How technology is streamlining remote work

There are a hundred things to take care of before, during, and after hiring an employee and paperwork is the least of the worries of an employer. And on top of this, if you’re hiring a remote team, scattered across the globe, the complications increase exponentially.

To give you an idea, some of the main problems that are faced in hiring remote employees are:

• Work visibility and accountability
• Digital and data security
• The difference in time zones and communication difficulties
• Accounting for the work laws of different geographies
• Building an organizational culture
  

However, regardless of the hurdles, if nearly 70% of the world’s working population is working remotely at least once a week, then surely technology has made it possible and even a preferred choice. Let’s see how.

Selection process

With the shifting interest of people from desk-bound, time-bound jobs to working as per their own comfort, companies have also modified their recruitment processes accordingly.

Video and audio chat software such as Zoom and Skype were already among popular means of conducting long distance interviews but with the need of hiring full-time remote employees, companies also have started making use of many other technologies, such as online surveys and real-time testing and evaluation techniques.

Collaborative working

Even though you work with a remote team, several things in a company depend upon group decisions and discussions. In such scenarios, having a system for effective collaboration with your other teammates is crucial.

However, science has effective solutions for this as well.

• Virtual Whiteboards: These softwares are real-time boards that provide a platform for remote teams to collaborate in an interactive way and work. With features like real-time screen and document sharing, audio/video conference, live chat, polling, collaborative document and design editing, etc, these apps are some of the best options to help your remote teams reach their maximum productivity,
  
  
• Cloud computing: Known for being one of the safest options when it comes to storing and sharing data, cloud services, such as Dropbox, Monday.com, Slack, and others make it extremely easy to communicate among one’s team.
  
  They provide flexibility and scalability for growing businesses along with data security for remote employees.
  
  Users can fix specific credentials and manage document access limits for every individual person. And at the same time, users can also easily accommodate a large and sudden increase in the workforce without added hardware costs (if employees use their own devices).
  

Remote team management and training

Besides collaborative working, effective team management and training are the foundations of remote working. With multiple people, operating from different time-zones at different times, managing and training a remote team can be nearly impossible.

All thanks to modern technology, team leaders and upper management can not only manage the work and learning and communication among remote employees but can also increase each person’s accountability and track their training progress.

Platforms like some given below are making remote working a mainstream idea of a job.

• Trello, where you can create separate boards to delegate work to different teams effortlessly, allows users to interact visibly and share data. It also records a history of actions so that each action can be traced back to its root easily.
  
  
• Learning management systems, or LMS, such as 2U or Skilljar provide a digital platform for employees to train in a flexible and accessible way. These systems can be customized according to each employee’s requirements and even gamified to increase its effectiveness.

In the end

There are many more aspects of managing and maintaining a remote team well. HR practices and cultural activities are core values of a company with which employees must feel connected in order to feel aligned with its vision and mission.

But thankfully, technology can help you to build a strong team, regardless of time and distance.