How can I help my remote team adjust to working remotely? What should I do to build an effective remote team? How can I encourage trust and transparent communication with a remote team?
These are the questions that you may have in mind when thinking about remote team management. Asking them may help you better understand how to manage your employees.
That is why, it will be beneficial to guide you to understand the remote work organization.
This article talks about the tips of building a strong remote team and improving their work-life balance. Thus, you will have a better picture of how to keep your team engaged when you only meet virtually.
Best Practices of Remote Team Collaboration
Before finding out the tips of effective remote work setting, let us dive into the “remote team collaboration” term. As many organizations belong to the remote work category, it is important to know how it operates. Remote team collaboration means working together at a distance. For this, remote employees should communicate and support each other, and have clear goals and objectives.
As the world is becoming virtual, you might need to make the best out of remote work.
Let Your Employees Restructure Their Day
One of the main advantages of remote work is flexibility. That said, employees may need to have both location and schedule independence. Now, this doesn’t mean that they won’t work all day. Instead, it means that you and your team have to work on the ultimate goal. In this case, trust is the most important thing. You need to trust that your remote team will complete all the tasks by the set deadline. You should also build trust in your team. So, with this trust, your employees should have a chance to restructure their day.
Having this structure will help employees do the things outside of work. For instance, they can take their kids to school or pick them up. They can also visit an art museum or gallery, have friends over for dinner, read a book, workout, rest, etc. At the same time, you need to make sure that your employees complete their work sometime throughout the day.
Moreover, by having flexibility, the chances are high that your employees will be satisfied and your company will succeed. The more flexible the schedule, the better they will do their job.
Equip Your Remote Team with the Right Tools
There are several tools that your remote team should have:
- Communication tools
- Productivity monitoring tools
- Remote employee monitoring tools
As the work is remote, it is difficult to communicate effectively, estimate employee performance, and focus. Direct communication is missing, and it may be hard for your remote team to discuss work while no one is next to them. Besides, they may get easily distracted and may tend to focus on non-work-related things. To avoid these scenarios, you might want to watch the progress of your team to see whether they work or not.
For that, there is time tracking software that helps remote teams stay productive. WebWork is an employee monitoring software that has various helpful features for remote teams. Here’s how this software will help in remote team collaboration:
Communication Tools
Communicate with your remote teams via Team Chat and Video Calls
Productivity Monitoring Tools
See whether employees dedicate enough time and effort to tasks or not.
Remote Employee Monitoring Tools
Easily track your remote team’s app and website usage.
So, with proper tools, you will be sure that your remote team stays productive.
Set Smart Goals Together
To keep your employees motivated, you need to make sure that they know the company’s aim. This way, they will know what they need to do. You should first establish smart goals for yourself. Then, you need to talk about them with your remote team.
How Smart Goals Should Be?
- Specific – be more specific about where you are going
- Measurable – make sure you can track your goal
- Attainable – be confident that it is possible to accomplish the goal
- Relevant – your goals should correspond with your values
- Time-based – set deadlines for task prioritization
With smart goals, your remote team has a clear picture of where the company is going. Setting expectations helps your employees understand contributing factors to achieving success. This way, they focus on the common mission and work both individually and as a team to have a successful company.
Strengthen Remote Team Culture
Team culture is the values, beliefs, attitudes and goals that a team shares. That’s how employees work together to reach a common goal. Company’s success is dependent on how they treat each other.
As communication may be difficult for your remote team, you can provide opportunities for your employees to know each other better. For instance, you can create a virtual break room, hold virtual company events, play online games together and more. Maintaining a good team culture contributes to the working process.
If you stick to this plan, you’ll gradually notice positive changes in employee productivity and effectiveness.
Establish a Daily Routine
Last but not least, you need to create a schedule for your remote team. Research shows that a daily routine helps employees work better. Mastering schedules helps your employees when they have many assignments, deadlines, projects, etc. This gives your employees the opportunity of clearly knowing what they have to do at any time of the day. With this tactic, they focus on the things that they can control.
Besides, having a daily routine creates a sense of community. This routine can include trainings, work-wise meetings, performance evaluation, etc. All these activities enhance not only productivity, but communication. You can reach out to the employees when they need help and motivation.
Providing a structure to your remote employees’ day can improve employee focus, productivity and organization.
Conclusion
Considering the rapid development of technology, remote work has become more and more popular. Sadly, it has many challenges and you need to choose the right method to overcome them. When remote, it becomes difficult to communicate with your remote team and make sure that employees work. Luckily, there are several ways that will help you to build a strong remote team. You can either equip your employees with the right tools, or set smart goals together. You can also create a schedule for them and of course you can improve remote team culture. Any of these tactics will help you keep your employees engaged and realize your company’s objectives.
