What is the hardest thing about managing a remote workforce?

The answer to this question in one word is “Trust”.

Do you trust your people to be productive at home while they work? Have you put all the correct behaviours in place to allow your employees to work in a dispersed way? HRLocker has been at the forefront of remote working for many years, we employ many remote workers and found early on that you must have the right business culture set up in your organisation for remote or dispersed workforces to operate properly.

“We have built our culture around “Trust”. It is included as one of the core behaviours and for us, it begins at the interview stage. HRLocker is a developing DDO (A Deliberate Development Organisation) where we put adult development at the centre of our strategy. It is what we use to build and grow our company every day.

To build a great company culture you must first start with creating principles & behaviours, this is what we use to drive the business forward.”says Adam Coleman, CEO of HRLocker.

How do you create a new set of behaviours and principles?

You must first begin with what is fundamentally important to your business. What makes you different to everyone else? What are you trying to achieve?

“Have trust in the company’s actions. HRLocker always has the success of the company, its employees, and its stakeholders at the core of our decisions. Be truthful to yourself, our customers and your colleagues at all times.” says Adam Coleman, CEO of HRLocker.

When a new Principle or Behaviour is proposed, the senior management team should discuss it.

Once the title and the proposed definition are set up, workshop them with the rest of the employees. Each workshop participant then puts forward suggestions on ‘what good looks like’ under that principle. When it is completed, it should look like this:

Title: Trust and Truth

Definition: Have trust in the company’s actions. HRLocker always has the success of the company, its employees, and its stakeholders at the core of our decisions. Be truthful to yourself, our customers and your colleagues at all times.

What good looks like:

• Be honest about your capabilities and your limitations/vulnerabilities, to yourself and your colleagues.
• Know what you know and more importantly know (admit) what you don’t know.
• Respect people’s vulnerabilities in your actions.
• Do not talk behind people’s backs.
• Show respect to everyone in the organisation regardless of their position.
• Support and encourage new ideas, no ideas are stupid.
• Show trust in each other and the actions of the company.

Creating your culture

When you have your Principles & Behaviours in place, create an employee handbook and make it part of the onboarding process. New employees know from the very beginning the ethos of your business and have read, understood and signed their employee handbook. These documents are invaluable as they state from the outset what expectations an employer has from the start.

Measuring Success

You must have to correct tools in place to measure success, this is where HRLocker can help. Our system covers a lot of ground you will need to measure your success.

Timesheets & Projects

Timesheets & Projects allow employees to plan and summarise their week before they submit them weekly. This is a great way to see the progression from week to week – Growth.

For example, if you are using HRLocker, when employees log their times against Projects it generates reports. This is a very useful tool to track how much it costs to develop or to get clients on board – Resource Planning.

A clock in and out system with IP address and/or GPS/GEO location will tell you where your employees are. However, in HRLocker, even though we offer this feature, for us, we prefer the honesty timesheet approach. We use one of our core values, trust, by taking their word based on their productivity and results.

Development

Adult development should be a big part of your company culture. Having a CPD Module (Continuous Professional Development) allows employees to request training. This will help them improve their current or future job or their wellness. All requests should be evaluated and then agreed upon, which will prompt a good conversation on why an employee has requested training – Adult Development.

Productivity and Performance

Having Real Time Reviews allows for a continuous ongoing conversation between managers and employees. It strengthens relationships and spots any issues before they arise. For example, we often schedule weekly catchups just to stay in touch – Open & Transparent ongoing conversations.

Recorded Meetings

In our company, all meetings that have more than two people in attendance are recorded in Microsoft Teams. This is a brilliant way for employees who were off or unable to attend to stay part of the story. We have put this in place to practice open transparency which is a vital part of our culture.

You can put as many scheduled meetings and systems in place to help to make remote working a solution for your business, but it all must start from a core foundation. ‘Trust and Truth’.

Recruit, Reward and Promote!  Trust will help your business to be successful.