Offering flexible working options are becoming increasingly effective in attracting the best talent pool in modern workplaces

The world is becoming increasingly more flexible.

Advances in technology and communication tools have made it easier to connect and work with employees around the world, continuously lowering the barrier to international expansion and multinational business operations.

And with more tech-savvy generations entering the labour force with new ideas about how they want to work, employers around the world are embracing fresh approaches to the 9-5.

For many professionals, particularly those in progressive industries like tech, the option to clock in from locations outside of the office can be very attractive.

According to a recent survey of the Microsoft cloud community, almost 60 per cent of professionals were offered home working as a benefit.

When it came to influencing the acceptance of a job offer, the opportunity to work from home was the second most popular perk that would tempt a tech professional into a role, coming in just behind annual bonuses.

Offering remote working blows open the pool of candidates that businesses can draw from, as well as giving them a competitive edge in the battle to attract great talent.

For this reason, among others, businesses in Singapore are beginning to adopt remote working more widely.

Also Read: 4 factors that make the Philippines an ideal source of remote talent

In fact, 43 per cent of businesses in the country say they offer remote working to at least some portion of their workforce, with just 11 per cent giving no flexible working options—such as flex-time or compressed hours—at all.

The most popular reasons for implementing remote working were to reduce overheads, improve staff retention, and to be able to scale staff levels more quickly.

Clearly, there are a whole host of benefits to implementing remote working, but building a cohesive, efficient machine from such disparate cogs can often be challenging.

So, how do those that are utilising remote teams in Singapore get the best out of their workforce?

Separate but together

Strong bonds and unity between a team is something all business leaders want, no matter where their composite members are based. A solid group who know how to work together efficiently makes for happier, more productive workers.

Colleagues who are sharing a physical space are inundated with organic opportunities to build relationships, whether its sharing theories on the latest TV show while making coffee, catching a quick drink together at the end of the day, or chatting over lunch.

Those working remotely don’t have these natural chances to communicate, so you need to overcompensate for their absence.

Make sure you put in the effort to substitute that organic interaction with something that helps your remote team get to appreciate, understand and have confidence in one another. Think of this like creating a digital water cooler, or an online staff kitchen; an informal, social space for your team to connect.

You can’t force a team to bond—these attempts will inevitably backfire—but that doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t nudge them along.

Whatever platform you use for your virtual team building, as a team leader you should be stoking the fires of conversation, and ensuring the wheels of discourse stay greased if things start to flag.

Play online games together, start a fantasy league, create a chat thread for your team to post their favourite memes, initiate a Monday morning check-in to find out what people did at the weekend.

Yes, these techniques aren’t work tasks, but spending a little time each day on building bonds will pay off big time when you have a group who’s comfortable with each other and communicate well.

Communication is key

Clear and frequent communication is essential to facilitating collaboration within remote teams. A good rule of thumb is to over-communicate—think you’ve been obvious? Think everyone knows what they need to do? Say it again to make sure.

Recap phone conversations by email and note down actions for each team member. Remember that tone is hard to convey in text, so leave nothing to the imagination: ensure clarity even if you have to repeat yourself, be overtly friendly, and get confirmation that your message has been received.

Also Read: From space stations to crime scenes: The remote AR revolution

You can’t just roll up beside your remote team members and check in on them, and likewise, they can’t just shout over and run something past you.

To make sure communication doesn’t break down, you should open a channel where everyone can ask questions, confirm plans, and check-in with their colleagues.

Having a team chat window open at all times, for example, can help keep the flow of collaboration going without it feeling overly formal or arduous.

If communication among your remote workers is challenging or ineffective, your team will be put off collaborating with one another and may avoid it wherever possible.

Implement the right tools

Staying connected is essential for virtual teams to join forces effectively. Forget about relying solely on email—in fact, it’s often considered the least intimate of workplace commutation tools, which isn’t great for engendering relationships.

Also Read: How to make your business irresistible to remote workers

Tools like instant messaging, project management platforms, shared calendars, and cloud productivity software that lets multiple users work on the same document simultaneously offer a more casual and responsive way for team members to work together, chat, and stay up to date.

Given the ease and speed of written digital communication, it’s no surprise that remote workers communicate disproportionately by text.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t have regular calls with your teams and enable them to speak to each other in person, but having a lengthy paper trail is incredibly useful for developing a library of ideas, processes, and communiqués that can help turn your team into a lean, efficient collaborating machine.

But to achieve this peak state of remote team productivity, you need to work out what platform works best for you.

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Image Credit: Nathan Anderson

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