10 Tips for Successfully Managing Remote Workers

Regularly communicating with your employees is an effective way to ensure that they can rely on you and consult you. It’s also a great opportunity to learn about their concerns, questions, and suggestions. Turn on video when you are attending an online meeting, or having a daily check-in meeting. Here’s an expanded list of more tools for communication and collaboration for WFH teams. Visual collaboration platforms to replicate your office whiteboard. An online canvas software like Creately can help plan your Sprint, brainstorm, collaborate on product wireframes, or analyze processes in-real time.

Sparrow suggests thinking about different ways of creating connections with remote workers. She started a video blog “to have an emotional and direct connection with every one of my people. has had a huge positive impact.” “What works in the office may not remotely,” Sparrow pointed out. “Instead of lengthy meetings, have short virtual huddles. …. Apply this thinking to team resourcing, scheduling and action planning.” It can be expensive to replace employees who have left your business, both in terms of the costs to hire a replacement and lost productivity. Remote work often boosts job satisfaction, which means employees stay with firms longer.

Transitioning teams to remote work

You need to schedule interactions and be available on the fly. You need to show you’re around by communicating through your established channels, and you need to respond to private questions when your team reaches out via DM. If people need more than a short break, take a task or two off their plate or give them the rest of the day off.

With the Covid-19 epidemic, many employees — and their managers — are finding themselves working out of the office and separated from each other for the first time. First, it’s important to understand the common challenges, from isolation to distractions to lack of face-to-face supervision. Oftentimes, remote employees leave their positions due to a lack of interest in their work. Leaders should set up virtual meetings to talk about how their employees are coping with remote work and project management.

The manager should discuss how previous projects went, the blockers they faced, and how challenging or exciting their work has been. When employees feel indispensable and valued for their unique qualities, they feel more engaged. When a company is committed to their remote employees and has a strategy that focuses on their people, they tend to provide a better overall employee experience. Software to manage remote employees are considered the best performance tracker and productivity booster for teams. The way you manage a remote workforce will have long-term implications for your business and its growth potential.

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A remote working setup makes it tough for people to establish a sense of personal connection with the team. I still remember meeting my colleagues for the first time in person at a company offsite, six months after joining. I also remember experiencing the magic of offline how To manage a remote team conversations with them. And I won’t deny that there was a newfound ease in working together with my team virtually after getting to meet them personally. If managers found anything wrong they can discuss the problems with the teams and manage them more effectively.

Remote workers must be able to collaborate just as if each of them were available in the same place. This need calls for secure, high-quality apps and platforms for advanced technologies like chat, teleconferencing, document sharing, laptops and other standard business hardware and software. This article about work from home challenges and benefits shows some of the most basic issues with remote work and how to get rid of these issues. It’s important to have regular meetings with your team so that all of you are on the same page and understand what is expected of you at work. Remote workers can be productive and engaged when they have a clear understanding of what you expect, how you expect it to be done, and the consequences of not meeting your expectations.

Out of office: 8 pros and cons of being a fully remote company

Similarly, managers require robust tools to manage remote employees. We’ll touch more on how workforce management software can help you effectively oversee your team while working in separate locations later. As the business world moves increasingly digital, the need for team management skills has never been greater. While managing remote teams can seem like a novel experience to many managers, it opens countless team opportunities.

You can also proactively, block access to websites that could introduce malware, and set alarms to alert you when suspicious behavior anomalies appear. Employees may be worrying about job security or a parent who is ill. Be supportive of them, be available to listen and allow for time off if necessary. Apart from these, a lot of productive discussions can take place during unofficial in-office chats.

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Keep the lines of contact open with regular phone or Zoom meetings. It can be an effort to get employees to have team spirit when they are not working face-to-face. But you can create unity by engaging with your workers and encouraging workers to connect. These actions will inspire them to be more productive because it will create positive morale. During non-verbal communications , use emoticons to express enthusiasm in conversation.

Remote workers are generally happier due to the greater freedom, flexibility, and autonomy they have. The lack of commute plays a significant role in this—one study found that 79% of respondents cited avoiding the commute as the biggest benefit of remote work. As a result, 52% of employers report an improvement in employee productivity since working remotely. 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.

