How to help your team improve their remote work practices?

We all know that in the last two years a lot of workplaces had to adjust to keep employees safe and follow various health and safety measures. The biggest adjustment is probably the remote work. This type of workers and also employers working from home are increasing.

Today both employers and employees know how beneficial a work from home option can be, with many companies shifting to full-time remote or offering flexible work solutions indefinitely. So, from that point forward it’s essential to maintain certain best practices in order to be successful.

How to help your team improve their remote work practices?

1 | Organice flexible schedules

With the right organization it’s possible to work in different periods of time throughout the day and not the traditional 9 to 5, so planning and good time management is the key to achieve all the tasks we want, both in professional and personal routines.

Every department has its own pace and dynamics, so as a manager it would be something good to talk with your employees in order to find the best schedule for each of them. At the end of the day the majority of people end up working standard hours even in remote work.

2 | Define goals

Working from home requires discipline, no doubt about it, it’s necessary to accomplish some specific task day to day in order to meet the established goals, so as a manager one good practice is to set clear expectations for employees. Start following weekly update meetings and short term goals, so everyone will know and understand what tasks need to be done and prioritize.

You might be interested in:  Classify your employees: the difference between full time and part time

3 | Trust is important

It’s true, managing a remote team is not easy. Managers need to lead and guide people from different locations, time zones and also different backgrounds. As a remote manager you have to create a healthy environment and a good working relationship between all team members.  

One thing we need to understand is that remote teams need space and some freedom to manage their work efficiently, so over communication and micromanagement can affect productivity in a negative way.

According to different research, when employees feel empowered at work, it directly leads to high job satisfaction, retention and good performance.

4 | Manage documents in the cloud

Storing your documents and files in a cloud data center makes it possible to have access and share them anytime you want and in an efficient way. One of the main advantages when you follow this approach is the ability to edit documents online regardless of your location or device. This function can also be extended to co-workers, clients, partners or maybe suppliers. 

Managing documents in the cloud it’s a plus when it comes to security, collaboration, permission, backup, recovery of documents and cost.

Now you can apply these remote work practices.

MidtownHR can help your company with simple solutions for payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team, ¡Let’s talk!

Classify your employees: the difference between full time and part time

It’s normal for small and medium companies to struggle when it comes to hiring full time and part time employees. Truth is that some companies need more part time workers and others need more full time collaborators, sometimes a mix of both.

You need to know that commonly the number of hours worked per week and the schedule helps define if it’s about a full time or part time job. For instance, a part time worker in a mall may have a schedule of 10 hours one week and the next one 25 hours. 

Most of the time employers are able to make their own definitions, so we can understand if you haven’t found what you´re looking for related to this subject so far in your research. In this article we´ll help you out.

The concepts of full time and part time jobs

Definition of a full time job

The major employment law in the United States does not provide a definition 100% clear in this matter, so it depends on the needs of the company. Some companies may require people to work 32 or 40 hours per week. The exact amount of hours is particularly important because it determines how many hours are guaranteed on a weekly basis for the employee.

Definition of part time job

The name part time job defines itself, this type of work routine has fewer hours than full time. Part time employees are not guaranteed the same amount of hours or shifts each week. 

Employees for part time jobs have the option of selecting additional turns to cover for co-workers who can´t make it because of different reasons, and sometimes they can make extra hours during a particular time of the year. Part-time jobs typically require no more than 35 hours per week, and may be as few as 5-10 hours. 

You can also read: What are the best PEO company services in 2021?

Main differences between full time and part time

Amount of hours considered for full time 

The answer is that The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has no exact definition for part-time or full-time employment, and the owners of the companies may determine their own definitions. 

However, according to the IRS, for purposes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this is the right definition to use: for a calendar month a full-time employee is someone employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week, or 130 hours of service per month.

It’s important to make the right classification

If your management does it wrong it can cause unwanted penalties, like benefits related issues for the company. For instance, if an employer under the ACA does not offer benefits to a full-time employee because they hired the person as part time colaborator the company may face fees or other demanded payments for that kind of error.

MidtownHR can help your company with simple solutions, classifying your employees, also with payroll and taxes, propose benefits that really feel like benefits, keep up with employment law and also help protect your team. MidtownHR is on a mission to create a world of optimistic entrepreneurs.