Arnon Barnes: Working From Home

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Personal Development: International Speaker, Peak Performance Trainer and Business Mentor Arnon Barnes looks at working from home.

How do you keep your team motivated while they work from home? Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, the common workplace has rapidly changed. For most employees, working from home has now become the norm. As many businesses have noticed, there are many advantages for employees to work from home. However, it does come with a few challenges. In this article I am going to share my four main ways on how to keep your team motivated while they work from a distance.

Stay connected: To keep the energy high, address certain issues or to just have everyone’s nose pointed in the right direction, I would recommend an online team meeting at least once a week. As the leader, it is your job to create a trusting environment on the call. This stimulates open communication and is essential for employees to work successfully. You see, a connected, positive culture is key in keeping employees happy, and happy employees equal motivated employees.

Aside from the team meeting, it’s important for everyone to stay connected with each other. Allocate time slots where everyone should be available because there is no way to communicate effectively if people aren’t online.

Working from home also means your employees don’t get to catch up at the coffee corner. Use a business messenger tool or even WhatsApp for the nitty-gritty talk. As the leader of the company, pick up the phone whenever you can, especially for situations might be emotional or stressful. Guiding people through these situations is done far better through the phone or virtual call. Tone of voice and body language read better through these mediums than through an email.

Action: It’s management’s task to set clear actions and deadlines. When your employees know what to do, by when, they’ll be in their power, and this in return will drive their performance.

A task manager tool is great for this. That way, everyone can see which tasks they’re assigned and by when they have to be completed. In addition, each employee can see what the other is doing, adding to the accountability factor. Use social pressure to its advantage.

Trust: Once you’ve clarified responsibilities, expectations and set deadlines, you have to trust your employees to follow through and get the job done. As a leader, you need to do everything you can to set your employees up for a win. Provide the right tools and support so they can work happily and effectively from a distance. A big factor of the success formula is simply not to micromanage, but to provide them with what is needed and then move out of the way.

Fun: The company’s vision should be audacious, out of this world and exciting. It should also be crystal clear, motivating employees to want to move towards it. However, making the vision tangible is a long-term project and could take years. Instead of having a big employee outing or party annually, have smaller ones more frequently. People love having something to look forward to, especially when it’s something fun. So many companies get stuck in the seriousness of doing business, but from my experience business should also be fun, and who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

To close: The fundamentals in managing employees who work from home are very much the same as if they are were in an actual office building. Open, honest, direct communication is important, no matter where you are situated. Working from home makes this a bit more challenging. Therefore, I strongly recommend you, the leader, invest in good communication tools. Because good communication equals motivated and effective employees. This in return ups productivity, enabling your business to grow and reach its full potential.

Short bio: Arnon started his first business at age 11 and built and sold his first multi-million euro company by the age of 28! In the past 5 years, Arnon has personally trained and coached more than 90,000 people from well over 65 different countries from all over the world! He is an explosive international speaker, author, investor and one of Europe’s leading and most exciting business mentors.

Meet and work with Arnon Barnes live? Join one of his next upcoming events in Europe. For more information on the event, or coaching, contact his office via info@ arnonbarnes.com or check out his website www.arnonbarnes.com

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