- Ramp Up Your Remote Working Policy
- Realign Core Finance Processes
- Prioritize Employee Engagement
- Focus On Strategic Finance Initiatives
- Embrace Relevant Collaboration And Productivity Tools
- Strategies for Managing a Hybrid Workforce
- Flexible work schedules
- On-site vs. Remote Balance
- Well-being and Engagement
- Training and Upskilling for Remote Finance teams
- Remote Leadership training
- The Key to Better Remote Work: Cultural Engagement
Actionable Remote Work Tips For Finance Companies
The pandemic is no longer around. However, remote work is here to stay. The flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness make it an excellent choice. I feel businesses of all sizes and scales can adapt to it.
However, running a finance company remotely sounds challenging. Firstly, clients believe in you and let you handle their money and financial information. Moreover, it is hard to control productivity. Even employees may show a lack of efficiency.
But don’t worry. I will discuss strategies to handle remote work without much stress. You only need to devise a strategic process. Let’s check out how that works out. I will also share a few actionable remote work tips for finance companies.
Ramp Up Your Remote Working Policy
Let’s check and find out flaws in your current work-from-home (remote work) policy first. Then we can work on your recruitment plan, HRM, and operations plan.
An effective policy highlights the basic rules for your team. It will leave the rest on the team. When the team can work autonomously, they will feel the liability to deliver. Hence, their productivity will also improve.
It should also set expectations regarding working hours, equipment, communication tools, productivity tracking, cybersecurity, and well-being.
Realign Core Finance Processes
After defining a remote work policy, you must realign your core financial processes. Finance companies need to work on aspects such as budgeting, cash management, and loan approval processes.
Paper invoices and checks make things complicated, even more, when your team operates out of the office. You can implement a transition from paperwork to electronic documentation and cloud-based software. At the same time, create a centralized digital workflow for it.
Prioritize Employee Engagement
Employee engagement should be on your checklist to ensure a successful remote finance function. Engaged employees also deliver more because they have a sense of belonging and motivation despite being away from the office. Moreover, it enhances bonding and collaboration.
Starting with Remote Training is an excellent idea as it makes people more comfortable with the process.
They can handle daily IT issues and stay ahead of security concerns with proper training. Conducting regular meetings and team events also helps with employee engagement.
Focus On Strategic Finance Initiatives
Remote teams often get stuck with day-to-day operations, and strategic goals and initiatives take a back seat. But finance companies must focus on them to keep the business on track.
Processes such as budget reviews, financial data analytics, and client reporting should be on top of your team’s checklist. Of course, they must also take care of the daily tasks, but long-term initiatives should be the top priority.
Embrace Relevant Collaboration And Productivity Tools
Collaboration and productivity are the pillars of success of remote teams, so you must embrace relevant tools to keep them on track. For a finance team new to remote work, proper communication tools are non-negotiable.
They keep people on the same page and facilitate quick discussions on issues such as budgeting, analytics, and reporting. Productivity apps ensure employees stay on top of productivity levels, regardless of the location. Besides implementing the tools, you must test them thoroughly to minimize cyber threats.
Managing a remote team for your finance company can be a breeze, provided you know the ins and outs of the process. You can implement these measures to stay ahead on the productivity, collaboration, and security fronts.
Strategies for Managing a Hybrid Workforce
Most finance companies prefer hybrid models. However small companies often fail to manage the remote working ecosystem professionally. Here are some basic things that they need to do right.
Flexible work schedules
We’ll start with flexible work schedules. Firstly, you have to analyze the workload fluctuations and set an optimal overlap time. Also, set core working hours when you need maximum collaboration from the team.
Meanwhile, create a flexible shift roster for the core hours. But rotate the shifts fairly between the team members. Any free scheduling software may help you with the same.
But don’t forget to communicate the shift structure to employees properly. At the same time, try to take care of individual preferences and the business demands of the company.
On-site vs. Remote Balance
We will use an example to explain how you can bring in this balance. Firstly, sort out projects that need employees to be on-site. Done?
Now, distribute the work that can be done remotely, among all employees. Here, I would like to point out one more thing. It is better to make a flexible roster and let employees decide how they will distribute the on-site shifts among themselves.
Meanwhile, you can ensure that you meet basic criteria like having a minimum number of employees onboard on-site every day.
Well-being and Engagement
A hybrid model works best if employees can avoid burnout. In a finance company, a large share of the jobs is client-facing, either B2C or B2B.
So, try to streamline working hours, even when employees are working from home.
Avoid calling up employees after work hours, just because they are working remotely. At the same time, try to retain the organic bonding within the team, when they’re working remotely.
Organize interaction, debate, and fun-activity sessions online. At the same time, call employees for one-on-one sessions. Discuss the issues that they face during remote work.
Training and Upskilling for Remote Finance teams
Finance companies must provide frequent training to employees. But that’s difficult when they are working remotely. Don’t sweat. There are several continuous online learning platforms that you can try. I prefer Coursera and Udemy.
Meanwhile also provide compulsory cybersecurity awareness training. Consequently, employees can reliably prevent phishing, fraud, and other similar attacks.
Remote Leadership training
Let leaders communicate with team members on a priority basis. For example, you can set up internal communication channels where managers can place calls and text employees and vice versa.
Your prime goal is to ensure that there are enough team bonding opportunities. Meanwhile, open and transparent communication is the root of a healthy remote working finance company.
The Key to Better Remote Work: Cultural Engagement
According to all recent surveys, finance service employees strongly prefer hybrid/remote work. However, physical separation can hamper workflow and productivity.
To stop that, recruit or promote culture ambassadors. Encourage people managers to sync with the team. They may not be the line managers. But they must have a rich sense of the company’s mission, vision, values, and goals.
Two popular examples of this culture are mentorship programs and buddy systems. Reach out if you have more questions about remote work!
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