A Guide To Managing A Remote Workforce

As a manager, this provides you with an opportunity to connect your employees’ goals with those of the company. For instance, an employee who has always wanted to visit New York could be given a chance to work on a New York project when it arises. Your role as someone responsible for remote team members is to help them understand the values and mission of the company.

Create a shared experience multiple team members can participate in. Such independence is a valuable thing for a successful remote team. While the journey may be the destination in some instances, the destination for your remote team is their endwork. Let the work they’re doing speak for itself rather than obsessing over how they get the work done. Do you want to limit video calls for your sake and the sake of your team?

Common Challenges Of Remote Work

That’s why remote project managers use online project management tools to virtually connect people who are physically distant. Recent events have proved that many industries could survive, and even thrive, using remote project management. While the benefits of remote work often far outweigh the disadvantages, one of the most debilitating drawbacks has to do with feelings of loneliness and isolation. One way of supporting remote workers is by encouraging remote employees to interact with each other on a social level. Providing your team with social hours, video chats, or virtual team-building exercises will improve both morale and communication. The way you manage a remote workforce will have long-term implications for your business and its growth potential.

As much as remote work can be fraught with challenges, there are also relatively quick and inexpensive things that managers can do to ease the transition. We are big believers Managing Remote Teams in Daniel Pink’s work that champions autonomy, mastery and purpose. We believe the remote environment reinforces all of these principles.” — Articulate, Inc.

And when managed poorly, remote work can dramatically erode engagement and productivity. Remote work isn’t just better for business — it’s better for employees too. Remote employees often have higher engagement and wellbeing than fully on-site workers who can do at least portions of their job remotely.

Most of the role’s tasks and processes are inherently well-defined. It’s important to consider each job individually — generalizing jobs could hide opportunities and risks related to remote work. View All Events Browse webinars and in-person learning sessions to fit your interests. Learning Discover courses and other experiences that bring out what’s best in you, the people around you and your entire organization.

Step 2: Set Up Recurring 1:1 Meetings With Each Report

Some of the best ways to do that include virtual hangouts, joint brainstorming sessions, morning coffee standups, online lunch and learns, and team-building games. Go around in a circle and give each worker a chance to talk about their plan for the day, any issues they have, and what they need from other team members. Blink, for example, is a mobile app that allows team members to communicate via a social-media-style feed, instant messaging, and cloud-based document sharing — all from one place. At Actualize Consulting in Reston, Va., workers’ contributions are celebrated with videos, says Kerry Wekelo, the organization’s chief operating officer. The videos have replaced the recognition that would have taken place at the company’s annual retreat, which was canceled because of the pandemic. Ask employees to give you their work schedules, along with tasks they’re expected to accomplish within a given time, Civitella suggests.

He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night , you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. While you’ll glean some of that know-how from time, experience, and managing, you’ll need to be more intentional about gaining specific knowledge. This sort of leadership leads to long-lasting trust, strong relationships, and powerful insights.

Project management apps often cover employee communication and tracking the progress/stage of current projects, allowing for maximum efficiency, and a better way to determine deadlines in the future. If you’ve inherited a team or are struggling with your existing team, take some time out to understand the team’s purpose and vision — and be sure you and your team members are on the same page. To be effective in the face of different perspectives and experiences, it’s important for your team to unite around a shared purpose and vision.

Managing remote workers could mean that you may end up managing employees from different cultures. Being culturally sensitive includes agreeing on which language will be used to communicate during interactions. Also, you’ll need to invest in learning the communication styles of your employees, and how they view punctuality. You should be willing to embrace different cultures without diverting from your own company culture. One way of encouraging employees to know each other and feel less socially isolated is for you, as the manager, to find opportunities for collaboration.

• Project management apps often cover employee communication and tracking the progress/stage of current projects, allowing for maximum efficiency, and a better way to determine deadlines in the future.
• Have an agenda and a dress code (if that’s what’s usual for you).
• “Show employees that you plan to look out for them for the long haul,” says Kropp.
• For example, what specific tasks or perspective do you expect each team member to contribute?
• Here are some tips to help you tackle the challenges of managing remote employees, plus the pros and cons of having a remote workforce.
• And yes, you should encourage the use of video during these meetings.

