Manage My Employees

Blogger Jason Christensen linked to a recent BNET.com article interview I gave regarding “Can’t Pay Your Employees What You Like? Praise Them Instead“

You might want to check out Jason’s article on motivating and building the morale of remote employees, I found it pertinent. He offers up a number of useful ideas especially if you have employees scattered about. See: ON A BUDGET: Motivating your team, bolstering loyalty & elevating morale. (Full Series) « “Life as a Remote User”

Motivating, managing distance employees presents a few unique challenges like…

• Less face time to create open dialogue about work goals, problems, feedback, updates, etc.
• Communication is relationship and distance can impact building relationship and trust.

• Distance ‘can’ make us tempted to over-supervise. In the absence of seeing for ourselves the activities of our employee, we may feel like more granular management is needed. This can create animosity and destroy trust.

Noting that ‘the challenges’ may be exactly the same as with an in-office employee, however, sheer distance can and often does intensify those challenges, here are some helpful tips to keep in mind:

• Schedule appointed time with your distance employee for open dialogue. Keep your appointment too, don’t cancel or repeatedly reschedule or your employee will feel unimportant and more disconnected.
• Emphasize the importance of the employee’s role in the scheme of things. Jason, a remote employee himself, points out, “It is important for people to understand how each gear turns to keep the machine operating effectively.” Further, each employee needs to hear how they help the company achieve its goals.
• Do for him/her what you do for others. Probably the biggest complaint I’ve heard from remote employees during my client needs assessments is that the remote locations (offices) aren’t treated the same. “They hardly ever come to see us,” or “We aren’t included in the loop on things,” are common grievances. Get out and go see remote employees, or bring them in for a visit. If budgets are tight, use technology and the Web to connect more often.

There are more ways than the three above, of course, if you have some thoughts on the topic I welcome hearing them.

NOTE: you might search under the topic categories to the right and find more on employee motivation, attitude and morale from past short articles on this site.