Transparency In Remote Work: A Guide To Ensuring Long Term Project Success
Transparency in remote working is one of the keys to success. Having visibility into the performance of your team is one of the firsts for maintaining a smooth and steady workflow.
Remote work empowers employees to be as creative as they can be, work the way they want, and utilize their time without any restrictions. On one hand, remote work has liberated workers by offering more freedom and more flexibility but, on the other hand, it has challenged managers’ ability to efficiently manage their team .
The move from a physical office setting to at-home work is a big one. While employees enjoy the comfort of their homes, it is difficult for them to not get off-tracked and to maintain the punctuality and efficiency typical of office work. Similarly, it is challenging for PMs to keep tabs on their team members 24/7.
To regain that visibility and have an insight into the working ability of their team, PMs are forced to bring transparency in remote working. Transparency in remote working ensures that the managers are well-informed, have seamless communication with their team, and can easily track the progress of their team.
Why Is It Important To Bring Transparency In Your Workplace?
Remote working poses several hard-to-tackle challenges and unless or until you are fully armed to deal with the issues, you won’t be able to solve these issues.
Transparency in remote working is an all-in-one solution for all these problems. Transparency across teams ensures effective communication between team members, visibility, smooth exchange of information and encourages employees to be more open and sociable.
Once you introduce transparency in workflows, you will be able to enhance your teams’ productivity and efficiency, resulting in a spike in profitability.
Tips To Increasing Workplace Transparency
We have already established the importance of transparency in remote work, let us now look at the steps that you can take to increase transparency across teams.
If you wish to see transparency in your workplace, start by integrating those values into the very roots of the organization. Make your employees aware of the fact that transparency is one of the core values of your company and not a supporting character.
Since you wish to imbibe openness and visibility in your work settings, it is imperative that you clearly state so in your value statement.
Your core principles should explicitly reflect your beliefs so that your employees are also clear about those values and respect them.
The first step in the process of bringing transparency in the work setting should be to reflect those values in your demeanor first. Start by being the practical example of the change.
Your employees see and learn from you so you should make sure that you are also transparent in your work. There is no rocket science to being transparent, all you have to do is to communicate those values through your work.
Bring transparency in workflows, exchange feedback openly, and participate in chat groups. By doing so, you are integrating transparency in your workplace.
Once your employees realize that you are also openly exchanging information and are explicit about your work progress, they will also not shy away from communicating their work progress.
By bringing this change, you are not only making it easy for your employees to embrace the change but are also encouraging them to enhance their efficiency. It will also bring you closer to your teammates and create a harmonious and comfortable working environment.
To make sure that you do not go wrong in the later stages of working, start by carefully recruiting appropriate personnel.
Your HR department should make sure that the recruits are sufficient in the required skillset . Carefully select the right people by employing the use of tests and interviews.
Once you have the right people on board, you will not have to put in a lot of effort into training them and getting them acquainted with your company’s working environment.
Also, list these requirements and the culture of your company in the job listing so that job seekers are already aware of their roles and responsibilities.
Finding team members who are open to criticism, communicate regularly, and are flexible in their work, saves you a lot of trouble in the later stages.
When employees are working in the office, they are repeatedly reminded of the core values of the company through the whole layout of the office that includes paintings and writings reflective of those values.
In contrast, when employees are working remotely , they do not come across those writings and prints. In this case, you should deliberately emphasize and reemphasize those values in online meetings , chats , feedbacks, etc.
Make sure to keep it in a normal amount otherwise your employees will quickly get weary of the repeated emphasis and will stop paying attention altogether.
