Working from home is on the rise in today’s workforce and was accelerated by the pandemic for most employees. However, this has led to several issues that organizations can help the productivity and welfare of their remotely located employees. In the survey conducted by Owl Labs, 52% of the workers who Work remotely often stay dissatisfied and lonely, affecting their mental health and satisfaction on the job. Also, Stanford stated that overall productivity either rises by up to 13% or drops by up to 10% showing that some circumstances like communication and work-life balance are among the factors.
The concept of remote working has reshaped the global workforce. Businesses worldwide have adapted to a digital-first work environment, making the role of Human Resources (HR) more crucial than ever. The shift has required HR teams to rethink and modernize their approaches to managing and supporting employees. In this blog, we will learn different HR practices that can be adapted to shift remote working.
What Is Remote Working?
Remote working involves employees performing their job duties from locations outside traditional office settings. Due to technological advancements, changing work cultures, and the need for greater flexibility, this setup has become the new norm. Companies are leveraging digital tools to ensure seamless work operations across borders.
Importance of HR in the Remote Work Era
HR ensures employees remain productive, engaged, and compliant with company policies, even when working from home. HR teams must foster an inclusive and supportive remote environment, provide essential resources, and manage performance efficiently. This demands a strategic overhaul of conventional HR practices, transforming them into digital-first processes prioritizing human connection, transparency, and growth.
HR Ways to Improve its Practices Due to Remote Working
To avoid not getting all these negatives of working remotely, the HR departments are responsible for ensuring that workable solutions for remote workers are devised and fine-tuned. One solution is the effective use of communication tools to provide checkpoints so that remote teams can stay in touch and coordinate with each other.
A survey by Gallup establishes that teleworkers who speak to their manager at least once daily are three times as engaged than individuals who do not. Moreover, allowing employees to work from home to have flexible schedules and providing online wellness programmes may reduce the consequences of working from home. FlexJobs reported that when remote, 70% of people have more flexible working hours. This means that human resource departments need to incorporate well-being into the remote work policies.
i. Being Clear on Work Expectations and Objectives
Setting expectations is the first step toward working remotely. HR should work with managers to develop clear roles of responsibility, reporting mechanisms, and performance expectations for each employee’s duties.
HR must ensure that all remote employees can access all necessary documents, including policies, procedures, and guidelines. This can be done through appropriate onboarding activities, timely revisions of organizational knowledge repositories, and executive-employee communication lines.
ii. Fostering Skills for Remote Employees
If the organization wants to optimize its staff’s potential, it must train and develop remote employees. HR can develop a list of courses, webinars, or virtual workshops where action learning can occur. For instance, remote employees can use platforms like Coursera or Udemy to expand the collaboration between HR and e-learning platforms and provide options of courses that directly reflect the nature of the jobs and the employees’ probable future career paths.
Also, HR can establish the proper professional mentorship programs and have remote workers mentored by other experienced staff. Some ways that the B.C. can establish the above structure of mentorship relations include videoconferencing, goal setting, and review meetings.
iii. Build an Organizational Culture of Feedback and Appreciation.
It has been widely reported that remote employees need to be praised and appraised quite often to remain engaged. Performance reviews are a key activity that HR must introduce and provide guidance on how managers should engage in them and when to do so. They can consist of measures like a performance management system that regularly provides quarterly or 360-degree feedback.
Thus, to change the organizational culture, HR can initiate virtual initiatives, such as a website or app for peer appreciation or the best achievement of the month.
iv. Social Compliance and Prompt Payroll Services
Working through these issues can be difficult especially when employees are in different countries, making the legal regime surrounding remote work quite challenging. Preferably, the department can only work hand in hand with the compliance and legal departments since it needs to learn the current laws regarding labour, taxes, and compliance. This may require engaging the services of Lawyers or sourcing for good software to effect a correct computation of employee wages, tax deductions and other related matters regarding employees who work from home.
Another area, for which HR should introduce corresponding guidelines, concerns methods of remote employees’ working time control and their overtime and leave entitlement.
V. Enabling Resource and Tool Accessibility
When employees work remotely, they need essential tools and equipment. A significant concern is providing laptops and software to all employees. HR should liaise with the IT departments to ensure remote workers have secure VPN access. Moreover, HR could offer guidelines and materials on organizing the workplace safely and comfortably at home to other employees.
In addition, HR must use efficient self-service‐portal solutions, which allow remote access to the organizational HR information systems and data make requests and manage employees’ personal information.
Vi. Protecting Employees from Discrimination and Promoting Health
It is essential for these employees to feel that they are part of a team and to help them remain engaged and healthy, mainly while working from home. To enhance employees’ mental health, the HR department can schedule team-building exercises wherein employees can participate in games, have informal coffee breaks and clinically themed discussions.
Regarding work-life initiatives, HR can offer suggestions, resources, and education on managing time effectively on the job, healthy ways to cope with stress, and incorporating mindfulness into workers’ lives. For instance, HR can provide subscriptions to applications like Headspace or Calm to strengthen the staff or hold guided virtual yoga classes.
Vii. Promoting Employee Feedback and Working Together
It is, therefore, critical to open avenues through which employees can pass their cons on the tasks that concern them as they work remotely. From remote employees, HR can directly schedule a set of pulse surveys, virtual focus group discussions or even personal follow-ups.
HR may incorporate digital collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Workspace to maintain collaboration and knowledge sharing. Such applications help distributed teams organize remote collaboration effectively, regardless of the geographical distance between the members.
Viii. Meeting New Conditions and Adopting New Technology
HR continues to face new situations and technologies characteristic of telecommuting and thus to continuing evolution. This means cutting-edge knowledge of trends, practices, and tools needed to manage workers with references to virtual environments. HR can attend virtual conferences, join online discussion forums, or interact with professional practitioners.
However, there is one more critical factor that, in turn, should be a priority for HR – data security and privacy while using new technologies or ideas. Some of this may be done in consultation with IT departments to implement adequate security measures, including conducting periodic security awareness campaigns for off-site workers, using passwords requiring additional verification and reasonable data security practices.
ix. Being Effective With a Digital Workspace
When employees transition to remote work arrangements, HR must select the right solution or technology to make work more collaborative and effective.
Integrated communication tools include text, video and voice chat or meetings, text and voice messaging, screen and document sharing, and notifications. Using a single working environment reduces mess while it appears to maintain the links between employees in different working locations.
Employees must be trained to use these tools to the best of their capacity during onboarding so that employees in different departments, locations, or offices in different time zones can effectively collaborate.
Final Thoughts-HR in the Remote Work Era
HR is a key participant in fostering and empowering workers who work from home. It is at the center of facilitating a strong remote work culture. As such, the emerging and future distant work model reveals that HR remains dedicated, focused, and responsible for responding to the organizational need to implement the best strategies, benefits, and policies to capture distant workers’ hearts.
In the same way that the previously listed strategies help overcome remote work challenges, by adopting benefits packages that suit remote employees and practicing best practices, human resources can realize the possibility of diverse and qualified remote employees.
FAQ's-HR in the Remote Work Era
By establishing clear communication protocols, using collaborative tools, and promoting transparency.
BambooHR, Workday, Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams are highly effective tools.
Organize virtual events, provide wellness programs, and schedule regular check-ins.
Data privacy laws, labour law compliance, and cybersecurity measures are critical.
Remote work will drive tech-driven HR processes, greater flexibility, and more personalized employee experiences.
