Anuj Anil Narkhede

Coronavirus pandemic has forced many organizations to shift their traditional office set up to remote work culture that is also on a large scale. Many managers and employees never worked on such set up before and hence they find it difficult to adjust in this new normal.

Working from home isn’t always as easy as it sound. It can lead to feeling of loneliness and isolation in employees, especially the extroverts who have habit of continuous interaction and learning from peers. Apart from it, this pandemic situation also created emotional and economic pressure on employees as they are worried about losing their job, paying rent and EMI, protecting health. Such fears are distressing the employees and affecting their morale and productivity.

Harvard Business Review(HBR) has surveyed more than 20,000 employees worldwide in 50 organizations regarding motivation for work, which also include how much work from home affect the motivation. They found that motivation level of majority of employees fell down tremendously in the situation of working remotely away from traditional work canters such as office. Motivations drive employees to work and get their job done which leads to their productivity. This pandemic situation has affected employee’s motivation most and this shift in motivation will ultimately lead to decline in creativity, quality and adaptability of organization.

So how can organizations make sure that their employees are equally engaged and motivated when they are working in remote environment of their home, away from traditional office environment?

Following are the five ways, leaders or managers of any organization can try to improve the motivation of their employees working from their home during this corona pandemic:

1. Effective communication

Communication is the most important parameter for managing the work force in remote environment. Not all employees get easily comfortable with work from home culture without any guidance. Many of them might feel reluctant to get in touch with their supervisor out of fear they will look foolish. Therefore organization must create and publish work from home guide and provide its access to all the employees. Also instead of directly assigning work to employees on this new platform, organizations should come up with fun activities to make this new environment familiar to their employees. Hold online meetings regularly or create “ask me anything” chatting platform to resolve all the issues they face.

Effective communication lay the foundation for successful implementation of strategy and collaboration in organization. Therefore leaders must communicate their expectations and short term as well as long term objectives of organization to their employees.

2. Set up meaningful target

The key to engage employees into work in remote environment and maintain the efficiency of getting work done is through setting up meaningful target which are achievable considering the current situation of pandemic. There will be difference in efficiency of employees when they work in tradition office environment with their peers and when they work from remote place. Therefore managers must consider this aspects before assigning any task to their employees.

Not down the daily targets and deliverables required to be completed by each department and keep a tracking system to measure the outcomes effectively. Conduct virtual meetings time to time just to get update on status of work. If employees are struggling to get their work done then instead of pressurizing them supervisors must cheer up the spirit of such employees so that their morale will always stay high and their productivity doesn’t get affected.

3. Celebrate achievements

Positive environment leads to increase in productivity of employees. Celebrating smaller achievements of employees is useful to motivate them for improvising further in their job and improve the spirit of an organization. Employees get demotivated if their hard work doesn’t get appreciated and they stop putting their all efforts in next task they get assign. Therefore recognizing a job well done, minor successes, appreciating team work is important for organization so that employees will get motivation to employees to work hard. 

Organization can congratulate the employees who achieved success by publishing about them in company’s newsletter, otherwise can felicitate them with some incentives or bonus. Gift cards, E-commerce vouchers or subscription plans can also be useful to reward employees to keep their motivation high.

4. Encourage new learning

During busy office hours and long commuting time, many employees are unable to pursue the learning or hobby they want to purse. Work from home culture saves their commuting time so that they can focus on learning new things. The role of organization is to promote employees to keep learning new thing. By learning new courses, skills of employees will get upgraded which in turn will benefit to organization.

When an organization promote learning, it keep its employee motivated because eventually everyone wants to do job that helps them to learn new skills and grow as individual. Also introduce employees with non-work related courses such as music, meditation, poetry, etc. that can keep their mind free from stress and keep their motivation high.

5. Promote health and wellness

To make sure employees keep staying motivated, organization must ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of them. Productivity of any organization is primarily depends upon the physical and mental health of the employees working there, irrespective any type of work set up. Unwell employee, even with high motivation will not be able to produce the desirable outcome for organization. 

During this pandemic time, health of employees should be primary objective of any organization. Due to coronavirus, employees are forced to stay indoors and isolate themselves. This might lead to depression or anxiety among some employees. Therefore role of an organization is to keep engaging with such employees to understand their problems and provide suitable guidance. Organizations can also keep tracking the health of their employees through surveys.

Overall, motivation of employees is critical for any organization. This pandemic has created crisis in front of organizations to keep their employees motivated in remote work environment. But with the help of technology organization can still manage their work efficiency by keeping their employees highly motivated through engaging with them regularly, understanding their needs and providing them support whenever they required. Highly motivated workforce will always provide desirable results for any organization regardless in which environment they work.