Did you have the same problem as me?

Did you find yourself alone in front of a pandemic, forced to close or reduce your activity, without knowing how to reorganize your work, but especially that of your employees?

Without an instruction manual in front of the obligation to work from home?

Well, I don’t think you are a multinational that has a multitude of processes and procedures tested for this type of activity.

I didn’t either. Although I have been working from home for three years (with 2 small children and many household responsibilities), without giving too much importance to the consequences. (My mistake)

I have heard of remote, but I did not know what this means for the employer, what legal or financial implications it may have.

Until 2020, when I was put in the situation to manage overnight, not only my work, but 8 employees who had to work from home overnight. Without anything, without communication tools, without objectives defined in such conditions, a management lost in space, and much more.

But, after several months of study and legal advice, I came to a pretty good knowledge of this type of activity that will become the new trend in terms of labor relations.

So I suggest you see below what it is about, to be informed and prepared for the mutation that will occur.

Remote work, what is it?

Working from home refers to any form of work organization in which work that could have been performed at the employer’s premises is performed by an employee outside these premises voluntarily, using information and communication technology.

Who can benefit ?

The Labor Code does not establish any specific criteria or conditions to determine the possibility or opportunity of implementing teleworking in a company for the benefit of employees.

In theory, this applies to all professional categories.

However, it is not a right for the employee.

Within the same company, the profile of a position may prevent the implementation of remote work, while other positions may benefit from it. Thus, employers may decide to establish remote work only for certain categories of staff.

If an employer has the right to refuse homework to an employee, even if it is established within the structure, he still has the obligation to justify his answer.

On the other hand, the refusal to accept such a proposal is not a reason for dissolution of the employment contract.

What are the benefits of this type of work?

The advantages of home office work are numerous, both for companies and for employees.

In more detail, what are your advantages as an employee?

Independence

A homeworker gains independence insofar as he organizes his work day as he sees fit. For some, there is also geographical independence.

Depending on what has been negotiated with their employer, some of them can work from anywhere they want.

Time saving

Transportation to work is a real waste of time for many people. In some cases, this means tens of hours lost each month spent in the car, on a train or on a bus.

Teleworking gives you the opportunity to save those hours and use them for something that matters to you.

Increasing the quality of life

The stress related to the observance of work schedules, the relations with certain colleagues, sometimes very tense, the meetings with the clients, the fast lunch breaks disappear with the telework. As I have already said, a teleworker organizes his working time easier.

In addition, he meets his colleagues and superiors only when the situation requires it. The stress of going to work disappears. Being often at home, the quality of the breaks that the teleworker makes is of a better quality.

A better balance between professional and family life

Many teleworkers fulfill their mission from home. Therefore, they can take care of their family when they need them and can resume their activity later.

The advantages of remote work for an employer

Less costs for the company

Teleworking is a reduction in the costs of rent, electricity, heating, equipment … for companies that provide employees with this way of working.

Persons with disabilities

This facilitates the employment of people with disabilities who can only work from home.

Simpler and more efficient management

Working online naturally makes you more independent. Therefore, the role of the company manager is simplified. Therefore, he can dedicate himself to other previously neglected productive tasks.

Disadvantages of working from home

Isolation risk

Without a predefined framework, some people risk isolation. Before you start working from home, it is necessary to prepare so as not to risk feeling alone.

The obligation to be autonomous

An employee who works from home does not have a program or a supervisor to supervise him. He must organize himself and find his own framework to achieve the goals set by his employer.

Feeling we have ‘Run out of gas’ emotionally

From time to time, a telecommuter may feel that they are missing out on opportunities to advance within their company because they are far from where the decisions are taken.

How to prepare for teleworking?

Greater flexibility, work-life balance, eliminating commuting time, teleworking is presented as a solution to many problems … But it also has its disadvantages. To counter them, there are some rules to follow.

Reserve a workspace

Working at home means taking the risk of mixing professional life in your privacy … and vice versa. To avoid this, plan a separate workspace from the rest of the house. You fall for an agreement with your loved ones: when you lock yourself in the office, you are not there! And when you leave him, you leave your professional concerns behind.

Be rigorous

If you want to be efficient, you can take advantage of teleworking to give you a half-day break every two days, but you risk seeing unresolved cases accumulate. Set regular hours and don’t get distracted by personal phone calls or impromptu visits.

To stay in touch

Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you have to lose touch with colleagues, especially with the tools that exist today.

