Remote Work in the Modern Landscape
According to a Linkedin report, there has been an increase of whooping 1,100% in remote work job offerings on their site since the end of 2021. Additionally, Eurostat documents an almost 120% increase in the number of remote work employees since 2020.
Diving deeper, the Owl Labs’ survey on the state of remote work suggests that over 47% of all workers would be willing to take a 5% cut to their pay just for the opportunity to work in a remote environment.
These and many other statistics undeniably show that remote work has a crucial role to play in today’s work landscape and that this is just the beginning.
What Is Remote Work Management?
Remote work management encompasses the entire process of managing remote teams, including the tracking and gathering data on employees’ work activities and subsequently analyzing that information.
The main goal of this endeavor is to identify work inefficiencies, under-/over-performing employees, and employees overburdened with work, as well as attain valuable information about productivity and job satisfaction across your company or organization.
Still, according to some studies, keeping tabs on remote employees through electronic means can negatively affect job satisfaction and increase stress related to work obligations. In the long run, this can actually decrease productivity and create a work pattern riddled with counterproductive behavior.
That’s why it’s extremely important to manage your remote workers in a reasonable and non-invasive manner to avoid looking like you’re trying to micromanage them.
The Difference Between Remote Work Management and Micromanagement
Although micromanagement can have some short-term benefits, especially when dealing with new employees, it runs the risk of becoming a disastrous and costly managerial practice in the long run.
So, what are the main differences between these two managerial approaches?
Main Goal and Focus
The main goal of remote work management is to collect data about an individual employee’s work activities, workflow proclivities, and performance. This information allows managers to create objective and impartial evaluations for the purpose of providing honest and accurate feedback. This feedback can, in turn, help elevate employee performance, productivity, and efficacy when dealing with work-related obligations.
On the other hand, the main focus of micromanagement is to generate excessive control mechanisms to ensure employees are producing quality work and are being efficient.
For the most part, micromanaging is connected to a lack of trust in employees and might stem from managers’ inability to properly delegate workload among their team members.
Autonomy of Employees
Another key difference between remote work management and micromanagement is reflected in the way they approach employee autonomy.
The core idea behind remote work management is to encourage an increased level of autonomy in employees so that they become more capable of performing their work duties independently, with little to no input from their managers.
Micromanagement, on the other hand, is completely antithetical to the individual employee’s autonomy when it comes to work-related obligations and tasks. In the view of micromanagers, the increased control guarantees higher chances of a positive outcome. The lack of autonomy is just a necessary byproduct of the manager's desire to create the most productive and efficient team.
Effect on Morale and Job Satisfaction
A good remote work management strategy and practices can have a positive effect on both morale and job satisfaction. There are still a lot of research opportunities when it comes to this subject, but the already visible benefits should not be ignored, such as increased transparency, employee accountability, and performance levels.
Although micromanagement can have some positive effects in the short run, it almost always falls apart long-term. It’s a good practice during onboarding or when dealing with less experienced/new employees. After that, it just miserably fails.
Micromanagement creates employees that are completely dependent on constant input and guidance from their managers. This means that managers will have to put more time and effort into managing employees, leading to micromanaged employees taking more time to finish their tasks overall. Additionally, employees will also feel like they are under constant surveillance, which can negatively affect their morale and overall job satisfaction.
The Benefits of Remote Work Management
The benefits of remote work management are plentiful and can be felt by both employees and employers.
The Benefits of Remote Work Management for Employers
Increased Employee Productivity
By keeping track of remote employees’ work habits using a combination of time-tracking tools and other digital solutions, employers can gather important information and insight into employee workflows and work patterns. This data can help identify job areas where productivity is lacking and/or can be improved.
Knowing and understanding how remote employees spend their time can help managers or team leads discover bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and allocate resources more efficiently, ultimately leading to increased employee productivity.
More Accurate Performance Evaluation and Feedback
With efficient implementation of remote work management, managers or team leads can gather all the information about their teams' or individual employees’ performance. With it, they can discern high performers as well as workers who need additional training or support.
By analyzing all of the collected remote work data, managers can create accurate and quality data-driven feedback to share with their employees, further promoting an increase in their productivity and motivation.
More Accountable Employees
Good remote work management can help change and shape the entire work culture of the company by making all remote employees more accountable for the work they perform.
When remote workers are aware of the fact that their work is being tracked, there is an increased chance they will stay focused on their tasks and meet all of their deadlines.
Increased Transparency and Honest Communication
Time-tracking tools facilitate transparency and honest communication between team leads and their remote employees/teams. When employees are held accountable for their work hours and output and know that someone is paying attention to and evaluating their performance, they’re less likely to try to cheat the system.
Also, according to many studies, team leads make their best decisions and operate at their highest capacity when managing employees who are fully honest with them.
