The Golden Rules For Managing Remote Teams

While no one is everywhere, those that are remote miss way more communication than others. These are reference points which work well in a remote team. You might have to add a few more, depending on the nature of your team and project.

Some employees find it hard to create a work-life balance now that they work from home. For some, productivity has dropped simply because they can’t get motivated at home. These considerations are important because your workforce’s performance will impact your company’s overall success. According to Global Workplace Analytics, the number of people who work from home has grown by more than 173% since 2005. There are now over five million remote employees in the U.S. If you’re already having virtual meetings with individual workers, use them to ask if they feel current processes work well.

This blog lays down some basic yet important rules that every manager should follow to manage their team more effectively. From communication, mental health to hiring, it covers different pillars of remote working. While this blog is insightful, make sure that you try other ideas to ace your role as a manager of a remote team.

Educate Yourself On The Struggles Of Remote Management

For example, random video calls may be quite jarring if employees aren’t expecting them. You’ll need to establish a sense of trust when managing people remotely that balances holding employees accountable and being understanding. When your remote team realizes that they get the deserved value, they work to achieve the goal. You can implement the methods mentioned in this article to manage the remote team properly and complete the projects well ahead of deadlines.

Share useful information on best video conferencing practices. I have in the past mailed talking sticks to my teams to act as a visual cue for who’s talking next. While this is perhaps more about self-management, you as a manager can still suggest various methods of avoiding some of those interruptions.

Doing regular team meetings is a good call for managing remote employees, but it’s not enough. Your team members need to interact with each other spontaneously and independently, and to get to know each other as people, not just co-workers. Remote working consists of a give and take between the work and the outside world. Outside of meetings and required “office hours,” encourage your team to work from the park or take a free afternoon to bake bread. Instilling a sense of independence in your team is a critical part of learning to remotely manage employees. In remote work, it’s not unusual for employees to feel distanced from their superior.

• This also includes individuals being able to contact you if needed.
• That still holds true, perhaps more so, if you are managing remote workers.
• Our levels of tolerance and adaptability vary, and you should consider these factors when managing remote teams.
• More than once, we had projects where the work I found in the morning was not what we needed.
• Today we tackle the most common challenges managers face with a partially remote team, and what to do about them.

Keep a diary in handy, and make note of things that your employees are pointing out. Remembering these finer details will keep the bond with your team strong and long-lasting. Google Drive – Do you need to share work documents, presentations, and spreadsheets across multiple team members? It’s free, fast, and accessible from any Internet-enabled device. Turn on and off features, enable sharing, and change access rights.

How To Manage A Remote Team: 14 Effective Tips For Your Business

Google Hangouts – Google Hangouts gives you free access to voice, video, and messaging one-on-one or with a team. Learning how to manage a remote team shouldn’t be as difficult as it might seem. Some of your employees might be going through a challenging life crisis and become torn between attending to their challenges and keeping their jobs. This could take a mental toll on them if not quickly and adequately addressed. Team members who need more time to adjust to the remote environment might deal with mental health concerns if they continue to work under pressure.

These team management tools are affordable and easy to use across multiple devices anywhere. As a team manager, the mental health of your employees should be of utmost concern, especially since they will deliver better results when they have sound health and feel supported. Barbara Z. Larson is executive professor of management and director of partnerships at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. Prior to her academic career, Professor Larson worked for 15 years in international finance and operations leadership, most recently as Director of International Finance at R.R. In response to the uncertainties presented by Covid-19, many companies and universities have asked their employees to work remotely. Learning to remotely manage a team will have its inevitable growing pains.

In the absence of personal meetings, employees miss communication, which ultimately makes the relationship with their managers turn cold. Stand-up meetings, especially when done over video call, avoid that from happening. It causes dismay, and instead of looking forward to it, your team will abhor it. A 15-minute stand-up duration is great as a rule of thumb.

The race for improving team collaboration has become a hip trend in the business world. You can easily find a lot of strategies and how-tos describing ways to enhance employees’ performance and boost productivity. This virtual face-to-face assessment could be the perfect time to ask for project management feedback and suggestions on how to move forward.

Give Team Access To The Same Collaboration Tools

Lack of initiative to resolve conflicts might force employees to quit and take legal steps. Learn from great leaders like Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, and workplace research from Stanford & Harvard. It tops commonly believed top perks like higher pay, flexible work hours, and better how to build culture in a remote team healthcare. However, as a leader, you shouldn’t ask your team to do anything you wouldn’t do. While no one knows everything, remote staff are at a major disadvantage that goes much deeper than missing a hallway chat or two. They’re missing the majority of discussions in many cases.

