As the pandemic hit, working from home became the go-to solution to prevent virus outbreaks and increase employee safety.

Remote working does come with organizational challenges, however, and it is up to the HR department to create an environment that facilitates remote communication, collaboration, recruitment and training, and employee wellbeing – among others

Let’s look at what HR professionals can do to help their organizations set up a productive remote work environment:

10 Key Steps HR Departments Should Take for a Smooth Transition to a Remote Setup

From adopting new policies to choosing the right platforms, these are the 10 tactics to employ when transitioning to a remote setup.

1) Evolve the Existing & Adopt New HR Policies

As you might expect, the way you communicate, track performance, clock in and clock out, as well as a great many other practices will change when you go remote, and so should the policies that are guiding them.

The first policy to consider is which roles are eligible to work outside the corporate offices.

Next, HR professionals recommend focusing on the policies that guide remote communication as the foundation of effective collaboration and productivity. Communication guidelines should govern how and how often team members exchange updates and information. This can also include setting clear guidelines around the use of various communication platforms, from emails to instant messengers.

Then there are the question of flexibility including work hours and employee accessibility, tech and tech stipends, recruitment policies and so on. Bottom line, assess all the existing guidelines to see which ones can remain relevant and which ones need to evolve.

2) Invest in an HRMS

Evolving company policies is the first step to building an infrastructure to support your remote or hybrid teams. The next, and equally as important, are the platforms where these policies will take effect.

Cloud-based human resources management systems (HRMS) will help you manage employee records, generate data on workforce trends, and provide a centralized system for accounting and finance teams. It can also be used to manage payroll and even analyze employee performance data.

The HRMS will provide your HR department with a virtual environment that automates and optimizes previously manual tasks and workflows, increasing your team’s efficiency as well as the corporate one.

3) Recruitment & Onboarding

Recruitment has changed tremendously in the past decade.

Only a few years ago, job hunting would take weeks and even months. Today, for in-demand talent, job hunting can take only a few days thanks to platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed.

With so many opportunities, competing for the top talent is difficult, but retaining them is even harder.

It goes without saying that effective recruitment strategies, onboarding included, will rely on the effective use of recruitment and HR platforms.

There is a whole discipline dedicated to this called recruitment marketing. To gain real competitive advantage in your pursuit of the top talent, consider hiring an online digital agency who can optimize your employer profiles and recruitment marketing strategies.

4) Monitor Employee Performance

Making sure that every remote employee completes their tasks on time is a challenge for your HR team. To set up performance monitoring and ensure that your employees stay efficient and complete tasks on time, you need a monitoring system that allows you to check the progress of every employee regularly.

The system has to be able to track typical performance KPIs and metrics. The common monitoring practices include time tracking, target tracking, and creating regular reports on remote employee performance. Going back to the HRMS software we mentioned earlier, this is one of its primary roles. You can also consider introducing project management tools with time tracking capabilities such as Asana and Monday. Systems like these also help reduce human error and help save you money in the long-run.

5) Set Clear Work Hours

While remote working does offer a certain level of flexibility, ensuring that all tasks and projects are completed on time is a must if you want to keep your business going.

Setting clearly defined work hours will provide structure and help managers coordinate work more effectively across departments.

If some of your employees are in different time zones, your HR team needs to find a way to reorganize tasks so that all departments can complete their tasks on time.

6) Encourage Reduced Screen Time

Working from home could increase your employees’ screen time. More time spent at the computer has been linked with deteriorating attention spans, emotional wellbeing, socialization and focus – among other mental health concerns.

If your HR team notices that your workers complete tasks outside of work hours, or that some employees fail to take breaks, they should take the time to encourage breaks and leave time.

A 10-minute break or a lunch break can actually help improve efficiency.

Show your employees that breaks are good for them and try to promote physical activities and spending time outdoors after work. This will make a difference for your teams’ wellbeing and productivity.

7) Upgrade the Existing And Introduce New Technology

Much like HRMSs and project management systems, there are plenty of tools designed to help you manage and collaborate with your remote teams. For example, Google’s GSuite is a complete solution that offers dozens of tools that help streamline communication and improve team collaboration.

Zoom is a great choice when you want to hold regular online meetings and provide feedback.

If you want a tool that will help you maintain employee engagement and morale, 15Five is an excellent choice. It’s a versatile tool designed to simplify communication between managers and employees.

There are plenty of software solutions you can use to improve productivity, and some of them are completely free. It might take you some time to find the solutions that work best for your projects, but once you do, managing everything will become much easier.

8) Training and Development

Once you migrate to online ecosystems, your onboarding process and employee development techniques have to change as well. The key here is to communicate employee expectations clearly and ensure that everyone involved is on the same page.

Traditional onboarding, training, and development techniques are becoming obsolete.

In-person presentations, workshops, training sessions have to be replaced with video conferences and a suite of other solutions. Additionally, enforcing new policies and practices might require more attention once supervisors and their teams are physically removed from one another.

Invest time in creating shareable documents and interactive online learning experiences to promote the adoption of new policies and practices. Consider introducing a learning management system if your organizatio runs these sessions frequently and with a defined structure.

9) Maintain Company Culture in The Remote Workplace

A DesignRush report has shown that maintaining the company culture is one of  the top concerns for managers across industries when migrating their teams online.

What can HR do about it? You can start by communicating company values as early as possible and ensuring that employees are on the same page. A reward system that recognizes employees for their hard work is a great starting point.

