Remote but motivated: The #WorkFromHome solution

Bank al Etihad
Bank al Etihad
Published in
5 min readDec 8, 2021

Numerous studies have shown that employees benefit their companies when working remotely, whether through increased productivity, performance and staff retention or lower overhead costs.

The COVID-19 lockdowns gave businesses around the world the opportunity to experiment with remote and flexible working as employees worked from home to prevent the risk of spreading the virus.

In Jordan, government and private-sector employees spent more than two months working from home following the outbreak of the pandemic in mid-March 2020.

As life gradually returns to normal and companies resume work, some employers have decided to continue giving their employees the flexibility to choose where they work.

But how exactly are these businesses keeping their people motivated while working from home? And how are they measuring their employees’ productivity from a distance?

SHARED REWARDS

At Mawdoo3.com, an online Arabic content publisher that is often described as the ‘Wikipedia of the Arab world’, employees have been given the option to work remotely if they want to, until the end of the year.

After completing the annual plan for 2021, the Jordan-based company gave its teams new targets to work on. If any of the teams reach or exceed the targets, the benefits and profits would be divided among all members. The initiative has incentivised everyone to do their best regardless from where they work.

“We are looking at how to create a performance target-based environment rather than a time-based one and how to give employees greater flexibility,” said Esra’a Alsanie, product manager at Mawdoo3.com.

“We don’t feel that we are working just to complete hours, but towards a bigger goal, and everyone is motivated to get that reward. I can assure you it has encouraged us in a huge way.”

Founded by Mohammad Jaber and Rami Qawasmi in 2010, Mawdoo3.com has grown from a young startup to become the world’s most visited Arabic website, with more than 50 million users every month. Nearly 400 people work at the company today, mostly in Amman but also in its Cairo and Dubai offices.

“When they decided to let us work from home, they met with every single manager and employee and provided us with guidelines and lists of things to do when working remotely. They told us: ‘It’s your team, it’s your product, and we are here to help you better motivate your team’,” said Alsanie, who is also a fellow at TechWomen, a program that aims to empower the next generation of women leaders in STEM fields.

“They somehow let the product managers to be the source of motivation for employees and they gave us tips on how to keep our teams motivated and follow up with them. For example, if someone does not have a desk or laptop at home, we can provide them with equipment from the office.”

FREEDOM TO CREATE

In creative fields, the benefits of working from home are more pronounced. Employees can get creative on how to take advantage of their day and can define work in a fun way, bringing back that energy to any project.

“At our company, people work five hours at the office and three at home. This makes a big difference to productivity levels,” said Yaseen Ghazal, founder and CEO at Feeback, a marketing tool that helps small businesses to enhance the quality of their service by rewarding customers with cashback for sharing their feedback. The Amman-based company was founded in August 2019 and currently employs five people.

“Our employees don’t need to wake up early, run to the shower and get stuck in traffic. Instead, they can wake up slowly, enjoy their coffee, spend time with family, do some work on their laptop, come to office around 11pm or 12pm, and go home before the rush hour. Why should I keep my employee eight hours in the office when I can get the same amount of work in five hours?”

When assessing the quality of the content that his team produces, Ghazal mainly looks at how creative and witty it is.

“Whenever someone comes up with creative content, we show huge appreciation, and we create competition among them over the most creative work. We look for quality, not quantity. And, if you don’t do well today, it’s okay, tomorrow you might do better. However, if this becomes a pattern, there might be a deficiency somewhere; maybe they are not suitable for us.”

FOCUS ON RESULTS

At Maqsam, which employs 21 people, working remotely is an option for employees as long as they come to office twice a week. The cloud-based telephony solution is used by startups, SMEs, and remote teams to decentralise and localise how they communicate with their clients globally.

“We are already prepared for remote work by design so there was no problem for us to transition to #WorkFromHome like we did. During the COVID-19 lockdown, we actually grew in business by about 10 times; we were one of the companies that benefitted from the situation,” said Jordanian entrepreneur Fouad Jeryes, co-founder and chief product officer at Maqsam.

“The policy we have is that there is no ‘punch in, punch out’, and no mandatory time to show up at. Everybody is free to work from wherever they want and however they want as long as they bring results. About 80% of our employees come to office and 20% continue to work remotely because they prefer that. But we do ask them to come in at least twice a week.”

To track employee productivity from a distance and find out whether they are advancing on the tasks they have, the company uses a project management platform. Project management software, especially options that are could-based, are effective tools for project managers and teams to complete client requirements and manage time, budget, and scope constraints. Some of the top examples of such platforms are Nifty, Monday.com and Jira.

“We can see their performance through our platform and during one-on-one meetings that happen on a weekly or monthly basis either remotely or in person. Our biggest goal is to be as open as possible with our employees,” Jeryes said.

While Jeryes allows his team to work from home, he personally enjoys coming to the office, getting out of his comfort zone, and meeting with business partners.

“We used to work out of co-working spaces and different offices. Nothing beats creating your own environment and culture inside your own business. Being at the office is my personal way of being most productive,” he said.

--

--