Remote working environments have been proven beneficial for employee focus, productivity, and work-life balance.

Yet, maintaining these benefits takes some work on the part of the company leadership. Otherwise, your remote teams may quickly start to show signs of disengagement, burnout, and reduced productivity.

Buffer’s The State of Remote Work Report 2023 shows that 23% of remote workers feel lonely while 22% of them find it hard to unplug at the end of the day. Their loneliness stems from the lack of social interactions with colleagues and has been linked to stress and burnout.

The company expenses arising from these issues amount to $300 billion per year and involve costs of healthcare, absenteeism, and degraded productivity.

The good news is that your company can avoid these financial losses if you deploy workplace computer monitoring software to monitor your employees’ achievements and create team-building opportunities.

This article dives deeper into these elementary strategies that can help you improve and maintain employee productivity in the long run.

Psychological Factors Weakening Productivity in Remote Work

Here are five most common issues that lead to reduced productivity of remote workers:

Stress Due to Isolation

When working remotely, the lack of face-to-face interactions with colleagues can make people feel socially isolated. This negatively impacts employee engagement, reducing productivity and job satisfaction, while increasing stress levels.

The growing burnout finally leads many people to leave the company.

Difficulty Unplugging & Maintaining Work-Life Balance

Remote work blurs the limits between work and personal life and makes it difficult to disconnect when the shift ends. Professional pressure to be constantly available clashes with the pressures of personal life. This exacerbates stress and disrupts employee well-being, ultimately slashing job performance.

Disconnect & Disengagement

Disconnect in a remote work environment is usually associated with the lack of social interactions between colleagues. However, improper leadership may also create a gulf between remote workers and the rest of the organization. This can make remote employees feel undervalued and disengaged, profoundly affecting their performance.

Digital Fatigue

Also known as “technology fatigue” and “Zoom fatigue”, this refers to cognitive overload and physical exhaustion among remote workers. It is caused by excessive virtual meetings and digital communication. This fatigue reduces the workers’ ability to concentrate, decreasing their overall productivity​​​​.

Reduced Dedication to Wellness Activities

Remote workers can easily slip into a sedentary lifestyle. This probability increases if the company fails to provide them with wellness perks, like gym membership. Lack of movement contributes to various health issues and a decline in overall well-being, ultimately resulting in poor performance.

Strategies for Boosting Motivation & Productivity

Leading your remote teams to improved results, camaraderie, and engagement with company objectives takes serious work. Here are the six essential strategies that can help you do this:

1. Build a Trusting Relationship Relying on Hard Data

A tool that can help you build a trusting and honest relationship with your remote workforce is employee monitoring software. It gives you direct insight into the work being done without the need for micromanagement. More robust versions may also offer features like:

• Time tracking.
• Active, idle, and break time monitoring.
• Tracking the used apps and websites.
• Screenshots and screen recording.
• Customization of monitoring depends on the app being used.
• Early detection of burnout.

All this insight into your employees’ work enables you to authorize flexible schedules and offline time for demanding tasks without the fear of productivity loss.

2. Provide Proper Communication Channels

To maintain team cohesion, it is important to always keep the remote team members in the loop. This can help them feel included, appreciated, and loyal.

To support constant connection and communication, you need to select appropriate apps and provide accounts for all employees. The essentials include video conferencing platforms and direct messaging apps.

Video conferencing platforms are especially important for organizing 1:1 meetings with your teammates. These conversations can help you assess the level of each person’s engagement and job satisfaction, and provide support if they are struggling.

3. Set Clear Goals

It’s hard to stay motivated and engaged when you don’t know what is expected of you.

Schedule regular meetings with your remote teammates and discuss the goals for their position, as well as general company objectives. Clarity in these matters is a great motivator.

Be specific about their workday expectations also, and make sure you point out if the company has core hours when they have to be present.

4. Show Recognition

One of the major mistakes organizations make is failing to show proper recognition for the contributions of the remote workforce.

When you have the right communication infrastructure, it’s easy to celebrate a remote worker’s big wins together with the whole company. Simply create a channel for company-wide announcements and give kudos for every achievement.

This practice will encourage your employees to strive to do an even better job and increase retention among your ranks.

5. Nurture Company Culture & a Sense of Belonging via Team-Building Events

Engagement often stems from good relationships with coworkers. To build these close relationships, people first need to get to know each other and build mutual trust.

This is where team-building events come in. From in-person meet-ups to short informal video calls/coffee breaks, there are different ways to facilitate people bonding.

Even small initiatives, like rotating time zones so that the meetings aren’t always in the evening for some employees, foster the feeling of being appreciated and a sense of belonging.

6. Reduce the Amount of Unnecessary Meetings & Other Interruptions

An unhindered flow of communication is important for the success of remote teams. So is limiting the calls and messages to only those necessary to avoid the spread of digital fatigue.

Before every meeting, think about the discussion points. If there is nothing of importance to share with the team, cancel the meeting. The same applies to all other potential interruptions. This is a much healthier approach as it leaves more room for your employees to do their actual job.

Another good practice is scheduling company-wide no-meeting blocks so everyone can work without any interruptions.

Conclusion

Implement, reevaluate, and constantly adapt these strategies to prevent employee burnout and productivity drop. If the signs of these issues still start to appear in their monitoring reports, show your employees you value their contribution to the company so far by offering plenty of support so you can overcome this problem together.