Expert Opinion: The Best Way To Do Remote Working in 2022

The last two years has seen remote working explode in popularity and is now very much part of the employee and working ecosystem. This presents new challenges for managers and employers who have to find the best ways to motivate their staff, maximise productivity and work with new technology and its challenges. Today, Pheabs speaks to some MDs, CEOs and company founders to find out some of the best ways to do remote working in 2022.

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James Bellis, Founder of Eating in London

Particularly since the pandemic, remote work has changed the world forever. With some incredible pieces of technology, it’s now possible to work from anywhere in the world and still run a successful business.

At Eating in London we use tools like Slack, WordPress, Asana and Google Suite to effectively run our entire business operations. Our team is made up of around 20+ people from across the world all operating in different time zones.

We find it really effective. We are able to utilise time zones to our advantage and have content submitted by the time we wake up in the UK – which is pretty cool.

The most cost-effective way to hire and manage staff

At Eating in London, we recently launched a new membership product that provides consumers with restaurant deals in London.

For this new product launch we required additional resource se used Upwork, a popular freelancer platform to hire our staff. You can hire extremely fast, and you’re protected via contracts which can give you an edge when you need to bring in extra support.

Freelancer platforms also allow simple filtering and matching so you can find niche skill sets within any given field.

Operating from the UK means there are additional benefits in exchange rates relating to currency.

Overall, these modern-day tools have allowed so many more people to connect all over the world which I think is absolutely amazing.

The opportunities are endless.

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Jamie Johnson, FJP Investment

“Remote working – or working from home – is nothing new, but Covid has accelerated this trend out of necessity. Many take to it like a duck to water, whilst some struggle to keep motivated and productive.

My top tip? Don’t overdo the videoconferencing. Too many meetings, especially long ones without a clear, comprehensive purpose, can be a huge time sink. With virtual meetings, there’s an additional problem: Zoom fatigue. Yes, Zoom fatigue is a real thing! 

We have noticed the team are less happy and productive from being exhausted by attending too many virtual meetings. It’s easy to understand why this is happening. Whilst participating in a virtual meeting, we are forced to keep our eyes fixed on both the other participants and ourselves. To help reduce the possibility of Zoom fatigue setting in, we have done the following.

First, instead of several meetings, we have condensed them into fewer meetings but with more focus. This results in more meaningful and engaging meetings. Next, where possible, we prioritise sending out an email over a call. Lastly, we usually keep the camera off. It helps to keep the meeting more relaxed with focus placed on the topic at hand”.

Nadine Campbell, Founder, ACE Entrepreneurs and The Digital Helpdesk

“Working remotely can be extremely efficient if you follow some simple tips to ensure you can get the most out of your workday.

1. Set up a proper home workplace.

Find a good size table and a comfy but study chair to protect your back properly. The Kitchen table is an ideal place to work. Just remember why you’re there, to have a great work-life balance and not to snack all day; a common trap when working from home. Treat your home office as a professional workspace.

2. Create a routine.

Presentable work clothes, morning coffee, a real break for lunch and to get fresh air and a fixed time to end the workday. If you plan out your day or week well, you can be extremely productive and your reward will be; more work done in less time with no commute, saving on average 2 hours travelling a day.

3. Keep distractions at bay.

Wherever you choose to work, invest in good wireless earphones, especially when working in shared spaces. Minimize working AND looking after young children unless urgent, both jobs cannot be done well simultaneously.

4. Rework your workday around your other responsibilities, as that’s the real benefit of working remotely!

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Colin Hodge, Founder of DownApp

Async is The Future

One of the key advantages of running a remote team is that you – and your team – get to work on your own schedules!

You should fiercely protect that advantage, since it can make your team more productive & easier to please. One of the best ways to do that is to favor asynchronous communication & work over synchronous meetings & calls. This means reinforcing to your team members to: send messages as the default instead of suggesting meetings; share in public channels so all crucial team members can see updates & conversations; have patience when expecting responses; use emojis to communicate emotions & simple status updates such as showing you’ve seen a message; and establish a more urgent channel for items that require a quick response.

Voice and Screen Recordings Save Meetings

When text alone isn’t enough to get a clear consensus, try sending voice messages back and forth instead of jumping to a call right away. If something visual is concerned, quick video screen recordings are a blessing to get step-by-step instructions or clarifications! One of the great advantages of this is the ability for the listener/viewer to play it back at a faster speed to save time or to replay it again if they missed something.

Of course, hopping on a quick meeting is crucial and actually saves time for some intricate topics and building connections between team members, but those should be one of the last resorts.

Form Bonds Online and IRL

Managing a remote team also means managing how they bond with each other, so don’t forget to facilitate these deeper connections in addition to the daily grind of work!

We’ve found playing games in virtual worlds or maps, like in Gather, where our team had fun playing some guessing games together!

Of course, nothing can truly replace meeting offline, so we like to reward our team with an occasional IRL team meetup or trip. This year, we’re going to Thailand for 2 weeks of a “work-cation,” where our team members will have the opportunity to get to know each other even better.

Robert Scott, Managing Director at Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment

Be available:

Your sales team won’t be able to quickly reach out to you in your office when they need help – so make sure you’re available on your company’s communication platforms such as Teams or Slack. More importantly, ensure that you are actually approachable and don’t put down your staff for something you might deem as trivial or forgetful – many remote workers feel isolated so by simply being available you can solve some of these problems.

Reward remote achievements:

Pre-pandemic, you would have seen sales teams throughout the country rewarding achievements in face-to-face environments on a Friday afternoon. In this new age of working from home, this has become less prevalent, so it’s important to keep a recognition culture either digitally or when your team actually does get together.

Make use of cloud-based CRM software:

Team communication is often harder with staff working from home and this can disrupt your sales processes if vital information is not passed over correctly. A cloud-based CRM system can mitigate this by providing a ‘single customer view’ or even document your workflows or sales pipelines for everyone to see.

Employee feedback:

It can be harder to pick up on your team’s thoughts and feelings without seeing them face-to-face. This might create an issue where you as management might not recognise the needs of your workforce. To help with this, making your feedback culture even more prominent will help you resolve issues proactively and support your sales staff.

Advertise your roles as ‘remote roles’

If your business truly supports fully remote working you have the advantage of a national or global talent pool to choose from. At Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment we have seen the number of applicants for remote roles be on average 120% higher than office-based positions which can give you an excellent field of candidates to choose from.

There’s no escaping it – after the pandemic working-from-home is here to stay and many of the organisations we recruit for have embraced more flexible ways of working. Managing these teams can come with challenges, so it’s important to make sure your communication between teams remains consistent and that you’re asking for staff feedback on all of your processes.

Andy Peddar, CEO at Developer Marketplace Platform, Deazy:

“Managing a remote workforce is in some ways very simple – let employees work where they will be most effective. For some that means working from home so they can manage work alongside family commitments, while others prefer the separation between work and home, and like to come to the office. Others will want a combination of the two. It boils down to trust. If you trust your hiring process, then you will trust the people you employ to deliver good quality work, irrespective of location.”

“But with people in different locations and with different remote working preferences, managing this is shaping up to be a major challenge. Hybrid working has many benefits for employer and employee, but it’s model that’s hugely challenging, affecting meetings, travel and company culture. For each business it raises questions such as do we run remote-first meetings or attempt hybrid meetings, do we mandate a minimum number of days in an office and a maximum, how much do we provide for home offices and how does this change for those who are partly at home and partly in the office? A strong hybrid culture can be used to attract and retain the best talent, but attempting to make it an enabler to the business requires substantial thought and focus.”