Are you considering creating, or have you created a distributed team? Sharon Koifman published his timely book to help you with remote work. He writes with empathy to owners wherever they are on the journey. The book is a quick, funny read, and – spoiler alert – is designed to help you embrace remote management.
What if there were tools available for creating a better work environment for your staff?
In his business book, Surviving Remote Work: How to Thrive as a Leader and Entrepreneur in the Remote Age, Sharon Koifman answers your questions about this change with self-deprecating humor and a light touch. The author brings 20 years of experience operating his remote worker placement agency DistantJob, dedicating the book’s first section to reassuring you. Then, he shares a three-step approach to working through everything you’ll need to do for surviving the first couple of weeks of remote management.
- Identify practices (you already have them in place)
- Define values (you already know what those are)
- Create normalcy with 1 & 2 (you can do this!)
The process serves to help you overcome every human’s biggest fear: change. Koifman advises that you follow these steps, and you’ll end up with the trust needed to create an excellent distributed workplace.
What if remote work options increased productivity and improved communication?
Second Biggest Fear: people are prone to distraction, which leads to lower productivity.
Sharon Koifman challenges you to define your meaning of production. He advises identifying KPIs, tracking them in a system, and relying on the results. Never worry again about employee productivity when you can measure it. Ultimately, Koifman proves that the average in-office workday totals two hours and fifty-three minutes of productive work, anyway.
“Remote workers are 77 percent more productive, 52 percent are willing to take less time off, and 23 percent are willing to work more hours in return for working from home.”
So whether you’re worried about your productivity or the employee’s, try blocking off 3 hours of uninterrupted time each day and enjoy connecting to family, learning a new skill, or more sleep.
Try as much as possible to replicate the benefits that would usually come with the office, such as health care, holidays, and vacations. Moreover, leadership also needs to give all employees more personalized attention to create those happy, independent remote employees, the kind you’ll spend less time managing.
I’d go so far as to say you should spend the majority of your meetings learning about your employees as people. Like a therapist who discusses pleasant daily life events to find our hidden pains, you can home in on emotional challenges through the cracks.
This is the big change, and if you master it then you will bring your remote awesomeness level up to 90% on our new remote-awesomeness-o-meter.
This refreshingly realistic, well-organized book encourages leaders to build a distributed team or improve their pandemic solution. Find the best employees and keep them by investing in remote workers. Find your copy on Amazon now.