Resource Allocation and Workload Distribution
Remote work management solutions can be an invaluable source of accurate information about workload distribution and allocation of resources. With that data, employers, team leads, or managers can identify employees who are overloaded with work tasks as well as employees who are underutilized (have more room on their work plate than was previously thought).
This allows managers to make data-driven decisions regarding the redistribution of tasks and workload and manage their remote teams more successfully.
The Benefits of Remote Work Management for Employees
Even if the main reason for implementing remote work management solutions is to benefit employers, it doesn’t automatically mean that employees will be disadvantaged because of it. In fact, it could be quite the opposite – efficient remote work management can result in various benefits for employees as well.
But for that to be the case, employers have to ensure that all of their remote work management practices are transparent, respectful, and balanced around their employees' privacy and autonomy. If they manage to do that, their employees can reap various benefits from it. Here are just some of them:
Better Work-Life Balance
Remote work management and other tools (e.g., time-tracking apps) that employers might implement into their remote work strategy can help remote workers manage their time in a more efficient manner. And one of the staples of a good work-life balance is, in fact, time management.
Better time management can lead to a reduction in (perceived) work-related stress, improved task efficiency, and an increase in overall productivity, which can all have a positive effect on work-life balance.
Clear Expectations
Remote employees often find themselves in situations where they are unsure about what is expected from them in terms of work obligations. This can cause a significant increase in their stress levels, as one of the biggest stress inducers is uncertainty.
Remote work management is a way to set clear expectations for employees. Well-defined work objectives significantly reduce ambiguity and uncertainty about remote workers’ obligations and can lead to enhanced focus and fewer chances of decreased job satisfaction.
Professional Growth
Remote work management tools give employers more accurate information about their employees’ work performance. This information translates into objective and precise data that can later be used to give employees more accurate and impartial feedback surrounding their work performance.
Employees open to such feedback will know their strong and weak job areas. Based on that, they can work on improving the specific work skills they are lacking, which puts them on a path of continuous professional growth and improvement.
Access to Productivity Tools and Resources
In a lot of cases, remote work management will involve the use of various productivity tools. Companies may also invest in specific resources to support remote employees when managing their tasks and time. These types of tools will help remote workers stay organized and learn how to prioritize and optimize their entire workflows, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.
Recognizing and Rewarding High-Performers
A good remote work management strategy ensures that employers will always be able to identify high-performers and reward them accordingly, which is oftentimes a challenge for managers of remote employees. When performance is tracked and measured objectively, it becomes easier for employers to acknowledge employees' contributions and their value to the company.
Intrinsic rewards, acknowledgments, and regular praise can boost morale and motivation and increase the job satisfaction and productivity of remote workers.
What Is the Role of Time Tracking in Remote Work Management?
Remote work management relies heavily on technologies and various digital tools since it’s done remotely. Nowadays, the most important tools of them all are time-tracking apps. Here are some reasons as to why:
Tracking Work Hours and Measuring Productivity
Time tracking enables team leads or managers to accurately calculate the number of hours employees spend on specific tasks and projects. With this data, managers can analyze the performance of individual workers, identify their strengths and weaknesses (job-wise), as well as gather information about their workload (e.g., Are specific employees overloaded with work or underutilized?).
All of this allows managers to perform better resource allocations and employee evaluations and provide more accurate feedback to individual workers.
Promoting Employee Accountability
Time tracking, by its nature, promotes employee accountability and transparency in remote work settings. It generates a clear and accurate record of all work hours employees put in on their tasks and projects.
This record allows employers, team leads, or managers to ensure all employees are performing their work responsibilities in accordance with their employment contract, are adhering to their work schedules, and are putting in the required number of work hours each day.
Improving Project Management
Many remote teams work on a multitude of projects at any given time. That can make project management increasingly difficult for team leads and decision-makers. Time tracking can help with project management by allowing managers to track the progress of each individual task, allocate resources more effectively, and identify current and potential bottlenecks.
Time tracking can also help with estimating time and project costs and budgets to adhere to all deadlines regarding completing and sending in deliverables to clients.
Making Billing Easier
Equally important to both freelancers and teams operating remotely, time tracking allows them to accurately track all billable hours and makes the entire process of billing clients much easier. With a clear record of all billable hours, remote working managers can ensure that their entire communication with any given client is fully-transparent.
What Is a Positive Work Culture?
Positive work culture is a combination of values, attitudes, and procedures practiced within a particular company and aimed at creating supportive, inclusive, and engaging work environments. Positive work culture promotes employee-well being and takes into account job satisfaction without forgoing productivity.
How to Create a Positive Work Culture With Remote Management Tools?
Even though it might seem daunting at first, there are ways to implement remote work management tools and create or maintain a positive work culture with their help. And for the most part, it only requires some work and making certain commitments to employees.
But, if you put your back into it, you can ensure that the work culture you create and support is healthy and oriented toward productivity and positive work results.
