7 Remote Work Productivity Tips to Motivate Your Teams

Remote work is fun, and all until your team becomes disengaged. While remote work has shown that it can be a long-lasting work preference, organizations need to figure out how to keep their teams motivated, even when working from home. Here are seven work productivity tips to motivate your team in a remote environment.

The case for remote working is clear:

• A Stanford study found that work from home increased productivity by 13%.
• In the US, 18% more executives are working remotely than their on-site colleagues.
• According to 37% of survey participants, taking breaks is the most effective way to be productive (more efficient in a remote setting).

Companies that offer telecommuting are clearly on a progressive path, but there is a genuine need to keep employee satisfaction levels high, in addition to productivity and efficiency.

Motivate Your Remote Teams with These Productivity Tips

1. Have Core Work Hours

Remote work is challenging for several reasons, with one of the most prominent being the inability to separate yourself from your work.

Not being able to sign off from work and spend quality time on your own can quickly lead to burnout, defeating the purpose of working from home.

According to Wrike, in 2019, 94% of US workers reported feeling stress at the workplace. To avoid these stressful situations it is best to adopt core working hours.

Core working hours represent the hours within a day where your job has your undivided attention. Ideally, your core hours should match your immediate teammates as you can collectively work towards solving business problems.

A study by FlexJobs surveying 1500 employees found that while remote working is a favorable model, setting core working hours is critical to employee success.

You should spend the rest of your workday answering emails, scheduling meetings, and handling tasks that don’t require much of your attention.

2. Limit Meetings

Inefficient meetings suck the life out of employees. 

While they can help gather a better understanding of the most urgent tasks and improve situational awareness, meetings take up valuable time.

Most meetings can be avoided or at least shortened to increase efficiency. Research from Fuze suggests unproductive meetings waste 15% of an organization’s collective time.

If a virtual meeting is necessary, you can help shorten the duration by giving the participants the meeting agenda and things they should brush up on before joining.

To maintain morale, your team should have a few meetings regularly. Be sure to schedule them in a cadence that does not disrupt the productive work pattern of the day. You can even do something like a meeting-free day. 

Having multiple meetings disrupts focus and can inhibit people from performing as well as they can.

3. Incentivize Your Team

Depending on company culture, incentives vary by quite a bit.

Monetary incentives and benefits certainly increase morale. If people can see tangible benefits, they will be more likely to work harder. 

Employee performance can be improved by 44% if there is a well-structured incentive program in place.

But keep in mind that the world is in a weird place right now. Most people are away from their friends, families, and colleagues. Money isn’t the only thing that matters right now.

Forming meaningful connections and having memorable experiences is something that a modern workforce needs to stay motivated.

Consider giving your top performers paid days off. Send a themed gift package with goodies that the person can enjoy for the day.

Another decent incentive might be to give your employees a paid virtual coffee break. You can catch up with everyone, have a light-hearted discussion, and enjoy some delicious coffee at the same time.

4. Measure Employee Performance by Work Output

As a business owner, you should essentially be paying your employees for the work they can do and the expertise they bring. Not for their time.

Remote work is challenging because some companies require their teams to work set hours regardless of their work output or efficiency.

According to Gallup, workers who practice their strengths daily are more productive, around 8%, when compared to their peers.

Organizations need to realize that people don’t have the same efficiency for the entire day. So even if your team is working remotely for the whole day, they are not only going to be stressed but the work they do will also be lackluster. 

Create tasks for the day for each employee. Rank them based on their priority. Ideally, an employee should complete all tasks assigned to them on a particular day. But if they miss something and make up for it in the next couple of days then it’s fine.

Remember that working conditions are not what they used to be. The way you measure a teammate’s value should reflect that.

5. Listen to Your Team

Your team will often pitch in ideas or voice their concerns. As a business owner or leader, you should listen to your team.

When employees are connected in an organization, their productivity can increase by 25%.

If you know your team well and have been working with them for a while, you will know if something is bothering them. Even if members of your team don’t express it verbatim, they might drop hints.

Maybe an employee is having a hard time working because they are experiencing back pain or their toddlers are making it difficult to concentrate on meetings.

A proactive leader will notice these things and act before the employee realizes them.

When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.

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6. Give Your Team Flexibility

One of the benefits of remote work is that it can give you a lot of flexibility. But depending on the organization, remote work might be less flexible.

Organizations that allow remote work have 25% lower employee turnover than those that do not.

A radical but doable idea might be to let employees create their work schedules.

This strategy can be achieved if there is a high level of trust between a business and its people. In addition to this, your team should have a commitment to the organization and be mature enough to handle this freedom.

Creating this type of working environment can be challenging but will also have a positive impact on morale. Effectively managing time and becoming more productive through autonomy is a level of freedom that most teams would love to have.

Proper oversight, routine checks, and coordination can help remote workers enjoy a flexible work experience.

7. Encourage Teammates to Learn and Try New Things

Working alone at your home can be sad. People thrive when they meet people, learn from each other’s experiences, and apply those lessons.

According to a yearly survey by Ipsos, only 41% of staff acknowledged that their employer had offered them workplace development opportunities.

While it may not be possible for you to meet your teammates due to distance or because of the pandemic, you can still encourage them to learn new skills.

Continual education is essential. Not only do people get the satisfaction of completing a certification, but they also become more valuable to the company as a resource.

Productivity Tips to Make the Most of Your Team

Keeping people happy is always going to be a challenge. Whether you have people working out of an office, the beach, or from their one-bedroom apartments, businesses need to ensure that their employees are happy and looked after when getting work done.

Continuous effort and observing changes in team behavior are the only way you can ensure that you are ahead of the curve. Be mindful of your actions and how they will impact your team. A little effort and a lot of thought go a long way in keeping teams engaged and happy. We hope these productivity tips will help you to motivate your remote team!

About the author:

Wesley Cherisien is a speaker, trainer, entrepreneur and tech investor who has penned hundreds of articles, books and training guides for organizations in the Fortune 500, consultants and authors spanning across multiple industries. Chief Editor of WesleyCherisien.com, Wesley is a creative and highly innovative thinker with 10+ years of experience writing for online publications.