The last two years affected us all — across countries, industries and companies — and many businesses introduced remote or hybrid work to their organizations as a result. And in spite of some organizations' call to return to the office, the number of remote employees and teams is showing no signs of slowing down.
While people are pretty aware of the numerous advantages of remote and hybrid work environments, disadvantages do exist. Digital workplace management is one of the biggest challenges for team leaders and executives since it comes with unique difficulties unknown to the traditional working environment.
In this article, we'll cover all of the essentials of improving your digital workforce management, from the benefits of digital employee management to methods of enhancing your online management tactics. Let’s jump in.
About Digital Workplace Management
Workplace management is a set of processes that helps a company run smoothly. Workplace management involves recruiting, onboarding, workforce planning, staff scheduling, time management, employee productivity, assigning new tasks, among other activities.
However, workplace management becomes increasingly challenging when it comes to remote teams. Completing any of the above mentioned activities is much more complicated when employees aren’t nearby, especially if managers don’t have specially designed programs, such as headcount planning software.
Managing employees, processes and systems remotely and effectively isn’t simple, so team leaders started using unique digital workplace management tactics. Thanks to them, managers of remote teams can also streamline company processes and create smoother employee experiences.
Benefits of Digital Workplace Management
Team leaders should invest in digital workplace management for a number of reasons. Here are some of them.
1. Enhanced Employee Experience
When working remotely, employees can easily have a confusing experience. However, that’s not the case when quality digital workplace management tactics are in place.
Even if your employees have a myriad of options to choose from and can’t seem to understand some complex processes, the right workplace management system can help you streamline all employee experiences and make them more pleasant.
2. Higher Employee Engagement and Productivity
The level of engagement and productivity among your employees can vary depending on the management.
For instance, employees who receive their paycheck on time, know when their shift starts and ends, and understand how to submit their weekly expenses are more likely to be productive and engaged while working.
On the other hand, employees who don’t have access to or know about such information quickly lose their engagement and productivity.
3. Improved Decision-Making
Collecting essential data from other employees is more challenging than it seems when working remotely. However, with the right tools and management strategies by your side, it’s pretty simple to make informed and data-driven decisions.
Data-driven decisions help improve workforce management by allowing managers to gain insight into valuable data that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
4. Better Communication
Good digital management is based on clear and concise communication. With effective management strategies, HR experts can rest assured their team members understand their expectations.
By making connections between processes, tasks and systems, online teams can easily experience better communication among members.
Related Article: The End of the Social Collaboration Experiment: The Technology Is the Problem
How to Improve Digital Workplace Management
Taking the steps below will help take your digital workplace management to the next level.
1. Streamline Your Hiring Processes
There’s nothing more important than getting the right people at the right time. However, hiring remote employees comes with many obstacles, so it’s crucial to streamline online hiring processes.
That includes creating precise job openings to attract the right employees and improving your employee retention strategies to build a reliable and experienced staff.
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2. Use the Right Tools
Having dozens of software solutions and other online tools to manage your remote team can be extremely tiring, time-consuming and inefficient. Instead, opt for a single solution that incorporates all the features you find crucial.
It will be much easier for you to optimize various business processes and even automate routine tasks. When looking for the right tool, make sure it comes with the following features:
- Overview of all business processes from anywhere, at any time.
- Reporting and analysis tools to help you make quick but informed decisions.
- Integrated task management features.
- Communication and collaboration tools to keep your staff members in the loop.
- Overview of all your team members’ activities (shifts, working hours, leave requests, more).
3. Understand What Metrics to Measure
Each company has different priorities and metrics it needs to measure. So, when it comes to online workforce management, it’s vital to highlight which metrics are crucial for your staff and business. Generally speaking, most team leaders and HR experts choose to look at:
- Customer flow.
- Customer satisfaction.
- Footfall.
- Productivity.
- Sales.
With these metrics, it will be much easier to streamline all your online tasks and make better decisions for the future.
4. Be Flexible
When talking about digital workplace management, flexibility is the key to improving productivity, reducing costs, saving time, boosting employee happiness, and enhancing employee retention. After all, flexibility is one of the main reasons many companies decided to introduce remote work as part of their permanent feature.
Offering employees the ability to choose when and where they want to work can easily lead to a happy and motivated team.
5. Introduce Smart Forecasting
Forecasting can equip you with all the features necessary for better workforce management and planning. With intelligent forecasting tools, you can gain a deeper insight into the peak times of your business, which will allow you to schedule your staff accordingly.
For instance, headcount planning software can quickly assist you in hiring new talent when you need it most.
When using forecasts to make future decisions, think about:
- Using data from the past as a base and reference.
- The number of sales per employee and hour.
- Payroll cost.
- The cost of a salary compared to sales.
- Statistics relating to absenteeism (vacations and sick days).
6. Pay Attention to Employee Engagement
Regardless of the management software and strategy you choose, a team leader should never disregard employee engagement. More engaged employees are more motivated and more likely to invest everything into the business. They’ll go the extra mile to prove themselves and work harder to achieve individual or team goals.
Related Article: How Should You Measure Employee Engagement in Remote and Hybrid Work?
Final Thoughts
Digital workplace management is gaining popularity as countless businesses introduce remote work as part of their permanent policy.
Improving your online management tactics to have a happy and motivated team by your side can be challenging, but the tips and tricks mentioned in this article will certainly do the trick.
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