While remote working is certainly on the rise, with an estimated 4.3 million virtual employees, there’s still room for improvement - as nearly four million UK employees want to join the remote workforce, but aren’t given the chance.
It’s understandable why people want to work from home, given that the average British worker (roughly 3.7 million workers) has a commute time of two hours. Supporting remote employees not only reduces commuting times and subsequently greenhouse gasses, but also leads to greater productivity, engagement, and higher retention rates.
Supporting a remote team can be challenging. You want remote employees to be engaged and connected to the company so it’s important to develop a corporate culture. If feasible, hold biannual or even monthly face-to-face events to create comradery and positive relationships with remote workers.
There are also some fantastic tools for online collaboration. Slack is great at keeping everyone up-to-date on the latest developments while Skype is well-suited to conference calls. You can brainstorm and create action plans with programs like Trello or share files in real-time with Google Docs.
For more information on managing and supporting a virtual team, check out Sage’s handy article a guide to remote working and virtual teams.