Remote work management is a constant subject in recent business discussions. Some companies already give the option of home-office to their employees or even encourage them to take part in programs, like working from home once a week.
Some studies show that remote workers can be 13% more productive and stay longer in the company than on-site employees. There are other qualitative benefits too, such as quality of life and employee satisfaction, to name a few.
But there’s a big difference when remote work is enforced due to a world’s necessity. And that’s exactly what’s happening now with the COVID-19 outbreak. We at Pipefy—tech company and work management platform—acknowledge that this situation is new for most companies and we want to help transform this challenge into an opportunity.
We have already shared some tips in this remote work guide. Now, we want to provide information and examples of how to manage work and teams remotely. We will also share some process templates that might help you during this movement.
Customer Use Case: How JustPremium is Using Pipefy for Remote Work Management
JustPremium is the leading platform for programmatic rich media advertising headquartered in Amsterdam with operations all around the globe. Nowadays, JustPremium has 14 offices worldwide in different time zones, with more than 150 employees.
Remote work is a common practice in the company, as the whole operation isn’t physically connected. But now, with COVID-19, the daily routine completely changed. Dennis Pekel, Global Director of Operations, shared his golden tip: “We need additional communication because the team isn’t sitting at the same desk anymore.”
JustPremium’s core operation is marketing campaign flows. Understanding the stage of each customer’s single campaign is essential to any manager of the company. To manage this entire operation, they’re using Pipefy.
"We have teams in 14 offices around the world. Especially now with COVID-19, if it weren’t for Pipefy, we would certainly be struggling much more to find a way to manage our processes. Pipefy structures our daily work and gives us the visibility of how each campaign is running. Having this real-time communication is essential for us since we’re not physically connected."
Dennis Pekel, Global Director of Operations
So we asked Dennis for some tips on how to efficiently manage remote processes during the COVID-19 outbreak. He gave us three:
Have Virtual Daily Meetings
We were already used to holding virtual meetings between our offices. We always try to schedule them during the working hours of all time zones. It’s important to talk to people and to stay aligned in the process you are running.
But now, with all employees working from home, we are holding more virtual meetings. So my tip is: start the day with a quick daily session to give visibility to all employees of the department/squad.
Use More Labels and Filters
We changed the usage of Pipefy once we started to work remotely. Now, we’re using Labels to categorize all demands and filters to have full visibility of each one’s status. It’s helping us a lot.
Base the Agenda On Pipefy
Since our campaign management is made within Pipefy, it has become much easier for the manager to understand the situation of each demand by quickly looking at the platform. So I always base the agenda of daily meetings on Pipefy.
Before starting the meeting, I already know the status of each campaign. Then we use the time to discuss what looks great, what we’re struggling with and to share best practices.
6 Remote Work Templates to Help You During COVID-19
1- Remote Work Request
The Remote Work Request template allows companies to keep tabs on all employees that are working from home. It will enable the Human Resources team to easily access the status of each employee. Also, the IT team will be able to provide all the necessary equipment and software accesses to support work quality and productivity.
A Pipefy customer requested this process improvement; therefore, we created this template.
2- Access Request
As many companies are working remotely, it’s essential to control the flow of people in buildings, warehouses and parking lots.
The Access Request template helps you to collect information and the reasons why someone is entering your company’s physical spaces.
A customer also required this process. Our company’s champion explained:
“We used to manage this process in Google Forms, but now we’re implementing it in Pipefy because we can have full control and visibility of the flow. It gives us more security, since we’re not physically in our building to control people’s entries.”
3 – Medical Leave Management
During COVID-19, health is the priority. The Medical Leave Management template allows the Human Resources department to maintain visibility into the status of each employee that presents a health problem.
4 – Contractor/Freelancer Management
For different reasons, outsourcing some functions or projects may be necessary during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Contractor/Freelancer Management template is focused on helping you allocate resources and easily track who’s working on each project. It makes it a lot easier for you to keep track of all the job information and centralize the process’ documents, such as contracts or payment receipts.
5 – Expense Reimbursement
Remote work means that your employees are working from places that they’re not used to–probably from home, which may not have all the necessary infrastructure to be as efficient as the office. Also, in times like these, additional medical assistance may be required.
Some employees might need to buy equipment, assistance to pay for a medical consult or the internet provider. That’s why the Expense Reimbursement Template can centralize all these requests and manage them efficiently.
If reimbursing people isn’t the best solution for your company, you can also use the Purchasing Template, so your financial team can run the whole process.
6 – IT Service Desk
Your IT team is essential not only to provide all infrastructure necessary, as we already mentioned but also to support your remote team continuously.
Doubts on how to configure software and technical issues will probably be usual. So with the Service Desk template, all requests and communications will be centralized in a single platform.
