5 Best Practices for Remote Workers in the Financial Industry

 

While most remote employees feel comfortable working at home, some do not feel comfortable doing so. In order to make your remote employees feel more comfortable, here are 5 tips for promoting a positive work-life balance: Engage remote employees, secure equipment, and foster social interaction. Ensure your employees are engaged with your company culture, and you will be on your way to retaining good talent. Below, you will find 5 tips for managing remote employees in the financial industry.

Engage remote employees

If you are a manager in the financial industry, you know how difficult it can be to manage your remote employees. Fortunately, there are several strategies for engaging remote employees that will help you improve your results. First, you need to develop a culture of trust in your company. Building trust requires more than providing a good salary. Employees want to feel they are a part of the organization, and you can do this by giving them opportunities for social and educational interactions.

Another important factor is acknowledgement. Recognition increases employee loyalty. People are more loyal to an organization if they know their work is valued and acknowledged. Roofstock's Gary Beasley says kudos are a great way to do this. Kudos, for example, cost nothing and give employees a sense of public recognition for their work. They also provide social currency. Those who get kudos are likely to be more loyal and productive.

Secure equipment

The sudden shift to a remote workforce has caused a refocus on the security of endpoints, including company-issued equipment. For example, institutions must implement corporate malware protection, vulnerability detection and patching, and local firewalls on devices used by remote workers. Banks must also make sure that employees have secure equipment while accessing company networks from home. To avoid any security issues, banks must install secure software on employee-issued equipment, which can be updated automatically and without manual intervention.

For remote employees, a corporate policy that outlines the type of equipment they can use is the best way to ensure security. Employers must make clear expectations and provide training to ensure that they are protecting sensitive data. For instance, employees working from home should use company-issued laptops and VPN access with MFA keys. In addition, employers should install encryption on corporate-issued devices. And if employees are bringing their own devices, they should be provided with pre-configured routers.

Transparency about pay impact

Having access to salary information has both positive and negative effects for employees. Transparency in pay has benefited some companies and hurt others, depending on the company's culture. In the past, discussing salaries in the workplace was taboo. But nowadays, with websites like Glassdoor and PayScale, discussing salaries is a socially acceptable topic. Some companies have even boldly stated their pros and cons of implementing pay transparency.

A Beqom study reveals that pay discrepancies can negatively impact worker retention. Nearly 40% of workers believe their company does not provide them with a fair wage. In fact, 58% of Gen Z workers would consider moving to another company if their bosses made more money. Moreover, when employees believe their colleagues are earning more than them, their intentions to stay at the company drop.

Encourage social interaction

While a third of employees can work remotely for 90 percent of their time, that still leaves a third of the workforce missing out on social interaction with their on-premises counterparts. The other two-thirds, however, can still find social interactions beneficial and retain a sense of cultural belonging. One solution to this problem is to bring remote workers into the office more often. Instead of using microhubs, however, managers can build multiple hubs, which will allow for more social interaction amongst all employees.

Aside from offering a virtual workspace, companies should hold company-wide social events to encourage interaction. Companies can host virtual cooking classes, book clubs, happy hours, and similar events for in-person and remote workers to participate in. Some companies even offer dual-virtual employee training sessions. As long as the events are open to both types of employees, they'll increase their likelihood of attracting a diverse workforce.