Working remotely requires excellent communication skills, collaborative tools, and it goes without saying, regular online engagement. In this piece we present our tips and best practices to help teams stay productive and happy working remotely.
Set people clear goals that support the company vision and help them to feel motivated; provide visionary leadership and check in with remote workers to ensure that there are no issues to resolve.
Focus on Communication
As companies shift to long-term working-from-home arrangements due to the Covid-19 pandemic, managers’ roles have become vital: they are tasked with helping to shape an environment that allows teams to function adequately. If organisations are to continuously be productive, and to continuously seek new innovations from teams, remote team managers need to clearly communicate with the team about what they’re working towards, what’s permitted, what’s expected of them and how they work together with each other. Communication between remote teams will aid in the formation of relationships and increase team spirit: make sure that your team has access to tools for fast messaging (like Slack or Microsoft Teams), do regular video calls or conference meetings, use a project management system, QA processes or regular check-ins. It can enable a clearer definition between what is needed to be done, each person’s contributions to the wider company mission, and a means of asynchronous feedback. It can ensure that priorities and messages do not blurred in the day-to-day firefighting.
Establish Clear Expectations
In your role as a remote manager, you should set expectations and goals with your team members to foster engagement, productivity and create successful outcomes. This coaching should take place regularly to help onboard and improve each one in their role. Establish clear policies on how your team communicates. These might include provisioning clear synchronous (e.g. in person and virtual meetings) and asynchronous channels (e.g. email, chat and Project Management Software). If you schedule one 1:1 during every meeting with all your directs, by the end of the week, you’ve gone 1:1 with everyone at least once so that they’re brought up to speed on priorities, progress on work-in-progress, or plans and any other timely or relevant housekeeping information, so that everyone’s on the same page and no team member is confused or frustrated with any work. Additionally, 1:1 meetings are a great way to get to know your teammates better and build relationship with them.
Encourage Collaboration
This is often one of the most challenging aspects of management in a dispersed working environment.As remote workers are often without office-based issues and distractions, they can quickly lose sight of their projects.In order t address this challenge companies can encourage remote team members to interact with via telecommunication mediums as well as project management tools and software; give them clear attainable goals and objectives, as well as regular feedback/mentorship to facilitate and promote maximum growth and development. Managers should regularly touch base with remote employees through video calls, chat and other formation tools, to foster trust and camaraderie with them. Skip the proverbial water cooler? Try a virtual oneSocialising: Let your workers socialise by setting an agenda for how they interact as a group and how they share information.
Invest in Technology
Amid massive shifts in work modes, the CIO must develop new ways for teams to be collaborative outside of the office. This means leveraging new technologies as well as best practices for managing virtual teams. Sound investment in core tools to improve communication between team members and enrich a remote team’s experiences is crucial for a successful remote-working model. Besides investing in collaboration software through video conferencing, you should invest in tools like slack and other remote team collaboration tools or file-sharing solutions. Also, consider getting a back-up communication tool as a security measure to ensure unceasing work and productivity. Train your employees on these tools properly so that fewer misunderstandings occur in the first place, and so that your staff is able to work more effectively. At the same time, create chances for more informal forms of team-building such as virtual happy hours, a weekly team meeting, or other team activities.
Focus on Engagement
Successfully managing these teams means giving 100 per cent of your focus to keeping all the lines of communication open, building a vibrant culture and optimising productivity and performance. It also means valuing the fact that your remote employee’s life is being put under extra stress. Without hallway or water cooler talk, a team’s members might start to feel disfranchised. So, it’s important that workers have opportunities to discuss what they might need to understand and perform their jobs effectively – and be able to do so if their performance is starting to slip. Make sure that you also have a one-on-one meeting with each of your reports on a regular basis, and a call with the team as a whole at least once a week, to get a gauge on progress, concerns and guidance. Use collaborative tools that enhance teamwork, such as project management software and file-sharing platforms to keep remote employees on the same page, while limiting emails. Finally, surveys are also a useful tool for assessing employee happiness, or wellbeing.