Establishing Remote Work Policies and Procedures

How are Remote Work Policies Different from In-Office Policies?

When the COVID-19 pandemic arose, a significant number of businesses instituted temporary remote work arrangements for employees. For the first time in their careers, many employees worked from home and found that they remained productive despite the change in the work environment. Two years after the onset of the pandemic, many employees have learned that they enjoy working from home and want the option of workplace flexibility, even in a post-pandemic world. 

This employee feedback has prompted some companies to consider new workforce models. While some companies are able to continue offering remote work options, other companies are implementing hybrid workplace strategies whereby employees can work remotely part-time and report to the office on other days.  Hybrid workplace strategies seem especially popular with employees, who enjoy the flexibility of working from home but desire the option of in-office workdays to collaborate with their colleagues face-to-face.  

Employees will have an easier, more productive work experience if they are provided clarity on their employer’s workplace strategy. Companies need to establish clear and robust remote work policies and procedures to ensure an efficient and productive workforce working remotely or in a hybrid workplace.

How to Develop Work from Home Policies and Procedures

Before implementing a remote or hybrid workplace strategy, company leadership needs to have a clear understanding of which employee roles are eligible for such arrangements. Evaluating the business processes and workflows for each employee role and team is important in developing a remote or hybrid workplace strategy that aligns well with company goals and objectives. 

Remote and hybrid work policies should be easily available for employees to access and review and are often posted on the company’s intranet or in employee handbooks. Managers should explain the policies and expectations in detail to participating employees, and make sure that everyone on the team is aware of their individual and team duties. Employees should also be apprised of how and why their work arrangements are changing, especially if not all employees will be permitted to work from home.

To get started, use the following suggestions outlining what to include in a typical remote or hybrid policy, and ensure that it is customized to align with the corporate culture. 

Accept Remote Performance Management as a Routine Business Function

Traditional workforce management for employees working in a physical office can be a complicated blend of tools, procedures, and human observation-based judgments. It can be challenging to apply this combination in managing and evaluating the performance of remote workers. 

With remote work here to stay for many businesses, overcoming that challenge is crucial. It is important that employers and managers understand that remote performance management is a routine aspect of ensuring proper business functions and therefore must be given the same consideration and resources as other more traditional types of performance management.

When HR departments make changes to their performance management plan, including tooling modifications, they must keep in mind that these strategies will likely be in place for the foreseeable future. Management, as well as employees, must embrace the “new normal”. 

Establish Remote Performance Management Requirements

Traditional and remote management have significant distinctions. When it comes to managing an employee’s performance remotely, companies may need to do things differently.

Think about the company’s post-culture and performance management method. Come up with a list of all the components that may be lacking with a large-scale move to remote work, and start building tools and procedures to fill in the gaps.

Employee and manager uncertainty might undermine the project if HR fails to supervise the transition from traditional to remote or hybrid work management.

SCG has years of experience in helping companies transition through big changes such as this, and can equip HR and the entire organization with the right tools and communication methods to properly manage all these changes to limit, if not totally eliminate, resistance from employees.

Why It’s Necessary to Update Performance Management Tools for Remote Work

Remote work has increasingly become a popular workplace strategy to combat the business effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic prompted many companies to quickly transition from a typical physical work environment to a remote or hybrid workforce for health and safety concerns. Further, the productivity gains realized with remote and hybrid workplace strategies have fueled its long-term appeal for employers and employees alike.

With remote and hybrid work, managers need to understand if employees are efficiently completing their tasks. Productivity measures, such as specific deadlines or monitoring tools, may be established to keep remote workers on track. 

Measuring the amount of time spent on an activity or project is a common practice, however, this practice needs to be balanced against the temptation of micro-management and over-communication. 

If an employee spends too much time on a task, it could indicate that they find it challenging or are experiencing distractions. Employers can help control these distractions by helping provide the right work-from-home environment, or, in some cases, use tracking tools that check and control which applications are being used during work hours. 

Of course, if a company uses these strategies for their remote work program, it should be clearly stated in the remote work policy and disclosed to remote employees from the start.

Performance management software is an important tool that allows businesses to measure employee productivity in a standardized, consistent, and measurable manner. This software helps determine whether cross-functional divisions are collaborating successfully to achieve a common goal. Using and updating a performance management platform streamlines the performance process, allowing you to produce reports more quickly. 

These task portals are designed to keep track of current assignments and jobs to be completed in a certain period and require timely updates to register accurate work coverage. This will also have all your work accounted for.