Have them assign due dates to each item so you can track their progress, and schedule daily check-ins over video until they are ready to step into their new role with confidence. You’ll feel confident knowing everyone’s work is being seen and prioritized properly. So when managing virtual teams, don’t let the physical distance come in the way of celebrating and rewarding accomplishments. When you work from an office, there’s a clear line between your professional and personal life, at least more straightforward than the boundaries set by remote work. The PMQ teaches managers to lead effectively, giving HR more time to meet the demands of the workplace.

What Are The Advantages Of Remote Work?

Here are a few tips to set and properly communicate your expectations when you remotely manage a team. Assign a few team members to help you document any necessary changes to your typical project management steps. Share these documented changes to project management processes and other core functions so employees can easily reference them. Another important part of supporting remote workers is to show appreciation.

Best of all, an array of new and powerful technology is available, making the transition to remote work far easier for organizations and their remote workers. Not only will this ensure they can be a company that employees will happily remain https://globalcloudteam.com/ with, but also allows them to reap the newly discovered benefits that remote work provides. Not to mention, it’s been a key factor in fighting the spread of the pandemic, and has allowed many workers a healthier work/life balance.

This also means that organizations are no longer tied down to only reviewing candidates that can make a daily commute, so the pool of talent has exponentially increased. Remember that virtual communication’s effectiveness will vary from person to person, so it’s important to educate employees about how and when to deal with a challenging virtual discussion. Though they don’t have the benefit of in-person communications, team leaders can take steps to steer their dispersed teams in a positive direction.

Some productivity standards will vary with the job; others may be standard across the company. You can also build personal time into meetings, allowing for 5-10 minutes at the beginning or end of meetings for everyone to give a personal update. The big upside of using video conferencing for these ideas is that it naturally leads to more impromptu, unplanned conversations that can often lead to the best ideas from your team members. Hold weekly team meetings to establish communication and good social interaction. And, as a manager, hold regular one-on-one supervision sessions so workers can flag any issues. A word to describe how you’re feeling and a number to gauge your energy levels out of 10.

The New Norm Of Remote Work Support

Whether you’re managing a remote team of 10 or an entire company moving to remote or hybrid work, there’s a way to make your home office less lonely—while making sure it’s just as productive. 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. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your team is not delayed by the fact that a team member cannot accomplish their tasks due to technical problems. Solutions may include identifying service providers near each team member that would be available when a technical problem emerges. Another solution is to provide a backup by paying for access to a shared workspace where employees can work from while their problems are being attended to.

If you do a poor job, morale and productivity will suffer; if you’re successful, a remote workforce can build loyalty and boost engagement. Here are some tips to help you tackle the challenges of managing remote employees, plus the pros and cons of having a remote workforce. Managers need a strategy and a certain skill set to manage remote workers.

We’re constantly working to iterate and improve our onboarding process because it’s crucial for productivity and retention. Similarly boundaries need to be set around working hours and methods of communication. We change lives, businesses, and nations through digital upskilling, developing the edge you need to conquer what’s next. Enhance your skill set and boost your hirability through innovative, independent learning. Envision and execute the development of industry-defining products, and learn how to successfully bring them to market.

Set Aside Specific Days, Times And Methods For Team Interaction

To gauge a candidate’s desire to work for us, we developed a unique way of applying. Most applicants will create a newsletter and complete an assignment. For developers, it could also entail spending a week actually working with the development team.

Step 7: Hire And Onboard New Remote Team Members To Keep Growing

For remote teams, it may take a little extra effort to recreate common workplace water cooler communication. And when there is a mix of off-site and on-site employees, remote managers should seek team building opportunities to include everyone whenever possible. With the above challenges in mind, here are our tips for effectively managing remote teams. If you’re ready to develop your leaders in best practices for managing remote employees, partner with us to craft a customized learning journey for your team using our research-backed modules.

Tips For Effective Remote Team Meetings:

Ask employees what they are working on each week and be clear about what you expect to be completed. They show priority, status, can attach files to tasks, add comments and much more. There are also kanban boards to visualize workflow and a calendar view, too. All project views are simultaneously updated so no one is ever working with old data.