When I Work – Schedule your hourly team members with this dead-simple tool. This app helps you minimize scheduling conflicts and maximize efficiency. Quip – Use quip to host all of your communication in one central location. Share tasks, spreadsheets, and checklists both online and offline. Irina is a marketer and international keynote speaker based in Dublin, Ireland. She’s currently working at HubSpot, on a program called “Surround Sound”, where she is focused on building awareness for the company’s freemium products.

These feelings can again jeopardize the morale and strength of your employees. In such a case, training programs can act as a breather. Zoom – The king of video communication for remote teams!

Set Clear Expectations

Twitter, Netflix, dogs, children, and the lull of the couch don’t simply cease to exist when we work remotely. Busywork does not benefit anyone, especially remote workers. A crucial expectation you’ll need to set for your remote team is which communication channels to use. Hopefully, you already have some remote communication tools in place. To advance to a key leadership role often requires a person to be present in your main office. A mistake that some managers make is to assume moving isn’t something a remote team member will consider.

The same work that could have been done in a single day with better communication, stretched to two and a half. This can prevent them from getting critical mid-process feedback. Not wanting to be unproductive, they continue in the direction they started until they can reconnect the next day. When you hire someone who’s in a different time zone, the first thing to suffer is often work coordination. Where you may have previously been able to turn and ask a question mid-day on a project, now that same person is realizing everyone is asleep or away from work. Chances are, your remote team members did not hear those things.

Pushing them to work only at the designated time might put them under pressure and reduce their productivity. Time management tools like Time Doctor let you track how much time a member invests in a task or project. Thus, you will know who invests sufficient time to complete the assigned task.

Tools For Managing A Remote Team

One of them is making and following the rules for managing the team. Calendly seamlessly synchs calendars so there’s no second guessing time-zones for your next team meeting. Integrates seamlessly with hundreds of tools such as Zoom and Google Calendar.

Lead by example by blocking time on your calendar for yourself and your own activities. Create a shared experience multiple team members can participate in. Such independence is a valuable thing for a successful remote team. What’s critical is that you, as a manager, sign off on the every-now-and-then distraction. Show your team that you’re fine with the occasional jaunt on Twitter or a bit of playtime with the dog. These distractions are healthy and inevitable, so fighting them is futile.

To make remote teamwork efficient, you need to ensure an environment of transparency and trust. You can become a role model by communicating with them regularly. In case of any big decision or potential change, send an email putting every employee in CC. Since remote work lacks personal supervision, you might see a dearth of accountability. To avoid this issue, you need to make people accountable for the tasks they do. Besides, offer them the autonomy they need to complete a project.

Best Tools For Time Management

It can be too easy to jump on Facebook to see what the latest gossip with Bob and Marcie is. Keep all non-work windows closed except during any downtime. If you’re working from home, there are many potential distractions that can interrupt your workflow.

Also, offer individual and team feedback regularly so that your colleagues can locate their pain points and improvise accordingly. This action will have a positive effect on the team members and make them sincerely perform their work. ClickUp allows you to assign tasks to accountable people and track their performance. Just because they work from a home office or co-working space does not mean they do not want to grow. Your example, and the habits you build, make all the difference in how your remote team members will feel.

You may use tools such as Dropbox, Asana, or Microsoft Teams—but one general thing most remote teams will need is a good unified communications and collaboration platform like Dialpad. Monday.com is a colorful, intuitive project management software. While not the cheapest option, it’s worth paying more for this tool’s functionality and painless onboarding process.

Slack – Slack is the undisputed champion of team communication. Using an always-on chat interface, teams can converse with each other publicly via channels or privately through instant message. It’s simple to share files, access archives, https://globalcloudteam.com/ and create private and public reminders. Quite a few apps integrate well with Slack, including Clubbie.io, which bridges the gap between Slack and email. Team collaboration is important for a reason – it delivers results.

So find ways to bring your remote team face-to-face as often as possible, whether in-person or using video. It’s an easy and effective way to build strong relationships among people who aren’t together every day. Applicant Tracking Choosing the best applicant tracking system is crucial to having a smooth recruitment process that saves you time and money.