Essential tips for Enterprise managing a remote workforce.

As business becomes more global teams can be dispersed across cities, time zones and continents. Thanks to changes in technology the concept of a fully or partially remote workforce is more  common than ever. However, managing people remotely can seem like a completely different challenge than managing people who you work in the same location with. Businesses need to think  about the framework to support managers to enhance the output of their remote teams.

So how do you do it?

Lines of communication

Implementing technology, such as remote-accessible servers, cloud-based messenger tools and video chat are cost-effective ways to manage this and gives managers a way to build rapport  with and maintain their teams output. Expanding on video chat, use it as much as you can. Research shows that the majority of communication is non-verbal. Email and instant messages can  lack the context of a...

How to fill in application form the right way

An application form is often the first and most difficult stage of landing yourself a new job. It has becoming increasingly common trend in the job market for companies to ask applicants to fill in an application form rather than submitting a more general CV. While this approach can benefit the employer in many ways, it can be time-consuming and difficult process for an applicant and can often cause quite a bit of hair pulling and worry!

Determine exactly what the application form questions are after

When attempting to draft an answer to an application form question, it is important that you approach it with the correct mentality. Don’t simply take a question at face value.You need to consider exactly what skills and attributes the question is trying to look for. For example, a question such as ‘what are your hobbies and interests?’ doesn’t mean that they want to know about the rare stamp collection you’ve...

There is a great article just posted recently on on Linked in by David Kerpen “17 Things You Should Never Say to Your Boss”. It outlines some thoughts from new age CEO’s on leadership, honesty, hiring qualities they look for in employees. It also highlights the importance of honesty, openness for productive workplace and a healthy workplace culture.

Well worth a read for employee, managers and Human Resource (HR) employees.

I’m not sure what this google employee was trying to prove. The quote from the article could indicate the anonymous person may already be an ex-employee.

‘I Agree to Disagree’

“Whether it is said explicitly or passive-aggressively, this mindset has no place in startup culture. Those who have this mindset should either found their own startups or go work in big corporate America where this goes unnoticed. At a startup, you’re either all the way in or all the way out.”

The rise of popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has had an almost revolutionary impact on the way that people communicate and interact with one another online. It is a great way to keep in touch with rarely seen family members or friends, find people with similar interests, promote a business and a hundred other things besides. Given the way that it links people together through social networks, it is perhaps surprising that HR teams have to some extent been slow on the uptake when it comes to using social media. Listed below are just some of the ways that it can benefit an HR team and business in general.

Recruitment: One of the biggest reasons that HR teams should use social media is that it really does open up a whole new world of recruitment possibilities. Although a position may be advertised internally and externally, its profile may not always be high enough to attract the most suitable candidates. Websites such as LinkedIn are ideal for building up a...

Social Media, is it an Asset, Liability of just a Fact of Modern Life? It depends who you ask and also how it is managed. Managers may see it as a timewaster but many employees view it as a necessary way of networking their customers, colleagues and a way to express their views.

From the companies perspective it can be enormously valuable if the organisation is open to new ideas, the employees are happy and enjoy good conditions and are well managed. It can promote the company image, help in recruitment and product and service promotion. If however the company culture is poor, employees are not happy and there is a general atmosphere of mistrust then this benefits will not be realised.

On the other hand it can become another distraction to work for employees, in some cases it could allow the leakage of confidential private documents or publish inaccurate company information.

The reality is that whether employers like it or not it is here to stay, they need to recognise that it is...