Remote work has transformed not just businesses, but the way we work as a whole. With this change, businesses need to consider a new aspect of the employee experience: the remote employee experience.
A good remote employee experience can improve productivity, morale, and overall efficiency, while a bad experience can bring all of those crashing down. So, let’s examine remote employee experience, its benefits, its challenges, and strategies you can use to improve your employees' remote experience.
What is Remote Employee Experience (REX)?
Remote employee experience (REX) is the overall quality of the interactions, connections, and ease of work employees encounter when working remotely. If employees have a good overall experience, where they can access the work and tools they need, collaborate with coworkers, and remain connected, it leads to a positive REX.
REX covers a wide range of remote work aspects, including communication and collaboration, access to the tools they need for work, and even the company culture. If they have a good remote experience, this can lead to improved productivity, morale, and employee retention, whereas a poor REX will drive workers away.
The Shift of Employee Experience: From Office to Remote Work
The employee experience has changed with the advent of remote and hybrid work, shifting from traditional office environments to remote work setups. “Casual Fridays” and office pizza parties are no longer enough to keep employees satisfied, especially when many won’t be in the office to participate.
As a result, businesses must consider an array of factors when assessing the employee experience, including:
Flexibility: Remote and hybrid work give employees more flexibility with when and where they work. Embracing this flexibility is key to providing a great REX, as it lets employees remain productive while adjusting their working hours to fit their schedules.
Work-life balance: Remote work has been shown to benefit work-life balance in many ways. Not only does it provide more flexible schedules, but it also saves employees time spent commuting and waiting through traffic, giving them more time at home with their families and improving overall satisfaction.
Collaboration tools: Remote employees still need to communicate and collaborate with their coworkers. The tools you use for remote and hybrid work should include communication and remote collaboration features so employees can work together even when they’re far apart.
Remote employee engagement: Employees should feel connected and engaged, even when working from afar. Remote employee engagement is essential for maintaining employee satisfaction and a positive REX.
How a Seamless Remote Employee Experience Drives Team Productivity
Let’s consider the benefits of a positive, seamless remote employee experience. Remote work isn’t going anywhere, so organizations should make an effort to create a positive remote employee experience. In doing so, they can gain several benefits, including:
1. Higher employee engagement and satisfaction
While employers once feared that remote work would lead to employees disengaging from their work and their jobs, the reality has been quite the opposite. A good remote work environment has employees actively engaged with their work and teams, leading to higher levels of employee satisfaction, thanks to factors like improved work-life balance, flexibility, and, of course, the lack of commuting through miles of traffic.
2. Improved productivity and focus
A good remote employee experience can also improve productivity and focus, thanks in large part to the improved engagement and satisfaction. When employees have the tools they need to work remotely efficiently, productivity improves significantly, and employees can focus more on the work in front of them.
3. Better work-life balance and retention
One of the biggest benefits of remote work is the improvement it brings to work-life balance, by providing employees with more flexibility and giving them back time that would otherwise be spent commuting each day. This leads to improved employee retention, as satisfied employees are less likely to leave a company.
4. Cost efficiency for organizations
Remote work can also be financially advantageous. Remote work allows organizations to save money on electricity, real estate, and so on, while the improved productivity and efficiency lead to higher returns. The enhanced retention also helps companies save, as employee turnover and the cost of hiring replacements can be expensive.
Challenges in Delivering a Great Remote Employee Experience
If you want to create a great remote employee experience for your teams, be aware of the common challenges. Understanding these obstacles will help you be better prepared to address them:
1. Communication gaps and employee isolation
Communication is one of the most essential elements of remote work. Employees should be able to connect, communicate, and collaborate seamlessly; otherwise, they may become isolated from their teams, which is detrimental to well-being, employee satisfaction, and productivity.
2. Technology limitations and tool overload
Remote work requires the right technology to be truly efficient, but too many tools can also be overwhelming. Make sure you invest in tools and solutions that enable secure remote work, but are also user-friendly and easy to learn. Otherwise, employees may get overloaded with complicated tech.
3. Security and compliance risks
Cybersecurity and IT compliance are essential, especially in industries with specific compliance requirements such as GDPR and HIPAA. Make sure you find a secure remote access solution that meets your security and regulatory requirements.
4. Difficulty measuring productivity remotely
Remote work can lead to improved productivity, but sometimes that can be hard to prove. It’s essential to invest in a solution that includes real-time monitoring and analytics to measure productivity and assess the impact of remote work on your teams.
How to Track and Measure Remote Employee Experience
So, how can you measure REX? Several metrics can reflect the quality of the remote employee experience, including:
Employee engagement: If employees are engaging more with their work and coworkers, that’s a positive sign for your REX. However, if they’re distracted and disengaged, it could indicate a need for improvement.
Productivity: When remote work is properly implemented, it can improve productivity. Stagnating productivity, on the other hand, is a sign that the REX is low.
Satisfaction surveys: Sometimes the best way to measure the employee experience is just to ask the employees. Satisfaction surveys are strong indicators of how employees feel and where there’s room for improvement.
Retention rates: Tracking retention rates can indicate a positive REX, as satisfied employees are less likely to leave.
Work-life balance indicators: These are more difficult to track, as there aren’t exactly measurable data points related to work-life balance. But if employees are reporting higher levels of satisfaction from the ability to spend more time with their families (and less time in traffic), that’s a positive indication.
Strategies to Drive Success with an Optimized Remote Employee Experience
So, how can organizations optimize the remote employee experience? A good REX doesn’t just happen by itself, but companies can invest in technology and build a culture that creates a positive experience.
On the cultural end, remote employees must be treated just as valuable as in-office employees. This means including them in team-building activities, recognizing them to the same extent as any other employee, and building a communicative work environment where remote employees can chat with their colleagues.
On a technological level, companies should invest in tools designed to make remote work more efficient, such as Splashtop’s remote access and support solutions. Remote access ensures employees can access all the tools, files, projects, and resources they need for their work. Remote support ensures IT can support their devices from anywhere.
If your business invests in creating a positive REX, you’ll see improved engagement, productivity, and performance, even in distributed work environments. While this may require investing in new tools, it pays off immeasurably.
Elevate Employee Experience Anywhere with Splashtop Remote Solutions
When you want to create a positive remote employee experience, you need solutions that make it easy for employees to work from anywhere. Fortunately, Splashtop is one of the best ways to do that.
With Splashtop, employees can remotely access their work devices, including all their software, data, and projects. No matter where they go or what device they use, they can easily and securely access their work with seamless connectivity.
Additionally, companies can use Splashtop for onboarding, showing new remote employees the ropes from their personal devices. If there’s ever a need for IT support, Splashtop’s remote support software lets IT agents access the remote device to provide troubleshooting and assistance from anywhere and on any device. As a result, remote employees are never left adrift or disconnected from the company.
Splashtop is also incredibly secure, as it’s designed to meet a wide array of industry and government regulations. Splashtop meets industry security standards, including ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 compliance, and supports GDPR and CCPA requirements. Splashtop includes security features such as multi-factor authentication, remote connection notifications, and session logging to keep each remote session secure.
If you want to provide an amazing remote employee experience to your remote workers, Splashtop has the seamless, high-quality remote access tools you need. Experience it for yourself with a free trial today:
