When you take a step back to look at remote work, it can seem like a dream come true. You can miss the stressful commutes, work to a flexible work schedule, manage your tasks easier, spend more time with your family, and look after your health.
But if like many you are still new to remote working and slowly transitioning, it’s going to be a huge learning curve. This is especially true when it comes to managing a team. It can be challenging to look after your own work routine let alone now start to manage a remote team. One of the biggest challenges to overcome is the sudden absence of any face-to-face interactions.
While managers of the remote teams can perform the exact same duties as an in-office manager, managing employees who work at home takes more planning, strategic thinking, and plenty of practice.
Challenges That Come With Managing A Remote Team
Working remotely can be vastly different from a typical working structure. There are many benefits, however, it also comes with some new and unique challenges for managers.
The Wrong Communication Practices
Both regular and remote working teams can have issues with communication, however, the reasons for the lack of communication are usually different for both of them.
When looking at remote teams, if the managers aren’t quick and concise with their communication decisions it can lead to team confusion and ultimately affect their work.
Also, asking for last-minute meetings without any context or a heads up can make employees feel overwhelmed and make them anxious. You need to simplify communication for remote teams, as it is essential for the right practices and tools to be used.
Lack Of Trust
Many managers will struggle with things like ‘if I can’t see the team working, how can I be sure they are working to the same efficiency?’ The ability to trust your remote team can help to encourage employees and they will become more productive. However, if you show a lack of trust then it can be demoralizing and have the opposite effect.
Obsolete Or Incorrect Technology
In order for remote teams to collaborate with each other and work efficiently, using the right technologies such as an employee clock in is essential. If the technology or tools provided is too old or obsolete, it can be demoralizing and decrease their overall efficiency. At the same time, if you introduce too many advanced tools with a lack of guidance or training, can be overwhelming and damage their productivity.
Processes That Are Ineffective
The processes that you had in place for the office may not be as effective for a home working team. As a manager, you aren’t able to quickly hold a meeting in a room anytime or expect your employees to be on call right away.
When your employees work from home, they need to have a certain level of work-life balance, therefore constantly receiving messages from their manager can interrupt their concentration, reduce their efficiency, and cause them to feel burned out. This is why a remote team needs to have work calls that involve different processes from in the office.
How To Manage Your Remote Team Successfully
Build Your Teams Remote Workplace
Just as you would designate meeting rooms, desks, and common casual areas in a physical office, you need to recreate these as virtual spaces for your remote team as their workspace.
Having unified digital workspaces, employees are able to access the work resources they need, see project details, and communicate through one single platform. The idea is to provide your team with access to a unified set of tools that will help them to work together even though they are working in different locations.
Make Sure You Include:
- Somewhere for them to have conversations such as Zoom or Skype for business.
- Process and project management space where the team can see the work that needs to be completed.
- Cloud storage
- A common calendar
Schedule 1:1 Recurring Meetings
It is essential that managers have a strong focus on building their relationship with every single team member by having 1:1 meetings with them, a minimum of once a month. If you don’t have a big team you could also think about doing a weekly 1:1 meeting or offering the opportunity for your team to request an additional meeting if they feel like they need it. Just set these up as a recurring event in your calendar and you’ll never forget. It’s a good idea to provide a webcam to your employee so you are able to speak face to face over the internet, after all this is likely the only face-to-face you will get.
Organize Weekly Team Meetings
Just like 1:1’s team meetings are important in order to build and maintain strong working relationships with your team. Having a meeting once a week may work for some, however, remember this can be amended to suit the current workload. Just make sure any meetings are planned in advance and not at the last minute.
If there is an important deadline approaching, you may need to have more frequent meetings so everyone can understand the progress that has been made on the project. On the other hand, if things are running smoothly, every two weeks may work just as well. This is one of the benefits of working remotely; the ability t be flexible.
No matter what, it’s essential for you to have an agenda when holding a team meeting. There is no point in having a team meeting that is achieving anything. It’s a waste of your time and the team’s time and could lead to them feeling less motivated. It’s also a good practice to share the topic of the meeting with the team beforehand, this way they can prepare any materials, updates, or questions they have in advance. You need to make sure your time is used well as a manager, so make sure you only host meetings that serve a purpose and are going to help ensure people show up and participate.
Create Processes That Will Minimize Distractions
You may be surprised to find that a large proportion of employees believe they are more productive when they work from home as they don’t have many distractions to contend with. However, they need a helping hand from their managers to do this.
If messages start to overflow with no clear priority of the work needed, it is too easy for things to become stressful and overwhelming for your employees. It can be easy for managers to miss the telltale signs of stress and burnout in their employees.
This is why there is a necessity for a dedicated process where any requests can be assigned, prioritized, and tracked until completed. The best way to do this is by streamlining all the requests and then prioritizing them the help your employees stay on top of all their duties, it also helps to prevent things from slipping through the cracks.
Concentrate On The Outputs Instead Of The Process
You should encourage your employees to complete their projects in a way that is easiest for them that is going to be most productive. Instead of focusing on the process, you should focus on the outcomes. Remote work gives your team the flexibility to create their own working schedule and manages their work how they feel best. You should take advantage of this flexibility, otherwise, you may not see any benefits from having a remote team.
Increase Recognition
It’s important for you to have an effective recognition system in place, it helps to motivate your employees and makes them feel valued. Remote employees may feel a little disassociated from the rest of their team. Recognition helps to let them know they are doing good work and are contributing to the team. It doesn’t need to be monetary, a public recognition of their hard work at the next team meeting may be good enough. Even development opportunities are considered a good token of appreciation.
Be More Empathetic And Flexible
Considering the current wordwide pandemic, there is a lot going on in peoples homes. Of course, this isn’t an excuse that can be used all the time for not getting work done, but it may have an impact. Your team members may be juggling working from home, home schooling, taking care od small children, running extra errands to take care a vulnerable person, among other things, so make sure you take this into consideration.
Instead of having set hours everyday, give them some freedom and flexibility to complete their work when they canm as long as they meet the deadlines that are required.
Find What Works For Your Team
Remote working is looking like something that is going to be a permanent fixture for the future. Therefore implementing it has become a necessity for many organisations. You may have a few hiccups at the start, and you may feel overwhelmed but you will eventually reach a point where you might start to think
This guide should help you to manage your remote team successfully. Have you suddenly found yourself managing a remote team? Is there anything you would like to ad to this list?
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