How to Introduce Homeworking in Your Company
Since the pandemic, hybrid and homeworking roles have been on the rise. As of May 2023, 39% of the UK’s workforce had worked from home within the last seven days. Therefore, as it is now the standard in many sectors, businesses must start considering how to implement remote and homeworking.
Homeworking has allowed an increase in talented employees to search for job opportunities which satisfy their preferences. One such preference that most prospective employees will insist on is flexibility in working for greater work-life balance. Creating these opportunities will not only boost productivity, but studies have shown that overall employee performance will depend on employee satisfaction. Alongside this, your business can increase its talent pool, as you won’t be limited by your on-site location.
So, meeting these needs for partial or full-time homeworking is essential to reap the mutual benefits for you and your employees. If you’re then planning to introduce homeworking in your company, we have put together five tips to help you do so:
Invest in a pilot program
When initiating any major change in an organisation, it’s critical to create a pilot program. But what exactly is a pilot program and what does it involve? Well, a pilot program includes testing a small group of individuals currently in your organisation. You’ll want people who you can rely on to adapt to your test ideas before they are implemented throughout your entire organisation.
Choose a good representation of all types of employees in your organisation to form the pilot group. Avoid selecting the most productive people for the test group, because you’ll hope to identify issues that may crop up with the homeworking program.
List jobs to which you can apply homeworking
Every job role is of course different in terms of responsibilities and type of work. Some jobs will require more data security and can’t be managed from computers outside of office property. Other jobs naturally require less supervision and can be managed from anywhere.
So, when introducing homeworking within an organisation, consider what job roles and how many of them operate within your organisation. Once you’re confident with this list, you can then effectively create guidelines for every unique job type. It’s best to carefully monitor potential issues within your plans and put systems in place to avert them.
Organise training sessions for employees if needed
Plan how to engage productivity for homeworkers in advance and create training sessions to ensure that they are well-equipped to handle their responsibilities. Depending on the job roles, there may also be different software and security training required before full transition.
Some people may require training on time management and self-accountability before they are allowed to work from home. Others may require training in certain technologies beforehand, so they don’t face any issues by themselves.
Often, it may be helpful to create a set of resources that homeworking employees can access from the cloud when working from outside the office.
Preplan your homeworking employees’ communication
When working from home, communication plays a key role in delivering on time and successfully. Some managers allow employees to figure out communication by themselves, but it’s always best to set up reliable systems to ensure that you remain well connected.
Some organisations allow their employees a lot of freedom in how they communicate. Other organisations may brief employees in advance and allow them to run the show independently. But in most cases, it may be important to include clear hours in which homeworkers must be active for calls.
The way you communicate depends on your organisation’s work culture. Do you typically conduct daily meetings? If that’s the case, you may want to explore online conference software to ensure the same continues after you implement homeworking plans. If you’re unsure of the software that you can use, seek out the help of an IT support company. In fact, it may be necessary to hire an IT expert to help with consultancy and logistics.
Set clear performance targets
When you work from different locations, it’s natural for output rates to get affected at first. That’s why it’s critical for a manager to understand and set clear performance targets. Ideally, your deliverables should be measurable numerically, so there’s no conflict on what must be done. You could ease the requirements for employees who work from home, so they don’t feel overwhelmed when working from a different environment. Remember, employee performance is at a peak when they’re happy.
Homeworking is here to stay. Over time, more organisations will enable homeworking to suit employees’ preferences and help them avoid the downtime spent commuting every day. So, if you’re planning to introduce homeworking, remember to check off this list and your business and employees can come out the other end feeling confident and ready for the transition.