3 Tips to Manage Employees Working Outside HQs A common project collaboration tool helps in setting tasks as well as monitoring updates and deadlines

In today's world, workplaces are not limited to geographies. Chances are that you have multiple offices in various states and countries.

But the question is how you track the employee productivity in such cases. How do you know that deadlines are met or targets are achieved and work is done?

Entrepreneur India, in a conversation with various leaders, helps you understand how to manage employees who work away from the headquarters.

Regional Managers

Amit Saxena, Managing Director and CEO, Unimoni India prefers the traditional way to connect to all its employees.

"We have a distributed model where senior leadership takes charge of a region and resides there. This layer of leadership has a direct connection to the India HQ. All employees also have a direct line to the CEO through Whatsapp, phone and mail in case they want to share any ideas or voice any concerns," he says.

The NBFC, which has a presence across in India - 160 location with 376 branches, also prefers doing weekly live video messages from CEO's office that get broadcast throughout the branch network.

"We also host internal news, company announcements and a magazine on our social portal to stay connected with our employees," he added.

Individual Contributor Role

While on the other side, Sachin Uppal, CMO, Play Games24X7 feels individual contributor roles work the best in remote setups.

"I am based in Mumbai and two of my team members based in Bangalore work remotely from home. Their role is largely individual contributor role. They have a choice to come to the office, however, they can continue to work from home," he shares while adding that, "Setting timelines, clearly measurable deliverables for them helps in managing the process well. I tracked the data for these two employees by asking them the overlap times between their work and we realized they only spend 2 work hours in one month overlapping. So, I decided to let them chose the days when they would want to come to the office otherwise they can work from home."

Additionally, the entrepreneur believes that having a common project collaboration tool helps in setting tasks as well as monitoring updates and deadlines.

"We use Monday.com for the same. This tool helps in setting owners for tasks, managing deadlines and updates while all team members are on a common platform," he added.

Regular Reporting

Furthermore, communication is indeed the key to stay connected to your remote location employees. In the case of sales representatives, Kapil Gupta, CEO, Shella Consultants suggests entrepreneurs asking for daily reports such as the management information system (MIS) report.

Gupta points out that, "The company should be able to anticipate his moves based on his routine work. Additionally, a senior from the company should always be available for him in case he gets stuck to make a decision pertaining to a business opportunity."