Remote jobs have become common nowadays and they have transformed the way businesses operate. Remote work, although it comes with a lot of benefits such as flexibility and better work-life balance, it also brings new challenges. With off-site work, where you have the freedom to work from anywhere, you also need to ensure strong communication for uninterrupted work sessions and productivity.
Managing remote teams is more than just assigning tasks, it’s about making sure that your team members stay engaged so that they can perform at their best. If you don’t have the right remote work management strategies in place, you and your team members will not be able to communicate effectively resulting in missed deadlines and a lack of teamwork.
This comprehensive remote worker management guide will help you manage your remote employees effectively using the right remote working tools and strategies.
Understanding Remote Work Management
Before knowing how to manage your remote employees, it’s important to understand what remote work management actually stands for. So, let’s start with that.
What is remote work management?
In simple words, remote work management is the process of organizing, supporting, and tracking the progress of your remote employees. It involves setting up seamless communication channels, ensuring your employees have the right remote work tools they need to succeed, and task management. It’s like running or managing a spaceship from the ground, without proper communication, tools, and guidance, your team might drift off into space.
Why effective remote work management is crucial for success?
The success of any company is dependent on how engaged and motivated its employees are. Without proper remote team solutions in place, managing your employees will be much harder, if at all possible. Effective and high-quality managing remote teams strategies ensure your employees and tasks stay on track and the quality of work remains high. When you have a well-structured remote team management system in place, it will be easier for managers to build trust with their teams making them work at their best without constant supervision.
Key Challenges Of Managing Remote Teams
Managing remote teams isn’t easy but with proper management and preparation, it can be. Here are some of the major challenges you’ll have to tackle when dealing with your remote employees.
Communication barriers
In an office setting, it’s easy for employees to walk over to a colleague’s desk and ask questions about tasks or projects. In a remote setting, on the other hand, it’s not as easy as messages and emails can be misinterpreted. Waiting for teammates to respond can also slow down projects and may even cause their failure. To keep teams connected, up-to-date and efficient, companies should have reliable collaborative tools for remote working in place.
Maintaining work-life balance
Remote working employees often find it hard to separate work from home. This may be because of the distractions at home or irregular working hours. If not addressed in time, this issue can transform into problems leading to project delays or failures. Pre-decided work hours and time-off policies can make it easy for remote employees to maintain a balance between work and home.
Ensuring data security
With online business sessions come the cybersecurity risks that prove to be dangerous if you don’t take preventive beforehand. The danger of cybercrimes becomes even more imminent when your employees are using public Wi-Fi and personal devices. To eradicate this issue, you will have to use VPNs and encrypted remote working tools to keep your data secure.
Managing payroll and benefits
Paying your employees is not always simple, especially when they are working from different time zones because of the varying tax laws and regulations. You will have to find high-quality remote work management software to automate the process of paying your employees and managing benefits.
Compliance across states and countries
Different states and countries also require businesses to be compliant with tax and employment laws. So, if you have employees working from different states or countries, you will have to stay up-to-date with tax regulations and labor laws to avoid any legal complications.
Best Practices For Managing Remote Employees
The success of any remote greatly depends on how well the management manages the challenges listed above. Here are some practices that can ensure strong communication and increased productivity.
Set clear expectations and communication channels
You need a well-structured team management system in place for any meeting, let alone a remote one. Your team members require clear guidelines about the work hours, response times, project deadlines and their roles in them, communication tools, and sources for the information they need to reach the project’s goals. Dedicated communication tools such as Microsoft Teams can make it easy for you to manage roles, goals, and deadlines.
Schedule regular Check-ins and team updates
Frequent and scheduled team meetings are the key to Successful projects. It is the duty of a team leader or manager to hold regular team meetings. Daily, weekly, or biweekly remote team meetings help everyone stay on track. One thing that all meetings should have is a clear and focused agenda, so strive to create one and share it with the team before every meeting. One-on-one check-ins with your employees also help a lot.
Unify employee data for transparency
Micromanagement isn’t always needed, in fact, in some projects, it may even bring the morale down. Instead, strive for transparency between all the team members and ensure that all of them have access to the same information. Use reliable and effective remote team management software to track the progress of your projects. This eliminates the need for constant status updates from remote members.
Invest in the right tools and technologies (Conference Cameras)
Remote team meetings are only possible if each of your team members has a high-quality conference camera, microphones, headsets, and other devices essential for communication. In addition to these devices, you also need the right technologies that are customized to the needs of your projects. So, invest in the right tools and software to keep the projects running smoothly and your team engaged and motivated.
Encourage a healthy work-life balance
You can’t ignore the work-life balance of your team members if you want your projects to be successful. You don’t want your team members to be overworked or burnt out. So, set clear guidelines about work hours, breaks, meetings, and deadlines and encourage your team to follow them.
