Addressing the Challenges of Managing Remote Employees with Superior Task, Workflow, and Project Management Tools

Every manager today knows the challenges of managing remote employees. That means they also now know that remote-working environments can be highly productive and remarkably cohesive as long as companies develop processes that support remote employees. That’s why financial asset management firms are now establishing remote work procedures that support their businesses. 

Remote working is not simply doing work at home. It is a way of increasing productivity in ways that benefit both employees and management. These benefits are why many firms have experienced success with flexible scheduling including, alternating time in the home and office, shorter or longer daily hours, as well as working remotely full-time offsite.  

For management staff, work creation and deadline stress go down, since work is still done regardless of the location of employees. Remote working helps employees manage their work/life balance – improving job satisfaction.  

It’s not perfect. The challenges of managing remote employees are many. Managers, for example, often worry that they might not have sufficient interaction with employees to make sure their teams are working efficiently on the firm’s priorities. Conversely, many employees worry that remote working may have an impact on their career path. They might feel they’re not receiving all the information they need to succeed, nor given direction when they need it.  

Many great tools like Asana, Jira, Monday, Trello, and others can help companies manage their businesses. The cloud-based, workflow management platform OpsCheck is designed specifically for financial firms and fund administrators, however. Whether they’re reporting, reconciling, calculating NAV, assessing risk, and other responsibilities, remote employees at financial firms using OpsCheck can enjoy as much contact with coworkers and managers as they need and vice versa. 

This communication bolsters engagement, maintaining productivity. Study after study has shown that engaged financial employees are simply more productive. The keys to achieving that engagement among remote workers in financial firms include clear task workflows, checking in regularly, and ensuring that employees are considered valuable regardless of their work environment location. 

Managing Remote Employees 

Here are some tips for managing remote employees at financial firms and fund administrators. For management staff, keeping in contact with remote employees can be a challenge. In normal office environments, people communicate through meetings but a lot of significant work happens through casual encounters throughout the day. For remote workers, new habits need formulating, such as regular check-ins via email, group chat applications, and phone calls. 

Technology has become a crucial piece of the remote-working puzzle. It’s the best way to manage remote employees. Online video chat, shared documents, and mobile social apps are becoming more of the norm. The technological needs of serious financial firms and fund administrators, however, demand the sophistication of a centralized platform. A task, workflow, and project management platform connects staff across all departments, from office to office, across the globe. 

As an operations management and task-tracking platform, OpsCheck delivers the ideal task, project, and workflow management tool that solves the problem of how to effectively manage remote employees in finance and fund administration. Financial firms use OpsCheck’s automated processes and operations tools to help remote employees accomplish these financial tasks quickly and efficiently:  

• Regular reporting on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis 
• Reconciliations and treasury reviews and calculations 
• Monthly or quarterly NAV and performance measurement calculations 
• The compliance calendar for regulators, trustees, and governance 
• Counterparty risk, operational risk, and credit officer reviews 
• Automated document archiving 
• Manage all personal or group projects 

Onboarding Remote Employees  

Managing workers started with onboarding them. Among the most important tips for onboarding remote employees is a platform that is flexible so that financial firms, fund administrators, and other users can tailor their needs to how they work in changing conditions. Any platform that doesn’t easily adapt has no place in the modern business environment and will fail at onboarding for remote employees. 

OpsCheck’s three tool functions are core to this flexibility that cultivate best practices for onboarding remote employees in finance: Tasks, Workflow, and Notes. 

Tasks 

The Tasks tool enables users to organize responsibilities in a clear, searchable framework accessible to all that is perfect for onboarding financial firms’ remote employees. Whether a task is a one-time audit or client call, a repeatable or frequent job like reporting, NAV and performance measurements, or ad hoc, like a board presentation, the tasks tool can organize the work within a clear, easy-to-use interface that explains all policies, procedures, goals, and other aspects of the workplace. 

In addition to task tracking, the Workflow tool serves as a powerhouse of collaboration within the platform, a vital function as remote employees join a team. At its core, Workflow gathers Tasks into a seamless timeline of work for team players to see where they fit into the overall process for these on-demand events. 

Notes provide task tracking for a versatile array of ad-hoc working needs of remote financial professionals and fund administrators, from the standard to-do lists to reminders and automated alerts. Users can make their task tracking private. 

Training Remote Employees 

Onboarding and managing remote employees’ training at financial firms are distinct functions. OpsCheck easily provides learning materials, knowledge bases, and tutorials as well as reminders and schedules for training and managing remote employees. 

Within the Task function, users can develop and categorize tasks by type, date, user, and manager – a calendar for meetings and deliverables between compliance officers, regulators, and trustees, for example. They can log due dates and times and the automated notification system will ensure that no task gets overlooked or forgotten in a training session. Everyone involved in the chain can have access through highly adaptable permissions granted on a need-to-know basis, too. 

With Workflow, any event that requires multiple steps by various people, regardless of department, improves. By building out workflows, managers can track the flow for efficiency, timeliness, and completion, developing standards that can then be used in training. 

In Notes, training goals and individual responsibilities that users prefer to maintain in a more detailed or personalized way can be categorized and dated with automated reminders in one unified dashboard. 

Best Software for Managing Remote Employees 

OpsCheck is the best software to manage remote employees in the financial sector. Its time-tracking software for remote employees builds on the Task, Workflow, and Note functions to create the ideal virtual workspace. 

While individual departments can build their Tasks and assign them categories, the Workflow tool can pull together these Tasks across departments, easily maintaining AML/KYC compliance, for example. The completion of a Task in one department, for instance, can sequence in Workflow to the next Task function in a different department. 

Using these tools to manage remote employees, users and executors of specific job functions can be identified so that everyone understands who is responsible and whom they can contact for clarification for their information needs, task completion expectations and time-frames to complete jobs. Examples of Workflows that consist of regular, automated Tasks that provide tools for managing remote employees include:

• Onboarding / Off-boarding new clients, employees, investors, or vendors 
• Due diligence evaluations 
• New business launch timelines and the parties and steps involved 
• Re-balance funds or portfolios 
• Evaluate new investments, portfolio companies, and side pockets 
• Capital calls 
• New subscriptions, redemptions, AML / KYC, and client suitability
  

The Notes function, furthermore, is ideal for: 

• Responding to client calls or emails 
• Finishing and distributing internal reports 
• Maintaining training materials and knowledge bases 
• Reminders to respond to senior management inquiries 
• Prepare for client/investor due-diligence meetings 
• Greatly improve team efficiency and accountability 
• Complete presentation for board, clients, or regulators 
• Approve or sign off on internal requests
  

Now is the time to develop remote working procedures to meet the challenges of managing remote employees. 

Financial firms and their operations teams need an immediate response to the demands of the remote workplace, including the challenges of managing remote employees. Flexible operations platforms like OpsCheck are the answer. 

Remote workers need to stay in the loop of the greater office community, managers need immediate access to monitor ongoing workflows, and clients want to have confidence that business continuity issues are being met. 

With OpsCheck, you can meet these needs with fast implementation and robust support to overcome the challenges of managing remote employees and continue to excel with the best business practices.