lever for your company.

In this article, we start by taking you through the top 5 benefits of corporate remote. Then, we help you overcome 5 common problems associated with telecommuting, with practical tips.

The objective? To take full advantage of this new organization of the working world!

The 5 main advantages of working remotely

At Rzilient, we are convinced that remote working can bring many benefits to your company. As proof, more than 20% of our team works remotely!

‍

Benefit #1: Reduce your costs 📉💵

Professional offices are very expensive.

The simple fact ofsitting an employee at the office costs on average more than 13 000 € per year in France! The investments are indeed numerous:

• office rental ;
• purchase of furniture ;
• interview ;
• security ;
• general services.

If your team works remotely, you can reduce your real estate costs. This financial gain increases your ability to invest in profitable projects (business development, R&D, marketing, etc.), significantly. Let's take the example of a communications agency with 20 employees that decides to go 50% remote. Its annual gain is about 10 x 13k€, i.e. 130 000€ of savings!

‍

Benefit #2: Limit the stress of your teams 💻😵

With the flexibility that telecommuting offers, your employees can :

• spend much less time in transportation (the average time spent by employees in commuting is about ¾ hour per day);
• enjoy more time with their families and to take care of themselves. For example, it becomes possible to play sports at lunchtime;
• manage their household chores during their work breaks. This ensures that their evenings are quiet and free of work at home.

These may seem like anecdotal considerations in the context of running a business.

‍

In fact, these everyday details can make a huge difference to the quality of life of your teams. And better quality of work also means a set of associated benefits:

• lowering the stress level of your employees;
• Reduction of absenteeism and sick leave;
• increase in productivity.

Did you know that absenteeism costs an average of 4,000 euros per year per employee in France?

In our fictitious company of a communication agency with 20 employees, reducing absenteeism by 20% translates into an annual saving of €16,000.

‍

Benefit #3: Access a larger talent pool 👌

Being able to recruit anywhere in France, or even in the world, means that your company has access to an enormous panel of talents and skills.

The benefits to your business are many:

• increase the quality of your services;
• Improving your customers' satisfaction;
• and consequently, increased financial results (revenues and profitability).

‍

Benefit #4: Receive significant CSR benefits ♻️

Telecommuting is also a great way to reduce your company's carbon and environmental footprint.

Less transportation (often done by car) means tons of CO2 not emitted each year!

But that's not all. Your employees working in the office also need :

• office buildings be built ;
• then heated and maintained;
• and eventually renovated.

Knowing that the construction sector has a huge environmental impact, you act for the planet by choosing remote!

‍

Benefit #5: Improve your employer brand and talent retention 🤝

Do you want to be overwhelmed by motivated and interesting applications?

Offering the opportunity to work from home, whether full-time or part-time, is a good way to attract and retain talent.

But recruiting and retaining an employee costs a lot of money!

Telecommuting is an excellent lever for the costs associated with recruiting and training new employees.

The 5 key issues of telework

Let's be clear. Not everything is rosy in the world of telecommuting. To protect you from the risks associated with this practice, we propose a focus on 5 key issues to consider.

‍

Issue 1: Communication 🗣️

Working remotely makes communication between your teams more difficult.

This is especially true if your teams work in different time zones. For example, our marketing manager, Audrey, is currently telecommuting to Mexico. The difficulties were anticipated. Accommodations were put in place and are working perfectly! 💪

The key is toanticipate that telecommuting can complicate live meetings or real-time collaborations.

‍

Issue 2: Management 👨🏼‍💼👩🏽‍💻

With telecommuting, managers have toadapt to a remote management style. This is very different from management in a traditional work environment.

Effective solutions exist:

• communicate effectively with their team remotely (with tools such as Zoom, Teams, Meet or Slack);
• provide regular feedback on the work done;
• Ensure effective coordination of tasks, via project management tools (Asana, Trello, Airtable, Notion, etc.).

‍

Issue #3: Data security 🔐

Working remotely can lead to increased data security risks.⚠️

Many companies allow their employees to work from different locations with personal devices as part of a BYOD policy.

This can compromise the security of the company's data.

But, again, the solutions exist! We detail them in our article on cybersecurity, and implement them as part of Rzilient's all-in-one IT management platform.

‍

Issue #4: The well-being of your employees 🧑🏻‍💻😊

Remote work can be accompanied by feelings of isolation and stress for some of your employees.

To combat this risk, here are our tips. These are:

• remain attentive to the well-being of the team;
• Ensure that your employees have the necessary equipment to work efficiently from a remote location;
• plan moments of "real" exchange (such as seminars, "after work", regular face-to-face meetings, etc.);
• Alternate remote and face-to-face training for the most affected employees.

‍

Issue #5: Monitoring productivity 📈

The last issue to address when committing your company to telecommuting is productivity.

Some employees may be tempted to work less productively without direct supervision.

Management must therefore put in place safeguards to limit this risk, and even provide financial incentives.

For example, you might consider a salary increase for telecommuting employees in exchange for their moral agreement to work hard from home.

Considering the cost savings to your company from telecommuting, this is a win-win approach.

As a general rule, empowering employees is accompanied by greater adherence to company values. Telecommuting rarely affects team productivity, quite the contrary.

‍

The remote: a miracle solution, to be managed well

As we have seen, the remote brings a lot of advantages to your company! But it also comes with issues that need to be addressed carefully.

As far as your IT is concerned, let's mention cybersecurity and the organization of your computer and software assets on the other hand.

The Rzilient platform is designed to help you with both of these. It includes:

• a complete IT inventory tool. You save a lot of time on onboarding and offboarding management;
• all the necessary tools to protect your business from cybersecurity risks (deployment of security policies, installation of upstream antivirus and data encryption).