Develop your writing skills, talk precisely, use the right remote collaboration tools to collaborate effectively as awesome communication is vital in the remote workplace. To overcome the lack of in-person interaction, dedicate time for team building and interaction within your remote team. This can be a regular team meeting that starts with an informal chat, a dedicated team-building exercise, or a social catch-up, such as a Friday afternoon quiz. Like working in an office environment, you’ll need to have difficult conversations at some point with your remote employees, for example, around performance management or disciplinary issues. There’s a potential for these conversations to go pear-shaped when relying on technology and in the absence of non-verbal cues. Remote work happens when employees don’t report to a physical office.

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You must be aware of the contributing factors if you’re going to measure and analyze employee well-being proficiently. Several different factors influence an organization’s wellness. Fast internet connections and mobile technological advances that can withstand intensive employee connectivity are essential for virtual teams.

• Confirm each employee has access to workplace tools, like computers and scanners, and communication platforms like Google Calendar, Zoom or Dropbox.
• Beyond the simple daily check-ins, over-communicating is imperative when it comes to the team’s tasks, duties, responsibilities and desired outcomes, which we’ll cover more in a minute.
• Apart from these, a lot of productive discussions can take place during unofficial in-office chats.
• If an emergency occurs during an early hour, having your mobile phone number shared with your team will help them call you or send an instant message.
• Part of the challenge was learning to manage their remote workforce.
• At times, the managers and leaders may need to go above and beyond the call of duty to prof their employees for feedback.

It’s important to set clear expectations when discussing productivity standards with your remote team. Some productivity standards will vary with the job; others may be standard across the company. For a variety of reasons, remote work aids businesses in keeping employees. Many staff members value flexibility and value the opportunity to work remotely. Stay-at-home parents may be able to return to their jobs if they’re remote when they might otherwise not be able to in an office setting.

Best practices for managing remote teams

Here are some tips for designating your preferred communication channels. Think of these process documents as living things that may evolve over time as your team settles into remote work. Setting expectations is likely best done through one mass call and reinforced through one-on-one conversations or small group outreach. You can discuss nuanced expectations for various members of your team during that one-on-one time, which will be critical if you manage a cross-functional team.

Managing remote employees has become the main concern of employers everywhere. A good solution to manage all of your remote employee’s’ activities, projects, tasks, etc. is DeskTrack. Not only employees, but businesses are also getting benefits from remote working. Hiring remote employees allows managers to choose ‘the best team’. Employees can set up a much more productive environment at home, where they are more comfortable and provide greater results for work. Productivity metrics to help you understand how your remote teams are working.

Unexpected problems related to project, or a teammate or how the work is being done are common in every business. If something is really bothering your employees or they’re feeling under the weather, understand the clues they might be giving you and give them a helping hand. Companies like Aha, NationBuilder, Automatic Buffer and many more are successfully working as 100% remote companies.

How do you effectively manage a remote team?

So consider this post as your go-to guide for managing remote teams. We’ll begin with some common challenges that plague virtual managers, followed by our best strategies to lead your remote team with confidence. Due to business shifting to remote working from the typical office workspace, managers should acknowledge stress, distractions, and rate of adaptability. Then, exercise flexibility in task supervision while managing remote teams. As common as remote working is nowadays, team managers still face challenges when managing remote teams.

Essential skills for to effectively manage remote teams

Get teams together physically using co-working spaces in locations where they don’t have an office. Planning small cross-functional team meetings can also help foster broader engagement beyond the digital connections. Many companies have made a switch from in-person to hybrid or fully remote workforces over the last few years. While remote and hybrid models have many benefits, managing employees from a distance can present new challenges for some leaders. This can get complicated in larger companies, where some teams are remote and others aren’t, or there are multiple remote teams working separately. A remote team is a group of professionals from various time zones, diverse skills and different culture working together on a unified project.

Set aside specific days, times and methods for team interaction

These tools can help you see how your employees are spending time on certain tasks. So, it’s important to consider different time zones when you’re managing people from all over the world. If you need to have a large group meeting, try to find a time that works for everyone. Many employees who work from home are often able to better manage their home life, and schedule their work around their personal commitments. However, working from home had been trending among many organizations even before the dawn of the age of quarantine.

The best one-on-one conversations don’t just focus on productivity evaluation. They can also be practical tools for maintaining the engagement and motivation of remote workers. Because it has advantages for both management and staff, remote work has grown in popularity. Flexible timings help remote employees harness their peak productivity without needing to put in the hours just for the sake of it.

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