Widespread remote working is making it tough for employers to support their staff and build engagement. In a new report, Questionmark, the online assessment provider, explores how managers can make the best possible people decisions to engage and motivate at-home workers.
The report observes that, since employees have been working from home, the factors that undermine engagement and demotivate staff have been magnified. These include:
- Lack of career development – people are more likely to move jobs to develop their career than for money. Some 41% believe their careers have stalled in recent months.1
- Feeling less valued – managers play a crucial role in encouraging and motivating staff. But when working remotely, they can’t rely on facial cues and body language to check if praise is needed.
- Disconnected from colleagues – employees miss the social interaction they enjoyed with co-workers. Team spirit can suffer as a result.
- Uncertainty and anxiety – when workers worry that their job is on the line it increases anxiety and undermines performance. A survey suggests 75% of workers believe that living amidst a pandemic has increased their stress levels.2
Lars Pedersen, CEO of Questionmark, said: “Now more than ever, employers need to ensure that they give staff the support they need to perform at their best. The ability of employees to adapt to changing circumstances and learn new skills will be at the heart of surviving a period of economic uncertainty.
“The decisions that employers make around engaging and motivating staff really matter. Data from online staff assessments can give employers the information they need to make good people decisions. Leaders can ensure employees get the support, training and development they need to thrive.”
Online assessments give employers robust and up-to-date information on the skills that workers possess. Managers can quickly identify where strengths and weaknesses lie.
Additional training can be introduced to build needed skills and help employees develop their career. By testing participants after the training has finished, assessments can show if it worked.
Tests and assessments can also reveal attitudes toward working from home and identify particular concerns that employees have around face to face contact. As a result, employers can make better decisions around establishing a working from home culture and managing physical meetups.
For more information on supporting employees to reach their potential, download the full report: Making better decisions and engaging a remote workforce.
The report forms part of the ‘Questionmark Viewpoint’ series which explores the challenges that Questionmark customers face, and how Questionmark helps address them.
Notes to editors
About Questionmark
Questionmark provides a secure enterprise-grade assessment platform and professional services to leading organizations around the world, delivered with care and unequalled expertise. Its full-service online assessment tool and professional services help customers to improve their performance and meet their compliance requirements. Questionmark enables organizations to unlock their potential by delivering assessments which are valid, reliable, fair and defensible.
Questionmark offers secure powerful integration with other LMS, LRS and proctoring services making it easy to bring everything together in one place. Questionmark's cloud-based assessment management platform offers rapid deployment, scalability for high-volume test delivery, 24/7 support, and the peace-of-mind of secure, audited U.S., Australian and European-based data centers.
1 https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-covid-19-effect-on-career-development-forward-backward-or-stalled/
2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2020/10/08/mental-health-leadership-survey-reveals-80-of-remote-workers-would-quit-their-jobs-for-this/#45cf625a3a0f
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201020005129/en/
Contacts:
UK: James Boyd-Wallis: james.boyd-wallis@fourteenforty.uk 07793 021 607