Implement performance tracking and set measurable goals
Again, having a clear set of goals, proper task assignments, and pre-decided deadlines is better than micromanaging. Track the performance of your team members by measuring goals instead of focusing on how many hours they worked. Use performance dashboards and time management software to track performance easily.
Use asynchronous communication to enhance flexibility
Members of your remote team don’t all work at the same time as they span different time zones. Asynchronous communication, where you send a message without needing an immediate reply, can be a useful tool to enhance flexibility and productivity. A recorded video message is the perfect example of asynchronous communication. Tools like Loom and Notion can also help make communications easy.
Prioritize employee well-being and mental health
It’s important to keep your team members engaged and motivated as working remotely can be a bit isolating and may cause stress. Regularly inquire about your employees’ well-being and engage in fun group activities to keep the environment positive, even if it’s just casual talking or sharing jokes.
Emphasize results over hours worked
As a team leader, you have to respect your employees’ time and style of work. Encourage them to give their best and let them do their own thing. Measure the success of your project by the work done instead of focusing on the logged hours.
Take advantage of virtual team-building activities and milestone celebrations
Many think that team bonding is not possible when you are working remotely, that’s not true. Fun online activities such as games and trivia or even a casual chat during coffee break can make your team members bond. Celebrating milestones during online meetings can also help.
Essential Tools For Managing Remote Teams
Technology and the right equipment are the backbone of effective team meetings. To keep employees connected and ensure smooth workflow, think before investing in communication tools. Here are the best tools for each of your needs.
Communication and team chat apps
Project management and success are not possible without reliable communication apps, here are the most popular remote team solutions for communication.
Microsoft Teams
Slack
Discord
Online meeting and video conferencing tools (Conference Camera)
A high-quality conferencing setup includes a good conference camera, microphones, and headsets that make clear virtual face-to-face interactions easy. You will also need a good video conferencing platform, here are some popular examples.
Zoom
Google Meet
Webex
Project management tools
A good project management tool offers task assignments, progress tracking, deadline reminders and more, here are some of the best.
Asana
Trello
Monday.com
ClickUp
File sharing and Storage tools
The following file-sharing and storage tools not only let you share important files and documents with your teammates in real-time, but they also come with high-quality encryption and secure file storage.
Google Drive
Dropbox
OneDrive
Remote desktop software
For team members who require remote access to office computers or specialized software to complete their tasks, here are some remote desktop access tools.
AnyDesk
TeamViewer
Chrome Remote Desktop
How To Track Team Performance
It’s easy for managers and employers to track the performance of their teams and projects in an office setting, you only need to ask your employees. In a virtual remote setting, on the other hand, you need to utilize data-driven methods such as measuring results and progress. Here is how you can do that.
Key metrics to measure productivity
The key metrics to measure productivity include but are not limited to;
Number of tasks completed
Response times
Customer satisfaction scores
Peer feedback
Project efficiency
Focus on creating a system that assesses productivity utilizing the metrics listed above instead of tracking work time.
Tools for monitoring work progress and goals
Project management tools listed above and others such as Jira and Hubstaff to keep track of your team members and tasks assigned to them. The right remote team management solutions help you identify areas for improvement to reach your goals.
Using feedback loops for continuous improvement
For remote teams to work harder and keep growing, you need to establish a feedback system that allows your team members to share their thoughts, challenges, and suggestions openly. You can also perform monthly reviews that award the remote members of your team based on their performances. This will encourage them to be dedicated to the projects.
Managing Hybrid Teams: Best Practices And Tools
If your company has a hybrid employee system in place, the protocols for managing both in-office participants and remote employees will be different. Here are the best practices and tools for managing in-office and off-site participants to make everyone feel valued and included.
Balancing remote and in-office work
The ultimate goal of any team management strategy should be to ensure seamless collaboration between all the employees, no matter where they work from. For hybrid settings, determine which tasks can be done remotely and which require employees to be present in the office. You can consider rotating office days or allowing your team members to choose when they can come in.
Hybrid work tools for seamless collaboration
Let technology work its magic and bridge the gap between remote and in-office workers. Utilize hybrid team management solutions such as Zoom and Slack to keep communications open and the work going. A high-quality conference camera and audio setup are also must-haves for hybrid work environments.
Final Thoughts: Building A High-Performing Remote Team
The future of work is remote, it’s better to embrace it now than late. For remote working environments, you need to turn distance into advantage. To make your remote teams perform well, you need to ensure you have all the right policies, plans, and tools in place.
Keep your team members motivated and engaged by ensuring the provision of high-quality communication platforms and tools such as conference cameras and audio systems. Strive for a balanced life for your teams between work and home and prioritize results over logged hours.