A chat, an e-mail or a phone call from time to time to find out what office life is like will prevent you from finding yourself completely isolated and disconnecting from business problems. Also, you don’t have to be remote all week: for example, you can spend 3 days at home and 2 at the office.

Why adapt your management to remote work?

Remote work is a special form of commercial activity. Therefore, it requires a certain form of management. This specific management is called remote management.

Indeed, “classic” top-down management (vertical or top-down) is not suitable for remote work. It is necessary to favor more a horizontal and collaborative system.

Without adapting management, employees risk disengagement and their productivity may decline. Therefore, managers have an important role to play in ensuring business continuity and establishing efficient telework in the company.

Management by objective

While corporate activity is often managed by results, teleworking should rather be managed by the objective.

Therefore, the manager must assign clear short- and long-term missions and objectives to his teams and support them so that they can fulfill them as well and as quickly as possible.

The stages must be organized to control the correct execution of the assigned missions and to assist the employee in their accomplishment.

Management by objective is reflected especially in the empowerment of the employee and in establishing a relationship of trust. In fact, he is more empowered because he has to manage his working time and organization in order to achieve the objectives entrusted to him by his manager in the allotted time.

Management online for employee performance

In order to implement optimal remote management, the manager must be able to monitor the performance and productivity of employees.

Implementing a performance management program, selecting key indicators and monitoring these indicators over time is essential to be able to better manage your telecommuting teams and to optimize their productivity.

Implementing optimal management for remote work requires the choice and use of collaboration tools. Each tool must have a specific function to optimize their use.

Reserve your phone for urgent information

Use e-mail for lengthy communications that need to be explained, illustrated and to send documents to third parties.

Choose instant messaging software to exchange short information and keep in constant touch with employees who work remotely.

Use a file sharing space so that all employees outside the office have access to the documents needed for their activity at all times and share files with each other.

Prioritize video conferencing tools to hold regular team meetings and interact with others (eg. project meetings).

These tools must be chosen and implemented in the context of remote work as soon as the system is configured.

How is the productivity of remote employees measured?

Set up an employee performance management program

A performance management program makes it possible to clearly define the individual objectives and missions of employees. The manager and the employee must exchange opinions in order to reach a common vision of the role that the employee must have before implementing this way of working. This discussion should also allow the definition of how the employee can contribute at his level and remotely to the overall success of the company.

Thanks to this performance management system, the company can:

– Define the performance indicators for each position by establishing clear missions and objectives;

– Measure the productivity of these employees based on these indicators;

– Optimize the experience of employees who know how and why their performance is evaluated.

Define productivity indicators of  teleworking

To measure employee productivity, the company must define performance indicators to monitor.

By defining clear objectives and detailing the tasks entrusted to employees, managers can monitor the efficiency and evaluate the productivity of each employee.

To do this, it is necessary to establish and provide monitoring tables that include the following indicators:

– The rate of achievement of short-term objectives;

– The rate of achievement of long-term objectives;

– Time to achieve each type of goal (in days / hours worked).

The manager can also provide the average time to complete a specific task at the company’s headquarters and remotely to find out if the employee’s productivity changes depending on the situation in which he works.

These indicators need to be monitored over time to assess the evolution of the productivity of its telecommuting employees.

How to maximize the productivity of your employees?

Many factors come into play to maximize the productivity of employees working remotely, either in a home office or in an external collaborative space.

Evaluates and improves the well-being and satisfaction of remote employees.

Well-being at work and employee satisfaction directly influence employee productivity.

An accomplished employee, happy in his activity and who is satisfied with his professional experience will be more efficient and productive in his work.

Therefore, it is essential to send surveys to employees about their well-being in the company in order to be able to act according to their performance.

Asking employees about their feelings and how they experience remote work can help the company identify areas for improvement. By optimizing these points, the employer demonstrates to employees that they are listened to and understood and that they ensure that their employees benefit from an optimal experience.

Maintain and develop team spirit

Employees who carry out their professional activity remotely may feel distant from the company’s life. To counter this, managers need to make sure they cultivate team spirit and be available in front of their employees.

By keeping in touch with his colleagues and collaborating with them regularly due to ICT (information and communication technology), an employee will feel more involved in his work, which helps to develop his productivity and professional performance.

Distribute employee results remotely

To maximize teleworkers’ productivity, managers should plan to set up regular evaluation sessions.

During these sessions, the manager communicates the observed results to each employee and offers them ways to improve their efficiency in the home office.