Employees working from home don’t get the chance to experience company culture first hand. They don’t have access to the common areas where they can meet colleagues and create stronger bonds. Your HR team will have to create “virtual” opportunities that give remote employees the chances to exchange thoughts and build stronger relationships. Something as simple as a chat or a virtual game night can do wonders.

Lastly, your HR has to prioritize regular face-to-face meetings. Introduce weekly one-on-one meetings between employees and managers, so they can provide feedback and share experiences to improve company culture. Apart from these meetings, organize group video meetings to celebrate wins and encourage employees to exchange ideas.

10) Security

Ensuring that your systems are secure is a challenge when everyone is working from the office. It is way harder to keep your systems safe with a remote workforce due to an increased risk of human error and disregard of company rules. If your employees use personal devices during work, provide extra education to help your workers understand the security risks that put the entire company in jeopardy.

Online security should always be your primary concern, which is why you need a strict security policy. One wrong move can result in a system breach, data theft, and other cybersecurity risks.

You need to establish a highly secure environment that minimizes security risks. Technologies such as VPNs or proxies will go a long way in protecting sensitive data. Your HR team should find the best option and ensure that all remote workers understand how it works and why it is important.

Summary

As you can see, your HR department plays a key role in organizing and managing remote employees. They have to revise existing strategies and create new policies to ensure that the transition to remote working goes as smoothly as possible.

Your HR should be able to help guide the management and employees through the process and ensure that everyone involved understands how the remote strategy works. That might require extra training, new software solutions, technologies, and a different approach to maintaining company culture.

However, as long as everyone works together in building a solid infrastructure conducive to remote work, working from home can prove to be just as effective, if not more so, than traditional working environments.

The world is advancing at a rapid pace, so your marketing strategies should too. Promotional brand marketing activities like radio, print and television commercials are no longer the only way to show customers your product and generate leads for you. About a decade, above-the-line or ATL activities were the leading ways to market a new product. But when marketers started experimenting with experiential events and promotions to push products, below-the-line as a medium of marketing has almost entirely overshadowed traditional non-experiential marketing methods.

Marketing has multiple dimensions that are interchangeable depending on the present trend. BTL activations are among the most impactful marketing methods and are popular for grabbing attention and attracting untapped leads from within your target audience. They help customers experience the product or understand its real-world benefit through experience, or both. They enhance customer engagement and help build strong ties between brand and customer.

BTL Advertising Overview:

BTL advertising is a strategy marketers use to promote products in a more engaging and personalised manner as compared to ATL brands. This includes trade shows, direct mailing, telemarketing, free product sampling, search engine marketing, exhibitions and catalogues. BTL activations are highly interactive and allow customers to interact with brands in a personalised manner. It creates a direct bond between the brand and customers and helps increase visibility and brand engagement. 

Benefits of BTL Activations:

If you want to grab the attention of audiences and give them a very real experience of your brand, experiential BTL marketing is the way to go. There are many benefits your business can reap by investing in a powerful BTL activation. It directly scales up businesses’ marketing efforts and builds recall value for your brand that gives you an edge over your competition.

• BTL activations establish direct contact between brands and customers, which helps them in understanding the other more personally.
• They build brand awareness and target new customers that are currently untapped. This means higher lead generation.
• BTL activations allow you to reach target audiences easily and more directly as compared to traditional ATL marketing methods.
• They mark your brand’s presence and give you an advantage over your competition. This helps you to stand out and not become just a part of the crowd.
• BTL activations allow businesses to build a positive public image that gives instant and measurable results.
• They make you memorable and exciting. Dynamic BTL strategies can create a strong impact on customers and drive higher sales.
• They help provide your audience with product insights and allow them to experience your offering as they would if they were existing customers.
• BTL activations also give you customer feedback directly from the customer. This can help you improve your service or product.

BTL Marketing Activation Examples:

 Let’s take a look at how leading brands connect with their target audiences through BTL marketing.

1. Photo Booths:

Digitising photo booths and making them more Instagrammable is almost guaranteed to grab customer attention. It gives your customers social media clout and attention while giving your brand higher visibility through their follower base. A photo booth lets customers get snapped by following simple instructions mentioned on the screen. It lets them select layouts and pictures in the section given. They can upload an event image along with a branded hashtag to give your event more visibility on social media.

2. Social or Tweet Cafe:

A tweet or social cafe has the power to make you a trailblazer on social platforms and keep your brand in the spotlight. What makes a social cafe perfect is that customers can get rewarded for simply using a single hashtag. This not only gives your brand more visibility but also makes you a social media sensation. You reach more active users, every participant’s follower base and gives your brand more reach without much physical infrastructure.

3. Photo Wall:

If you are conducting an event, attendees are going to take pictures throughout the entirety of the event. You can display every picture taken at your event on a single mosaic wall as a collage to summarise your event. This gives you a vast digital album without putting in too much effort.

4. 3D Hologram:

This is a unique tech-first solution that is used to build brands. 3D holograms allow you to show your product to customers without needing to be physically present.

Take your marketing strategy to the next level with an experienced BTL marketing agency and put your brand in the spotlight today.

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Why Window Blinds Software Valuable For Wholesalers? 

Before analyzing the elements of this product, we see for what reason to buy window blinds software. How it is valuable in a cutting-edge market, where the rivalry between window treatment organizations is savage. Wholesalers of blinds have been around for quite a long time and a considerable lot of them are dug in customary ways of working together. Significantly such software utilizes to deal with the entire of a blind distributer business and in addition to a piece of it.

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