Performance management tools such as monday.com, Asana, Trello, IntelliHR, Kallidus, and Kazoo have been deemed the best-used performance management tools to date, and are a few of the solutions we’ve seen our clients have success with.  

What to Include in your Updated Work from Home Policy

Distinct Eligibility and Scope of Work

Determine which positions in the company are qualified for remote work. Consider client-facing obligations, software constraints, and cybersecurity threats. To avoid an abundance of work from home requests, clearly define all role constraints.

Furthermore, if management wants a more selective acceptance procedure based on individual employees, specify the type of employees who are qualified to work from home: dependable, disciplined, autonomous, well organized, and so on. Finally, specify any length of employment requirements for work from home eligibility (i.e. three months, one year, etc.). 

Explicitly define the goal of a particular policy, either in terms of the policy itself or in terms of what the management aims to achieve by providing work-from-home options. Use this as an opportunity to communicate best practices and lessons learned during the large-scale work from home initiative caused by COVID-19. 

Finally, work from home policy should boost your employee value proposition, improve the experience of your team members at your organization, and match your fundamental values. Explain the policy’s importance as well as how the policy will be used in the future.

Work Hours and Request Process in Detail

What is the best way for employees to request work from home arrangements? Map out the full procedure in this part –  define if there should be a formal submission protocol, or if workers should speak with their manager. 

Is it also necessary for workers to apply for the policy before making a request? Provide a step-by-step summary of what employees must do to be able to work from home.

Remote Work Policies

Companies are experimenting with new solutions to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time, as workers want greater freedom in where they work. Whether your organization is going remote or pursuing a hybrid work model, neglecting to give explicit work-from-home instructions to workers can lead to misunderstanding and improper enforcement.

Work from home policies are papers that detail the rules and regulations that apply to employees who work from home. This document might, for example, contain information about technology packages, password sharing, time tracking, expenditure management, and other topics. 

The goal of these regulations is to let remote teams perform their best work while also ensuring seamless operations.

Work From Home Policy Examples

Working from home might vary in some factors but these are policies that are by default, considered the basis and foundation of every organization.

1. Work Hours – One of the most critical aspects of the work from home policy to specify is working hours. You should state whether employees must be accessible during specific hours or whether they have the option of choosing their hours. You might also specify how employees should convey their availability.
2. Timekeeping – Timekeeping might be more difficult due to the flexibility of remote working hours. To guarantee that remote staff work the required hours, many remote supervisors use time clock software.
3. Communication Guidelines – These guidelines spell out how and when employees should react. Team members should be aware of which platforms to use and employees should also manage realistically expected response times.
4. Security protocols – In virtual workplaces, cybersecurity is a key problem, and deliberately include security precautions in work from home policy to guarantee that all company, customer, and employee data is kept safe.
5. Virtual Meeting Etiquette – Meetings, whether virtual or in-person, require professionalism. On Zoom conversations, attendees may often relax more, but there’s a narrow line between wearing sweatpants at a weekly team conference and playing with a five-year-old during a board meeting.

Work From Home Guidelines for Employees

While policies are rigid and mandatory, guidelines lean towards suggestions on how to maximize and improve the work environment. Guidelines are suggestions; they are neither obligatory nor necessary. Guidelines offer guidance and direction rather than control.

Work from Home Guidelines examples are as follows:

1. Create a Usable Workspace – Everyone should at least have a dedicated home office because having a private and quiet location to work in is essential.
2. Ensure Internet Speed That You Require- Your connection and internet rates may be slowed if your children use FaceTime, TikTok, or Xbox Live. Moving as near as possible to your Wi-Fi router will assist (remote devices tend to use bandwidth), or switching to Ethernet can help.
3. Use Apps on Your Phone – Make use and maximize the use of Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, and Skype as they all offer free international calls via the internet.
4. Distractions should be kept at a minimum or should be managed ahead of time – Invest in quality noise-canceling headphones if you have a pet dog or live near the roadside.

Work From Home Policy Template

There is no one size fits all solution for work-from-home standards because remote employment is still a relatively blooming work concept and every company is different. That is why it is necessary to tailor-fit your remote work policies with respect to your organization’s culture and needs. 

Stegmeier Consulting Group helps businesses acquire the necessary data needed to come up with the perfect work-from-home policy guidelines. If your company is starting on the goal to plan, implement, and maintain work-from-home standards, then reach out to us today so we can help you every step of the way.