5 tips to attract and retain commuters and employees

According to a survey conducted by Robert Half, 69% of employees who leave their company do so because they are not satisfied with their remuneration. 12% of employees who resign do so in order to find a better work-life balance, 7% are looking for a better corporate culture and ultimately 6% want to move towards new perspectives.

In this article, I offer you 5 levers to manage the retention of candidates and to have motivated employees.

1. Provide a certain level of quality of life at work for your employees.

To plan for the long term in a company, an employee must be able to associate his professional life with his personal life. Otherwise, it is difficult for the employee to project himself into his work over several months or even several years.

In particular, make sure that you are especially vigilant during a recruitment process, at a distance between your place of residence and your place of work. A person who spends more than an hour in transport may not be able to bear this situation for a very long time … Be careful, recruitment – or non-recruitment – based only on the place of residence is considered a discrimination prohibited by law (at least in France).

Discover the discrimination criteria.

To support existing employees in the company, you can promote remote work.

Moreover, a recent study by Anact-Aract (French administrative organization for improving working conditions) tells us that 88% of employees express a desire to continue working remotely after the health crisis.

One day of teleworking per week may be enough to generate this feeling of work-life balance.

However, make sure that you frame this practice with the establishment of an agreement and provide for the payment of compensation to the employee (exemption from contributions and social contributions up to a limit of 10 EUR per month valid in France). You will need to be vigilant, especially during professional interviews, with the right to disconnect and with isolation issues.

Learn more about remote work

From a human resources perspective, the company’s challenge is to retain talent. As mentioned above, the main reason for leaving is related to the remuneration policy.

The implementation of bonuses relies on the involvement and motivation of employees. You can also provide an individual social report (fr. BSI). This document, which includes all the elements related to the compensation / remuneration for one year, offers a clear vision of its structure and contributes to a process of transparency regarding the salary.

From the point of view of occupational health, the atmosphere among the company’s employees is fundamental for loyalty. What could be more demotivating than going to work when you know the atmosphere is oppressive?

It is important to have a team spirit, so that the people in your company can take advantage of downtime to meet their colleagues and recover mentally. This promotes a good social climate and good cohesion between internal collaborators.

In the event of a conflict or disagreement, your manager is to re-establish social dialogue to ease tensions. You can also organize team building actions to strengthen the sense of belonging of your teams. Do not hesitate to take into account the ideas of employees, so that they are actors in the life of the company.

2. Take care of the integration process for your new employees

Recruiting new employees is one thing, but securing their loyalty is totally different. The company must encourage existing employees to participate in the integration process to encourage their development.

 Here are some tips to keep them involved:

– Prepare meticulously for the arrival of the new employee, informing all employees (e-mail, intranet, team meeting) and offering them the necessary documents and materials from the first day.

– Appoint an experienced internal collaborator who will play a mentor role by regularly accompanying the new recruit.

– Conducts formal review interviews at the beginning, middle and end of the probationary period, to identify alert points as soon as possible and to establish the appropriate action plan.

3. Assess the skills of your employees

As we have often recommended in our articles, recognition is essential to the well-being of your employees at work within your structure. The work of employees must be fully appreciated by their manager. This allows you to highlight your company’s talents and involve employees.

Do not hesitate to congratulate each employee for a job well done to motivate and involve them. Indeed, encouraging employees in difficult times of work will lead to better involvement of your employees. Employee development will lead to better business performance.

4. Focus on intergenerational management

Intergenerational management is a real guarantee of skills development. A senior fuels exchanges due to his professional experience. Young employees, in turn, establish new ways of working with new technologies. This type of management brings wealth and diversity to your company. This allows for better advance job and skills planning (fr. GPEC) as well as good career management.

5. Develop the employer brand

In the face of a real war for talent, we must redouble our inventiveness to attract the best potential. In addition, many employees also want to be aligned with company values. For this, you need to develop your employer brand through your corporate culture. Branding is what defines you and why your business will be attractive. It will allow you to attract talent that will meet your business needs. Talk about your story and what is important to you. Also, ask yourself what sets you apart from your competition.

Employees who share the company’s values ​​are dedicated employees. This increases the chances of keeping them together for as long as possible.

Learn more about the employer’s brand.

Implementing a real strategy to prevent employees from leaving is imperative. Let’s not forget that loyalty has many challenges, especially financial ones.

If you want to know more, we are at your disposal through a wide range of quality services, oriented towards concrete results.