Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Plan ahead with a remote team.[+]
- Use the right tools and processes.
- Create a remote culture of trust and collaboration.
- Create and document processes, even when things go wrong.
- Communicate and collaborate with your remote team.
- Keep your team informed and involved in projects or problems.
- You can manage a remote team successfully with some basic strategies.
Introduction
Managing a remote team is no easy task. The lack of face-to-face interaction can make it difficult to understand your employees' strengths and weaknesses, let alone motivate and inspire them. But with the right strategies in place, you can build a thriving remote team that's just as productive as any other. If you are just starting to build your team, you can hire talent at High5 and learn how they manage a pool of professionals to value to the team. In this article, we'll discuss how to plan ahead before beginning your remote journey, how to choose the right tools and processes for working remotely (and why), and how to set up a culture of trust and collaboration among your employees—even when they're separated by thousands of miles—as well as some best practices for communicating when things go wrong. By following these tips and tricks, you'll be on your way toward creating an engaging workplace where every employee feels valued despite their physical location!
Plan ahead with a remote team.
In the world of remote teams, planning ahead is more important than any other task. A poorly-planned team will tend to run into problems and mistakes, which can lead to a drop in productivity and even employee dissatisfaction.
If you want your remote staff members to work well together and achieve their goals, then you must plan ahead as much as possible. Planning ahead will help prevent or minimize these problems:
- Communication breakdowns between team members
- Inability to meet deadlines (due to poor communication)
Lost productivity/time due to lack of focus/poor planning.
Planning ahead also allows you to stay on top of your team's progress and success. You will be able to identify potential problems before they become serious issues, as well as make sure everyone is happy with how things are going.
Use the right tools and processes.
- Be sure to use the right project management tool for your business, such as Asana, Trello, or Basecamp. If you're looking for something more consumer-oriented, try something like Gmail or Outlook instead of an enterprise cloud-based email service (like Microsoft's Office 365).
- If you need more robust collaboration tools beyond simple cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box (which are great), try using Slack—a communication tool that serves as both a messaging service and file sharing platform—Skype or Zoom (for video conferencing) with your remote team members to keep everyone in touch no matter where they are located around the world.
Create a remote culture of trust and collaboration.
- Trust is the foundation of a remote team. It's a simple concept, but one that requires constant attention in order to be effective.
- Building trust is an ongoing process that happens through being transparent and consistent with your team members across all channels (phone calls, text messages, Slack chats). If you can do this consistently over time, it will build trust automatically—which will help make working remotely much easier!
- A helpful way to think about trust is like this: if they don't trust you now, they never will. To create an environment where everyone feels valued and included by being honest about what's happening within the company or organization and between employees themselves.”
- Digital coaching platforms like CoachHub are masters at helping you establish a corporate culture built on trust and inclusion. They can help you develop talent management strategies that help keep your remote teams engaged and motivated.
Create and document processes, even when things go wrong.
When you're managing remote talent, it is essential to keep an eye on the details. Documentation is the key to ensuring that your team stays organized and accountable. When things go wrong, documentation can help you determine whether or not someone is at fault—and if they are, who's responsible for fixing it.
Documentation also helps you stay on track with deadlines and goals by keeping everyone focused on their responsibilities. For example, if an employee tells his or her project manager that a particular task won't be completed by the deadline because of family obligations, document this information so everybody has access to it when making decisions about what needs to happen next.
Communicate and collaborate with your remote team.
To ensure that you can manage your remote team effectively, it's important to use the right tools. If a team member is working remotely and has no access to office resources like a calendar or file server, then you must use a project management tool with the capability for online collaboration. In addition, video conferencing can be used for quick meetings, which allows everyone on your team to participate in discussions and brainstorming sessions from their own offices or homes. Finally, chat tools should be used as an instant messaging app between employees so they can communicate quickly when they need to coordinate tasks or make decisions together.
Keep your team informed and involved in projects or problems.
You can't make an effective remote team if you don't involve your team in decision-making. You need to give them a voice in the project planning process and keep them informed of progress and issues as they arise.
Your team will also be more engaged if they feel like they are part of the solution. This means that when problems occur, you need to involve them directly in finding solutions. The more involved your remote workers are with problem-solving, the less likely they are to feel separate from the rest of your organization.
You can manage a remote team successfully with some basic strategies.
If you're managing a remote team, it's crucial to plan and create the right processes. In this section, we'll walk through the steps for creating your own remote culture to ensure your team and business success.
Before you start:
- Plan ahead by setting clear expectations around communication, collaboration tools, meeting times, etc.
- Use tools like Slack or Zoom to communicate with your team members in real-time while they work remotely. They can also help with project management (more on that later).
- Create a communication schedule so everyone knows when they should be available for meetings or calls with clients/colleagues who are based locally from their location outside of their home country—this is especially important if there are multiple time zones involved!
Conclusion
If you've always managed a local team, managing remote workers can be challenging. But if you follow these guidelines, you'll be able to manage your remote team as successfully as your local ones.
Thank you for reading!