Keeping Your Company Connected Across Dispersed Workforce

Tools to equip your managers to run the show smoothly

Whether your team is grouped together across multiple locations or they’re working from home, and whether it’s been this way for years or you’re new to managing a dispersed workforce, it’s important to regularly evaluate what’s working and what’s not.

Although the benefits of having a decentralized workforce are numerous, the challenges that coincide with it can be difficult to deal with if a company is ill-equipped to manage the people, technology, and brand across multiple locations.

Let’s break down some of the struggles involved with having a dispersed workforce, and how you can approach them to ensure everything stays connected and running smoothly.

Cybersecurity and Compliance

The biggest technical challenge of having remote workers and people using mobile devices is protecting sensitive data through cybersecurity measures. It seems like nearly every day we hear about another cyber attack or data breach in a large organization. It doesn’t matter how big or small your organization is, though – every company has to take cybersecurity seriously. A breach can happen anywhere and to anyone, whether they’re working in a corporate office or a home office.

When the company or clients’ personal data becomes compromised, there are major costs both to the company’s finances and to its reputation. Luckily, it’s becoming easier and easier to implement measures that prevent cyber hacks.

Allowing employees to use or bring their own devices (BYOD) can save your company a ton of money on technology expenditures. However, you’ll need to have your IT department create a plan for mobile device management (MDM). 

If the strategy and details of your MDM plan are unclear, employees likely won’t take it seriously and will just work around the constraints of IT wherever they can. When they’re accessing sensitive company and/or client data, not having the right securities in place puts all of that data at risk.

If the importance of complying with cybersecurity measures is lost on your employees, or they’re simply unaware of what they need to do to keep data safe online, consider how your cybersecurity training could be more effective. Keeping information secure online is not just the responsibility of IT anymore – you have to get everyone on board.

Compliance training in general, whether it’s cybersecurity, harassment, safety, HIPAA, etc., tends to just be a checkbox to mark off, without much focus on whether or not that training is being retained and creating behavior changes with employees – which is the goal of training, after all.

If you’re looking for compliance training that actually prevents infractions and protects your company from lawsuits, you need modern solutions that are about more than checking off the “completed” box. Microlearning videos are powerful for delivering necessary training because they’re more engaging for learners and get key concepts across more efficiently than longer, traditional training.

Rather than taking people off the job for an hour or more at a time, they fit within busy schedules, allowing training to happen when and where it’s needed. Combining these short bursts of training with post-training reinforcement boosts allows employees to retain what they’ve learned and put it into practice.

Viewpointe, a professional technology services company, transitioned to an entirely virtual workforce, and found that using micro videos for training allowed them to keep everyone updated on compliance issues in cybersecurity and HIPAA requirements, and easily track the training for audits.

Communication and Team Management

Along with finding effective online solutions for compliance training, Viewpointe recognized the need for their virtual workforce to have a central location for all the company’s documents, resources, training, and company-wide communications. Providing that central hub through a learning management system allows them to give dispersed employees an online “headquarters.”

One of the disadvantages of having people working remotely is the sense of isolation it can bring if the team’s collaboration isn’t strong. Your managers have to understand how to effectively communicate with their team in multiple ways, depending on the task or situation. Rather than having people doing their own thing in their own corner, you can better connect your dispersed employees with the right tools and well equipped managers.

There are a lot of tools out there for helping your team collaborate, but your managers need to consistently evaluate whether or not those tools are being used effectively, or if they’re just getting in the way. They’ll also want to give everyone an overview on the best ways to use each tool. Chat platforms are well suited for some communications, while email or Skype is better for others:
 

A lot of headaches and mistakes can be circumvented by training managers and employees on the best ways to communicate across their dispersed team. They need to know they can count on each other, and building that trust requires everyone to do their best to communicate fully and clearly.

A hindrance to any team, remote or not, is having a manager who micro-manages employees’ tasks. When you’ve found talented people who are capable of working remotely and managing their own workloads, collaboration is helpful, but commenting on their every move is detrimental. Allowing people to be more autonomous in their work will help your company attract and keep talented individuals.

To train your managers on effectively communicating expectations and checking in without micro-managing, look into providing short, engaging, on-demand videos that they can use for quick reference wherever they are. The topic of communication is massive, and the soft skills involved can be constantly improved upon. Breaking it down into smaller subjects in microlearning videos, whether they’re covering concrete hard skills or more abstract soft skills, makes the information easier to apply on the job.

If your organization has to deal with fitting training in between the flow of customers, you’ll find microlearning videos to be a practical solution to that challenge. Consumers Credit Union used short, video-based training so their employees wouldn’t have to be taken off the job for long periods of time. They were able to train in between providing service to members, and reduced onboarding costs by $2,000 per employee.

Another way that Consumers Credit Union has kept their dispersed workforce connected is by creating custom training content that reinforces their brand and culture across locations. Branding is crucial for any company to see sales growth and move up market, so keeping the company’s mission and message cohesive should be a priority for any company. It can be difficult enough to maintain a brand and a strong culture when everyone is in the same building, but adding geographical distance between teams makes that even more of a challenge.

Your brand and your culture go hand in hand. They reflect and strengthen each other. They create unity internally and externally.

If your brand message and style isn’t consistently delivered by every employee, it weakens the credibility of your company in the eyes of consumers. This is why having that central hub for branded content and consistent training on the products and services you offer is key.

If culture isn’t properly managed, negative feelings can be harbored between on-site and remote employees or corporate versus remote sites – one group can feel as though the other group is being treated as “special” while they feel ignored. It’s always smart to regularly conduct anonymous surveys to get a read on the culture and find out where there may be issues.

Having a strong brand, a great culture, and plenty of professional growth opportunities are what attract talented people to your organization. When your location is decentralized, that opens up a lot of doors for hiring the best of the best, but you don’t want your company culture and management to give them a reason to take their talent elsewhere once they get an inside look.

The challenges of keeping a dispersed workforce connected through healthy communication and a solid culture are highly dependent on those in leadership positions. Some leaders are great with handling situations in person, but they struggle with motivating and overseeing their teams from a distance.