Despite the growing clamour about RTO mandates, recent studies show that the number of fully remote offices are only growing. An Owl Labs study published earlier this year found that nearly 16% of organizations are now fully remote.
This is not surprising. Remote workplaces offer several advantages to both the employer and the workers. Yet, one factor that physical offices have going for them is the ability to project professionalism. Do you really want your client to notice a dog barking in the background, or have the meeting interrupted by patchy home internet?
The truth however is that it is possible to run a professional organization as a fully remote team.
Start with a clear organizational framework
The first step in successfully managing a remote workforce is establishing a clear organizational framework. This includes defining each role and the responsibilities that come with it. Also, make sure that the reporting structures are spelled out clearly.
This makes it easy to chart the goals and tasks for each team, and further in identifying the KPIs for each team member.
A quick point to note here. A clear organizational framework does not simply mean assigning well-defined responsibilities to each team member. Instead, it is also to ensure that there are no grey areas that are open to interpretation, or overlap across multiple teams. These are scenarios that cause friction between the different teams, and can make working remotely difficult and unprofessional.
Offer the right infrastructure tools
When your team operates entirely remotely, the quality of their work is determined primarily by the communication channels available to them. Invest in collaboration tools like Slack or Box to ensure effective communication across your teams.
While intra-team communication is a major factor, professionalism in your organization is defined more by how your team communicates with external stakeholders - including customers, investors, and channel partners.
Most home internet connections are shared across different users and this makes them unreliable and patchy. For client-facing team members, this does not cut it. Service providers like Alliance Virtual Officers offer remote teams the freedom to pick virtual offices from across hundreds of locations across the world.
This way, your SDRs could set up physical meetings or Zoom Calls from an office setup, giving your organization a much needed professional facelift when dealing with stakeholders that matter.
Ensuring accountability with performance management
While the COVID pandemic definitely made remote work popular, the systems have been in place for over two decades.
Established process frameworks like Outcome-Oriented Management (ROMI), Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), along with an asynchronous-first mindset, defined rules for engagement, and continuous improvement cycle can really help make remote work robust and seamless.
This may not be adequate however. For remote work to fully flourish, businesses also need to ensure high accountability along with continuous performance management systems. This starts with hiring the right workers who thrive under remote work conditions, and extends to following robust project management processes like Agile that involve daily standups, and continuous improvement.
Invest in the right technology and security
A professional remote organization relies on a strong digital foundation. Investing in a reliable and standardized technology ensures that your workers, regardless of what devices they log in from, or from which part of the world they work, do not face any compatibility issues or other forms of disruption.
At the same time, a remote workforce leaves your organization susceptible to unforeseen cybersecurity threats. A worker logging in from a public WiFi, or leaves their devices unattended could be jeopardizing your business. While spelling out the do’s and don’ts in your IT policies can be a good start, it is not enough.
You may also need to deploy multi-factor authentication, virtual private networks, and firewalls to minimize cybersecurity risks. Regular cybersecurity training to your workers can further assist in maintaining accountability and reduce risks.
As a fully remote organization, cybersecurity needs to be one of your strategic priorities. It simply cannot be an afterthought.
In addition to this, make use of AI workflows to automate your business processes. Tools like Thena help businesses create automated business workflows that seamlessly scale without the need for dev resources.
Investing in professional development of your employees
One of the key differentiators between professionally run organizations and the rest is in the way they invest in their employees. Invest in the career growth of your employees by offering them support in professional development.
This includes providing them with monetary support to pursue online certifications, offering them virtual conference passes, or organizing internal training programs that align with your workers’ personal goals as well as that meets your organization’s needs.
According to referral marketing software company ReferralCandy, keeping employees satisfied this way contributes to employee advocacy, much like customer advocacy that happens from keeping customers happy.
You could also look at mentorships within the organization that let freshly recruited employees pair up with experienced workers to help them accelerate their career progression.
Prepare them for the coming decade. Train them to use AI tools to improve productivity. Recently, Johnson & Johnson trained their workers on generative AI tools. For your organization it could be something like creating their own GPTs, using AI agents in healthcare (or any other industry as is the case). Building forward-looking employees creates happy and loyal employees - in both remote as well as physical office setups
In addition to all this, regular check-ins and chats with your employees on their career aspirations and how your organization can fulfill this is key to ensuring that your employees are committed and happy in your organization.
Lead with intent and flexibility
Professionally run organizations stay away from cheat codes and chase long-term success. Investing in the technology and processes that build the foundation for your fully-remote organization can help you scale up fast and smoothly.
While this also means overheads that you may want to avoid as a bootstrapped small company, the truth is that these are essentials that ensure that your organization builds a reputation in the industry which is vital to long-term growth and success.
