Striking the Balance: Exploring Remote Work Management for Productivity and Employee Well-Being

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. 

Things to Keep in Mind

Ethical Considerations

Before you even discuss the use of remote work management tools with your employees, you should take into account the ethical considerations of this practice, as this is the main aspect your employees will have in mind. 

To put your employees at ease and make a case for the use of remote work management tools, try to put yourself in your employee’s shoes. Here are some things to consider regarding it:

• Privacy – Employees might be worried that your remote work management methods will compromise their privacy. Your job is to ensure your approach to remote work management does not violate any laws in your region/country. This is not only important for moral reasons but can also save your company from needlessly spending money on various lawsuits and litigations. 
• Consent – Before you implement your management practices, you should inform employees about the exact purpose, extent, and methods you aim to employ. Afterward, you can ask for their consent. If they don’t consent immediately, give them ample time to think about it, as any consent given under duress or time pressure can easily be made invalid in the courts. 
• Questions – It is highly likely that employees will have questions about your remote work management strategy, the tools you’re choosing to utilize, their rights concerning it, and how that will affect their job in the long run. Be prepared to answer those questions while giving employees the opportunity to provide their own input and share their ideas. One of the core notions behind remote work management tools is employee autonomy, and including them in the discussion is one way to start encouraging that.
• Security of employee data – Employees will probably have concerns regarding the security of the collected data about their work. It's the employer's duty to establish appropriate security measures and keep their employees' data safe and secure. Failure to do so is not only ethically wrong but can bring about lawsuits from employees whose data has been compromised.

Have Clear Policies 

Create clear and comprehensive guidelines and policies with the sole purpose of outlining the following: 

• The entire scope of remote work management;
• The type/types of employee data that will be collected;
• How will employee data be used?
• What security measures and safeguards are you going to implement to protect employee privacy?

All policies regarding remote work management should be readily accessible to all of your remote employees. Also, you should regularly inform them about any changes you’ve made in such policies.

Autonomy and Trust

One of the main benefits of using remote work management tools, which we’ve mentioned above, is increased employee autonomy and trust levels between employees and their managers, team leads, or employers. 

For this to become a part of your company culture, you should try and encourage employees to take ownership of the work they perform or the deliverables they send it. You can do this by allowing them to manage their time and work processes. Don’t force anything on them, but rather aim to facilitate their success and improvement of their processes with the data you’ve collected.  

For example, if the data clearly shows that a remote employee performs their best work between 11 am and 2 pm, your job as a manager should be to encourage them to focus on more complicated tasks during those hours.

Or, if the data shows that they’re clearly struggling with certain types of tasks, you can either delegate those tasks to someone better suited to complete them or share resources with the said employee and help them improve their skills regarding that particular type of task. This will ultimately lead to the employee becoming better at their job, which is the whole point of using remote work management tools

How To Start Using Remote Work Management Tools?

Build Trust 

One of the core principles of creating a positive work culture around remote work management tools is to establish trust as early as possible. When managing remote and regular teams alike, it’s important that your employees trust you and believe in your decision-making capabilities. But trust is not something that can be achieved easily. It can only come as a result of continuous effort over a certain period of time.

When it comes to remote work management tools, their implementation into your company, and building trust with remote employees regarding it, it’s vital to create and keep communication channels open for the sole purpose of discussing this issue. Your employees will have questions about it, and, to gain their trust, you should strive to answer all of those questions as honestly and competently as you can.

Measure Goals And Give Honest Feedback 

This is the core principle and reason for the use of remote work management tools – to accurately measure goals and give employees feedback to improve their productivity and work efficacy. 

Try to reward and acknowledge good performers. You can use them as an example that other workers can follow. Likewise, assess poor performances and discuss issues and problems behind them with your employees.

Help Employees Develop Skills

This goes hand in hand with giving honest feedback. Remote work management tools are all about identifying employees’ strengths and weaknesses and then helping them build upon those strengths while also working on weaker parts of their job performance.

Work on Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a term that defines the level of dedication, involvement, and commitment employees have for their work and the company that employs them. More engaged employees tend to perform better at their jobs, demonstrate higher productivity levels, a greater degree of passion for their work, and an increased job satisfaction.